Libraries won't load in Kontakt 6 anymore
Comments
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That's really strange. Given that parameters and functionality change, I wouldn't want my DAW to auto-transfer my plugins from one version to another. See the other dev messing up his plugins voluntarily (and communicating he doesn't care), when controls are simply not there anymore, so crucial automation would simply disappear, and settings would reset when loading the new version. Up to this day, I haven't heard of a built-in parameter in plugins that tells a DAW that plugin 2 is an updated (major) version of plugin 1. I wonder how your aforementioned DAWs are doing it (simply by number?).
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The main thing here is: I can still install Kontakt 6 (on all actual Windows and Apple computers and OSes). But I can't use libraries originally made to run on K6 anymore. That's just so wrong.
Got a new library but it'll only run on K7? Fine. It says so on the package.
Need to install K7 because your OS might not support K6 anymore? Fine. Not NIs fault, either. At least you can run Kontakt.
But everything is wrong with the way NI is doing things.
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Not disagreeing with you - but the use case your are stating is assuming everything is massively changed from one version to the next.
And I did not say this happens automatically either - only that those DAWs I mentioned have the capability to migrate plugins.
How they do it is unknown as do not use these products but I have read enough about it.
VP
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Btw, this is partially annoying me with Logic. The old EXS (sampler) had an option to extract MIDI regions out of converted REX files. I have tons of loops (all made by myself) saved as EXS patches.
But now the new Sampler (which completely replaced the EXS) doesn't offer that MIDI extraction anymore. So to get my loops back, I'll have to open a (way!) older version of Logic, load each and every loop and save them as Apple Loops. An incredible effort. And in case I hadn't kept my old machine, it'd be completely impossible.
In my book, that's completely inacceptable, too. Either offer the same functionality in the newer plugin version or allow me to run the old version in parallel.
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Any way we twist and turn the case at hand, it's frustrating how NI handled the transition for their libraries, forum posts and release notes or not. Other developers find solutions to not complicate their users’ lives with an update; NI are not only very slow with shipping features for their NKS2 platform (their S88 MK3 was almost unusable for the first few weeks on Windows, from what I've read) slash MK3 devices, they break their software in their way forward.
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I've been dealing with a similar, possibly exact same, issue for a couple of weeks. I have a support ticket open with NI.
I knew that existing DAW sessions with K6 loading K7 versions of libraries worked if they were made before the K7 changes - that is the sessions were originally created with a K6 version of the library. E.g. LoFi Glow 2.0.0 (requires K7.6) would load into K6 in an old Ableton Live session. This was true until months after I upgraded the libraries. It changed recently. Since all that had been updated in the meantime was Native Access and Kontakt 7, while Kontakt 6 and the libraries remained on the same versions, I was curious and did some digging.
Through experimentation I have been able to show to my satisfaction that the problem is one of configuration, not the libraries themselves. By a slightly convoluted process I was able to fix it. And break it. And fix it and break it again.
I will send the information on what I did to NI, along with the results of running their diagnostic tool on a system where one library (Glaze) is non-functional in an existing DAW session with K6, and another (LoFi Glow) is functioning as before. Both with only the K7 version of the libraries available, but the NI configuration modified so the system thinks there is a K6 version of one.
I don't advise anyone else try this which is why I am not detailing the process here. It works for me.
I don't know if NI will undo what they did to cause this situation. I won't be depending on that, and will work to migrate my old sessions to K7, at least the ones that depend on NI Kontakt instruments.
For everyone else, if you want a "proper" fix, install the K6 version of the libraries and don't update them again. Or update only when you've migrated all old sessions to K7.
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Exactly what happened to me. I am 100% sure I had Analog Dreams in a K6 instance, patch initialised before the last two updates (the breaking one would have been in September last year), running without any problems in my project until I re-opened it just two days ago, when K6 told me it couldn't initialise one library. As I opened the Analog Dreams instance, it still showed the AD interface being loaded. Upon reloading the project, the K6 instance was empty, and AD wasn't showing in K6's browser anymore.
I don't just think, I know I have been working on the project in the last year, with the instrument working. Thanks for confirming there must be more to it than just 'read the Release Notes'. I was scratching my head that I only came to realise the trouble now (the update is almost a year old), simply because K6 only started acting up at this point in time.
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Fwiw, I though K6 was supposed to end the version number desaster (as it's only showing up as "Kontakt" without any numbers in DAWs), but with K7 they're all the way back there.
If you want to know how you do these things, look at U-He's Zebra2. Same version number since almost 2 decades. Full backwards compatibility. New version obviously loaded automatically in older projects. No confusing forced/hidden update schemes. Easy rollback should your machine be too old for the latest update (very unlikely too as it's a compatibility monster).
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And now you're coming around with how one of the most forward-thinking small audio plugin developers is handling updates. THAT REALLY ISN'T FAIR!!!
But in all (real) fairness, an ecosystem like Kontakt, or on a larger scale, NKS, is probably a lot more complex to manage than plugin versioning. It is though not our task to keep things simple and compatible, we pay for the software and trust it to work without a hitch.
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I know it's possibly a lot more complexed. But then, even as a non-programmer, I could easily think of dozens of things that'd make the procedure easier.
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Yeah, we pondered on this ecstatically here 😊. I don't get the feeling it is going to change anything about the current situation with Kontakt, or NI's minds, for that matter.
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Same here.
And fwiw, if it wasn't for Kontakt being a sort of de facto standard (and perhaps a little bit for Maschine), NI would be out of business since a while already. Pretty much everything is super messed up since years already.
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I can't really judge that, they have a lot of software out there. I'm just surprised how they handle some of their projects, including Traktor. It always seems on the verge of being neglected, and then there is a new version (that basically includes the features that subscription users, who paid for it, never received) that hardly justifies an upgrade price. Just weird.
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Thing is, they're killing great plugins left and right. Absynth? Dead. Battery? Dead. Guitar Rig? AGAD (as good as dead). Reaktor? AGAD. And let's not forget all the things that died a long time ago already, such as B42, Pro-53, Intakt, Kore, etc. Sometimes even fully functional hardware died along with their software (Maschine Mk I, Kore Kontrol, Rig Kontrol (2) - all of which I own).
Sure, I could still be using quite some of these items if I was using Windows (and I absolutely agree that there's a certain, special kind of masochism involved using Apple hardware - and partially their software, too…), but otoh, a whole lot of companies manage to deal with the situation just fine. But NI + Apple = a match made in hell, no less!
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Out of the mentioned, although it hasn't seen a feature update, they are still selling Battery 4. I'm hardly using it these days, but it still felt usable when I last opened it. B4 II is really a tragedy, funny enough, I'm using a non-legal version in order to still be able to use it sometimes.
I though understand they can't keep supporting every bit of hardware from some 20 years ago, or have to make decisions to let go of some software if they invest in another direction. Lucky for me, my Traktor Kontrol S5 is still working with the latest Traktor Pro 4. Your Apple—NI relationship though seems to be most difficult.
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