One Possible Solution to "No Sound When I Play My MK3"

BIF

Hi, Folks!

I'm back to working now, and just thought I'd share this little episode with you in case you come upon the same behavior down the road.

Okay, so I figured today I would plug my MK3 in and play with some of the sounds for a few hours. This week is going to be stressful in a number of ways, PLUS I have to do my taxes, so I decided to just goof off for a bit and maybe center my Chi, haha.

Well, I was getting no sounds. I was ultimately able to correct it by doing a "reset" on the MK3. But here's the story:

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I'm on Windows 11 on an Intel i9 12th Gen processor.

I first noticed this In Kontakt 7 (I'm on Version 7.9.0) when I had loaded up a patch for 40's Own Drums. The display on the MK3 behaved normally and as expected, and the wheel on the right side of the keyboard WOULD advance and play the various patch examples. But loading the patch (any patch) and then trying to play it on the keyboard would yield no sounds and would yield no signal to the Kontakt 7 output display. I later found out that the behavior was the same on any Kontakt library and on any instrument I could pull up in Komplete Kontrol.

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Knowing that "no sound" issues are 99% due to improper settings in the MIDI configuration, I went to FILE/OPTIONS in Kontakt 7 and looked at the MIDI tab to see if my MIDI routings had gotten messed up by some gremlins while I was sleeping. I found that none of the 3 expected devices were checked in the MIDI INPUT tab:

• KONTROL S61 MK3 - Was UNchecked, and was also UNCHECKABLE. Seriously, attempts to click the checkbox were ignored, and the checkbox would remain unchecked.
• MIDIIN2 (KONTROL S61 MK3) - was unchecked. I checked it and selected PORT A. This did not fix my no-sound issue.
• MIDIIN2 (KONTROL S61 MK3) - was unchecked. I checked it and selected PORT A. This did not fix my no-sound issue either.

In the OUTPUT tab, all three of the same devices were already checked. That tracks, because the MK3 was behaving normally (screen was receiving info, buttons would respond, and so on).

Next, I decided to close Kontakt 7 and open Komplete Kontrol. I'm on Version 3.2.1. KK behaved EXACTLY the same way.

So to make a TLDR story "less TLDR", I spent a couple hours investigating EVERYTHING I could think of in standalone Kontakt 7 and in KK 3.2.1. I even tried power cycling the MK3 and I also tried rebooting the computer with the MK3 powered off.

Throught all of those efforts, I found nothing outside of the wrongly unchecked devices on the MIDI Input tab. Please note that I did not test or evaluate issues running K7 or KK3 as VSTs inside of a host. Ya gotta fix your standalone issues before you try running stuff inside of hosts, and my standalones were both busted like a shirtless criminal on "Cops", lol!

Eventually, in my attempt to leave no stone unturned, I clicked on the "Settings/MIDI" button on the MK3 (just to the left of the screen). Panning through the pages of options (looking for something that I might have changed that could have broken my environment), I found the reset option. I was currently connected to KK in that moment, and didn't think to disconnect from the app running on the computer. I just hit "Reset" and then I confirmed it, thinking I could be nuking myself from orbit, but had no other choices at that time.

Well, the MK3 keyboard reset itself with a little screen, button, and lightguide dance, then automatically reconnected with KK on the computer. Now I went back into the MIDI settings page. And magically, I was able to checkmark that first option for the S61 MK3. And it worked, I now could play samples, not only from 40's very own Drums, but from every other instrument.

After playing for a bit, I shut down KK and restarted K7 in standalone...made the same config change there, and now I can also play sounds in K7.

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Moral of the story: For me, "reset" worked. I can't guarantee that it will always work or that it will always work for everybody...but it worked for me and got me back to business.

Thanks for hanging with me if you made it this far. Now go play some music!

UcPhotos.online

I had the same problem but on Mac M2 but your solution works just the same. I believe my problem occurred when I had my MK 2 hooked up at the same time and using its control that’s when my sound when out ( no midi mapping on Mk3 so have to use MK 2 occasionally.)Reset solves the problems!

Also I notice when I use some other native instruments plugins (Play Series)it will go silent the keyboard. Or completely knock me out if my Logic Pro program !! and I have to restart Logic.

i say that 95% of the time theres no problem

Not working smoothly with Sonoma OS

BIF

You mentioned Sonoma...My Mac is patiently waiting for me to have more time to power it up again...but maybe somebody else can add some info about Sonoma.

@PoorFellow, @mykejb added for visibility.

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/28566/one-possible-solution-to-no-sound-when-i-play-my-mk3

Thank you for sharing , sounds to me as if the above is another thing for @Matthew_NI to dive into. Most likely related to the MK3's ability to switch between Midi 1.0 and Midi 2.0 ?