KK3 UX Feedback

spicemix

This is probably the last decade of "creative professionals" as the machines will do every part of the process better, including the conceptual level. I already see that in photography. This will at least cheer hobbyists as not being less-than anymore.

Although, people may also find themselves with an awful lot of time for hobbies, so creative hobbies may be a growth industry even as it's obsoleted as a human profession.

Kymeia

Only if your idea of creativity is painting by numbers. AI has no life experience, imagination, consciousness, meaning or feeling to create with. It may be very clever but it would be a very sterile form of ‘creativity’ without human expression and meaningful experiences and inner thoughts and feelings to express. One day perhaps when AI achieves true sentience and we can think of machine based consciousnesses as beings, but even then they would need to be given meaningful life opportunities and rights and not be treated as slaves. But we are a long way off from that level of AI.

nightjar

People will use AI in ways that suit their needs.

Commercial music/audio projects will lean on it heavily to generate "functional" music when that is good enough. But when it matters, the branding of human input will be a plus.

Artistic music/audio projects will use it in a wide assortment of ways... utility, experimental.. this will be handy and a lot of fun.

Hobbyists will use AI in a wide assortment of ways as well. From total rejection to "paint by numbers"... it's all good, to each their own.

nightjar

Anyway.. more on topic:

User faved & saved "Prompt words" and free-from text input, along with drag & drop "Patch Match" will be far better than embedded tagging.

This should have been the "big thing" in KK3 and NKS2

And 3 goals for KK3 & NKS2:

1 - Make it easy to find the sound you want (AI assisted search)

2 - Make it easy to lightly tweak this found sound if needed (smart assignment of 8 encoders)

3 - Make it easy to perform this sound within a DAW (smart assignment of expression input, light guides,DAW remote control, Play Assist)

spicemix

Humans aren't nearly so exceptional as we like to think...we are all painting by numbers, its just the numbers are fine enough few others can read them. AI will paint with even finer numbers, and have all of our experiences and feelings to express at once.

The very worst thing you discover at the end of mastery of a creative form is how trivial it all ends up being. These are very simple thoughts, with very simple expressions, "nursery rhymes for adults" and more or less just belched out carelessly. Then various "professionals" apply polish to increase credibility, but that's just factory work. And for a functional creator it's almost embarrassing to make such a fuss over so little.

We like complaining about the details of how exactly this factory work is done and how many steps we could eliminate. But this is obfuscation. It's ourselves making it complicated, because we feel it has to be harder than it is...why else would we not be dominating the charts?

People will want the best product, and only a fraction will swear allegiance to an inferior product just because it was made by their kind, out of nostalgia, politics, or guilt. Still, if nearly all of these product sales are effectively hobby sales, hobbyists should get what they want. And humble as we may end up, we should do a damn good job of it.

nightjar

We will all take a new lesson in enjoying the journey more than the destination.

People will use creative tools because they enjoy using them.

And they will use as much or as little AI assistance as they enjoy.

The output won't really matter that much.

And this is OK.

When the output DOES need to matter, it will.

JesterMgee

There goes @nightjar again with his 1 hit record...

nightjar

Here's another of my hits regarding KK3 UX...

KK3 UX should offer simultaneous viewing of browsing and an "instrument panel" that allows playing and light editing.

This new "instrument panel" needs to be very horizontal, simplified to primarily present how the 8 knobs and expression controls have smart assigned via NKS2, and just a minimal bit of identifying artwork. All visual design elements in this "instrument panel" scalable. An hide/view on-screen keyboard needs to always be an available option.

Here's my rough mock-up:

spicemix

Well not to be a downer but, the knobs view is already available with the knob icon, we already see the name of the instrument, and with an S-series keyboard we already have the keylights. Avoiding the loading time is why they spend gigs of drive on preview recordings, if you want to hear the full instrument you go ahead and double click, pinning the browser open. Playing without a keyboard isn't a core usecase, although sometimes I'm lazy enough to do it when kicking tires. So I think this much is covered OK in what they've got.

One thing they don't do but absolutely must is remember the window dimensions including the column widths. I want two or three columns of instruments like you have here but instead I get just one little column of patch names, when patchnames outnumber instruments over 10 to 1. And it keeps resetting to a bad default. The primary value of a large, hires screen is having less obscured content. The settings windows also for lame reasons prevent you from resizing very much...they are still thinking VGA screens or whatever...when there are enormous scrollable lists in there. An awful lot of rowing forced on us. Just release those constraints and pin the window dimensions to the screen when opening. Is that a crushing mathematical challenge?

Also, resizing a Kontakt instrument in KK3 is really cringe. If you drag too fast off the drag widget, it stays in drag mode but doesn't know where to go. You have to go back to the drag widget to get out of that. And it also resets itself if you drag too wide. Gruesome.

There are only so many hours in a day, yes, and that is also my point.

spicemix

Wow this forum code is just broken but anyway thanks everybody and I hope they get it together soon enough.

nightjar

Yep... really not a surprise...

Anyway, I wonder if the current decision to not offer simultaneous browser/instrument viewing is related to the commitment to the K-SMk3 on-device CPU/display for either a technical or strategic reason?

nightjar

I often work on auditioning sound without my Mk3-61 attached... Often work with just a laptop and headphones. So an on-screen keyboard to dink around while auditioning is crucial.

Load times between presets is pretty fast nowadays, so not offering simultaneous browser view/instrument panel for this concern doesn't really apply much anymore.

I think the desire for simultaneous viewing of browser and instrument is a very popular request.

BIF

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/124466#Comment_124466

Each of us would be LUCKY to have a 1 hit record (played on endless loop). You have yours, which everybody knows about so I won't go into it. I had mine. I actually had 3. One was to constantly complain that NI wasn't talking with us. Now they are, so I am in the "giving grace" stage.

Another was that the UI was too hard to read because I can't zoom. NI is fixing that, first with Kontakt, and now with Komplete Kontrol, so I am again "giving grace".

The third for me is NI abandonware. Rig Kontrol was the last one, and before that was Kore 2. And before that was Elektrik and Akoustik, and before that was B4. I'm too busy giving grace on the first two, and haven't yet decided whether or not I want to be angry about KK S MK1...

nightjar

Bringing up a conceptual issue of the KK3 UX...

The decision to make the NKS2 part of the experience entirely dependent on the embedded CPU/display of of their hardware devices.. initially the S-Mk3... although I fully expect the next generation of Machine hardware to bring in the same CPU/display and effectively make NI hardware required "dongles" to use NI instruments in any future-feature capable way.

I suspect this is an entirely strategic decision.. NI wanted to mimic the "success" of Universal Audio's external DSP hardware to lock in a user base.

But just as Universal Audio has learned.. this is a doomed strategy over time.

Limiting the future of the KK3 UX to what is possible with the hardware CPU/display is going to be needlessly stunted. NI users will notice this far sooner in the VI realm than it took users of Universal Audio external DSP.

BIF

Well, I STILL like having the "UAD dongle". Even though I have a modern CPU in each machine, the UAD can still offload some processing from the computer.

I have an old UAD-2 in the older desktop, and also an Apollo 8P on another computer, and an Apollo Twin for my MBP.

Having the ability to do EFX processing in another box or at least in a PCI-E card; that's wonderful.