NKS compatible "Spitfire Audio Plugins" no longer shown in "Komplete Kontrol 3.0"
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Note that the Spitfire plugins can all be instantiated in KK3 by using the Plugin row and clicking + and selecting them in the VST3 menu that pops up. The knob row will be automatically mapped to their parameters and work just fine that way, but the parameters won't have NKS names and page names. So this is specific to the NKS format, which is why I guessed (with 90% confidence) that the problem was they made a new format parser when they added NKS2 and it rejected the quirks in the Spitfire NKS files. Their rep says that's not it, but there's a good 10% chance the rep doesn't know the actual root cause and was told something else (spend some time in tech companies if you don't think this is possible), so I'm not taking that as dispositive.
I don't know if anyone's mentioned but the u-He plugins have a similar problem. They show up in NKS, but on launching via NKS I get "Can't be loaded Apple Silicon or VST2 to VST3 hasn't been implemented" error dialog, yet PlugInfo confirms they are all Apple Silicon and VST3. The u-he plugins can all be instantiated fine directly in the KK3 plugin row like the Spitfires can, but even though in that case the presets are still visible in the NKS browser, they still put up that error trying to load them into the already instantiated plugin. I will note u-he is probably the single most skilled plugin dev in the world. So if that also broke this is 100% NI having issues that NI has to fix. If it's not the file format parser, then it is the interfacing with the plugin automation API, and to be clear, u-he almost certainly has implemented their end of that API in exemplary fashion and NI needs to figure it out.
I will add that this Apple Silicon Error dialog also appears in the one Spitfire plugin that has NKS visible, the Speculative Memories under SA recordings. This (99% confidence) means NI learned of the false error dialog incompatibility before launch, and manually blocked the Spitfire files from being parsed. They forgot to also do the "SA Recordings" and u-He NKS files when they did that.
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The uhe plugins just need a full plugin scan to initiate the migration process on Mac AS
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I believe you are likely to be right on this. There were problems with Spitfire libraries inside KK a year ago that I raised with NI & Spitfire. Both acknowledged the problems and between the lines I concluded that nothing was going to happen until the new hardware and software were released and even then not too quickly. I wold expect to see some progress in the first half of this year.
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(sorry this post ended up duplicated below because the forum didn't want me to post a github link and then couldn't handle my re-editing the comment...but don't fix the forum, fix KK3)
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Well.. I would say that the new dependence of NKS2 on the S-Mk3 on-device cpu quite possibly has caused a resource shortage... HUMAN resource to tackle what needs attention.
Had NI not gone down this embedded path, adopting a next-gen NKS might be moving faster & more smoothly.
Did NI management want a hardware-dongle like Universal Audio? Perhaps so.
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Nope, I do a full rescan (1634 paid plugins, a couple trip up ScanApp3, if you hang ScanApp3 just force quit that and not the whole Komplete Kontrol) and get the Apple Silicon Error dialog on Repro1/5, Zebra, ZebraHZ. However I was interestingly able to get Diva working. I have the latest installs of all of these and PlugInfo shows Apple Silicon VST3. The symptoms are the same as Speculative Memories: the NKS presets all appear fine, you can instantiate the plugin directly fine, but you cannot launch the plugin from an NKS preset or load a NKS preset into the already instantiated plugin.
Ujam's Silk also gives this error dialog, but that in fact doesn't have Apple Silicon. Interestingly, that shows the NKS presets in the browser, but it does not show the plugin in the VST3 menu. So in that case the error is correct but the software should filter out that plugin from the NKS presets. In the Spitfire case they (obviously manually) filtered out the presets but allow the plugin to still be used. No way to run a railroad.
If someone wants to have a look at what might be tripping them up, JUCE has an AudioPluginHost example at (I'm too new here to post a working link but github.com/juce-framework/JUCE/tree/master/extras/AudioPluginHost) and given u-he is showing the issue, they are probably using more rather than less of the API and NI is just handling a subset. Or there's some binary incompatibility or something which would be lame (and that wouldn't explain why the plugin can still be instantiated directly in the host, and load its own presets).
I am disappointed my new toy doesn't work with all my other toys, but not aggravated enough to dive in here myself. But this looks like an open source opportunity (wrapping MIDI 2.0) if someone wants to do that for the industry...I don't know enough about what people are doing here to say exactly. Maybe MIDI 2.0 obviates this whole mess and no wrapper will be needed.
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As I said Diva uses a different process as it’s NKS2 now but for the rest of the u-he plugins rescan should help. If not maybe you need to update the NKS resources and if that doesn’t work contact their support as they work fine on Apple Silicon so it may be something more specific happening on your system they need to be aware of
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That tally’s with what I was thinking, this is probably a VST3 transition issue, not a KK3 one per se
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Neither I, the manual, nor Google understand what you mean by "update the NKS resources." Rescan the library didn't work. The presets are all there, the plugins instantiate directly, but they put up the Apple Silicon Error dialog when attempting to load a NKS preset. Has anyone gotten Repro or Zebra to run in Mac KK3 on Apple Silicon?
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Update the NKS resources means make sure when you install the latest version that the installer has NKS selected, it’s not done by default, otherwise you may still have NKS patches that are expecting the VST2.
Once you have done that run a complete plugin scan
This is what u-he themselves advise
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But, if were King of NI, I would not have gone down the path with this huge developmental dependence on the on-device embedded systems and the limits of the on-device screen and its navigation.
Above notion seems counter to NI's stated reason for putting a computer inside the MK3. Surely they can flash update the keyboard firmware as required for some years to come?
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Good news! That worked after re-install, re-scan both plugin and library. The NKS data was enabled by default in every u-he installer, and I had run these installers fairly recently, so I don't know what was going on there.
Anyway, this gives us a model for what's wrong with Spitfire, they show the same issue and so it's probably they just aren't updating their files to point to VST3, and NI and we aren't able to convince them to get off their butts and do it. Not sure why NI couldn't just implement an automatic upgrader but maybe they didn't anticipate recalcitrant developers. I mean, who would resist spending hours and bandwidth fees supporting someone else's hardware when there's no money in it for you?
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OK I looked at the files, the Spitfire NKS files are partly XML, and the newer u-he files and lots of others are YAML or something concise. Speculative Memories, which is parsed, is XML: so the KK3 parser still reads XML format NKS. But it don't work.
In theory we could reverse engineer the format changes and write a translator ourselves, but if NI has forcibly filtered Spitfire out of the parsing because it shows the error, then it probably won't accept our manually translated files either. Both companies would then have to update their ends of the equation. And maybe NI wants to wait until Spitfire has done all of its libraries in the new format, and that's what's taking so much time. And again, Spitfire may tell NI to write its own translator and manage their own hardware compatibility.
Of course, Spitfire has a large set of Kontakt libs still under vigorish, so maybe they would negotiate a break in the vig for the NKS work. This is one of those coopetitive situations where there is give and take. Also the 3rd parties are going to want to lean toward open standards rather than a bunch of proprietary tedium.
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I'm glad to hear this was unintentional, but my problems arose when I updated KK. Again, try loading e.g Spitfire Soft Piano up and expand the additional view. The only way to do it is to press the shortcut for it a bunch of times until it shows up.
All my 15 or so SA plugins broke at the same time, so something for sure changed on your end. I'd really appreciate you guys looking into this.
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But was this because you updated to KK3 or because you are now using the VST3 version? When you were using KK2 was it with the VST2 or VST3?
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