Tutorial - exporting u-he plugin third party banks to NKS

Kymeia

All u-he plugins that support NKS have NKS export built in. At the moment this option is available in the VST2 plugin but not the VST3 but the exported patches will load in the VST3 on Mac, on Windows you still need to use the VST2 version for NKS (except, I believe, with Diva)

First you need to give the patches a bankname in the plugin’s own browser by selecting them all and dragging them onto the bank field and filling out the bank name when prompted to (this ensures they won’t get mixed up with the other plugin factory NKS when you import them into KK)

Then right click on the save button in the plugin browser and switch the save as format to nksf.

Then select the whole bank and right click on the selected patches and choose export to nksf

Finally update the Komplete Kontrol database for the plugin in KK settings

Many u-he expansions already have NKS versions but most third party ones won’t

Kymeia

1 additional step I do to keep things organised is collect each exported bank in its own subfolder. Factory NKS for u-he plugins go in /Library/Application Support/u-he/pluginname/NKS/pluginname (Mac but I'm sure there is a similar folder in Windows). By default exported NKS also get put in there so you can end up with a jumbled up folder that combines imported NKS and factory NKS which for me is not desirable so what I do is when I plan to export a bank is first temp rename the folder inside the NKS folder with the synth name (eg I just rename/NKS/Dive to NKS/Divax) - then when you do your export you can see all the files that get exported, then just gather them into a folder under the bank name and place them in the 'DivaX' folder (or whatever plugin it is) and restore the original name - then rescan that folder in KK - see screenshot for example

That's if you want them in Factory btw - but for me I prefer not to keep any user content in factory as it may be deleted by installers so either put them in User Content/pluginname (the default user NKS location) or you can in fact pt them in any folder as long as you add the custom path to the user page in the Prefs panel shown above

Kymeia

Btw the only other dev that supports NKS export in their plugins is Plugin Alliance for their 2 BX Digital plugins, Knifonium and BX Oberhausen - it's a great idea though, I wish all devs did this.