[NKS] Freelance Soundlabs 3rd Party NKS Libraries for Komplete Kontrol / Maschine

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  • TallerThanPenguins
    TallerThanPenguins Member Posts: 31 Member

    Ahh yes makes sense. FWIW based on what I see installed, the paid expansions (Air/Pastels/Rumble/Threads) do come with sample content while the free preset packs are extremely lightweight in file size and contain only preset files. The paid expansions do ask for a serial number when installing (https://lunacy.audio/installing-cube-expansions/)

    Thanks for looking into it!

  • AxMusic
    AxMusic Member Posts: 131 Helper

    When everything is set up do the NKS libraries show up alongside all other NKS instruments or does this appear in the user section?

    If so, is there anyway to get these instruments to show up alongside all other “officially supported” NKS instruments.. I.E. Not the user section?

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert

    If you follow the instructions in the PDF it will install to your user library but I have a guide here to install things to the factory library:

    this is easier to do on PC than Mac and I don’t offer any further help than the guide and downloadable files.

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert
    edited July 2023

    Update: GForce OB-E

    An update is now available which fixes some presets not loading in the latest OB-E v2.5 update.

    The latest OB-E update introduces a new preset browser and tagging system but also changes the format of the presets. While it should be backwards compatible the developer has said there may be some cases where presets do not load and this has caused the previous NKS library to not load some NKS files.

    In addition to this the banks have also been changed along with how the presets are ordered and tagged and this has now all been updated into a new NKS library version which should work on both VST2 and VST3 plugin versions.

    You can download this free update from your account Here

    To update simply delete your existing OB-E NKS presets and replace with the updated library. No need to update the image/database files.

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert
    edited June 2023

    Update: GForce SEM for VST3 Compatibility

    Free update for GForce SEM to work with VST3 and a new controller template. Download from your user area if you have it already.

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert

    Now Available: IK Multimedia SampleTank 4 NKS Library (Core)

    I am finally able to release the first part of this massive library, the core factory library for SampleTank 4 and SampleTank 4 MAX. This covers the presets in both the standard and MAX versions of SampleTank 4 with up to 6700+ presets for SampleTank MAX owners.

    Presets include full tagging converted from SampleTank to NKS format, custom sound previews (done with painstaken patience since many instruments operate in a limited key range and need different keys to trigger samples) and control of the macro, volume, pan and envelope controls.

    To say this was a huge job is an understatement. Not only is there much content to process but SampleTank presents numerous problems in regards to making NKS that required months of work, testing and frustrations. The main problem is you have to enable "Automation" for the controls you would like to learn in KK but when you switch presets, this learned automation is reset. I have to say IK Support while responsive, are almost completely useless and will just ignore you when you hit an issue they cannot resolve and I found MANY problems in their plugins which many they confirmed but 9 months later, still no updates to fix so this resulted in me not being able to include some things I really wanted such as the ability to switch On/Off effects modules because there is a bug this results in these learned controls all resetting to effect slot 1 only on reload. Confirmed by IK as a bug in November last year and still not fixed.

    Another problem I hit frequently which caused much of the added time is SampleTank will just crash when you switch presets for no apparent reason. Luckily, NKS files make this a non-issue and when loading from NKS files I never received a crash so it is how their browser loads their own data that causes this crash, luckily because making sound previews would have been a nightmare more than it was already.

    Previews were also painful to make with this because many instrument presets have limited keys used so the usual method I use just hitting either C2 or C3 for the preview would often not work so it had to be done in small batches with weeks of manually fixing previews and generating new ones by hand. I am certain there will be some previews that are silent still or have terrible glitches so if you find them, just let me know what library/preset and I will fix.

    Lastly is the absolute inefficient way the preset data is stored when exported. SampleTank is (IMO) a rather bloated sample player and this carries through when you save out presets too. Some NKS files can be upto 12MB each with most being between 1-6MB.... This is the worst plugin I have seen in terms of how preset data is dumped out (Omnisphere has 10x the automatable parameters but has no issue like this) and results in a 10GB space requirement for just the core library and up to 22GB needed for the entire "Total Studio" bundle of instruments which is over 16,000 files.

    So this took a few weeks to test out and design a method to even save out the files reliably so they would work and a further 2 months using multiple computers to generate the files, tag them and make the previews.... But it is done and is working.

    Currently the main factory content is available with Expansion content and the Syntronik content (which is also available separately already for the Syntronik plugin) available soon covering the Total Bundle 3.5 content. I know v4 of this is now available which simply adds a few additional expansions and I may look at doing that depending on the popularity of this library. If it is deemed to not be popular enough, I will not be looking to update this any further. This was not fun to do at all!

  • James Steele
    James Steele Member Posts: 56 Member
    edited July 2023

    Wow... amazing work! What a pain, too! Thank you, Jason!! I'm download the Demo now, and will probably be purchasing shortly thereafter as usual!!! Much appreciated... sorry it was such a nightmare, but thank you for keeping the pricing so reasonable considering all the effort that went into it!!

    UPDATE: Arghhhh!! I thought I had Sample Tank 4... instead I just have the CS version. IK wants $149 from me to upgrade. Hmmmm... gonna think that one over. Still... amazing work, again!

  • James Steele
    James Steele Member Posts: 56 Member

    I suppose actually I could buy the NKS library and then manually delete the presets for the instruments I don't own so it just leaves the ones included in CS. Then if I do upgrade some day on a sale, I can reinstall the full NKS library. Hmmm....

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert

    That is what I had to do to make the SampleTank 4 standard version as I have ST4 MAX and it took 2 days to trawl through deleting everything. CS has about 1000 less presets than standard and TBH I CBF deleting manually all those presets to make a CS version unless I knew there would be demand because it is hours of work to do.

    If there is demand for it I will but basically given the time it took to initially make, what will. govern any more effort into this one will be how popular it is. I know I have been asked over the years multiple times to make it but that does not always translate into enough peop-le to even make it worth the effort in some cases so will see if there are any further requests for a CS version and I may set about making something for that which may work.

  • James Steele
    James Steele Member Posts: 56 Member
    edited July 2023

    Oh... I think that would probably be way too tedious and not worth it for you to do it, honestly. There really aren't that many presets in the CS version since as I recall it was a giveaway type thing by IK to try to hook you into buying into the full version.

    I actually had some Jam Points with IK, but you can only use them for up to 30% off, so I got my $149 upgrade to standard ST4 down to about $105, but even then I'm not sure I want to do it. Mostly because my 2TB NVMe Sample Libraries drive has only about 200GB free space left and the standard ST4 library takes up over 100GB. It would leave me with 100GB free and I know SSDs need a little "breathing" room.

    One of these days I'm going to get another external enclosure to house a 4TB NVMe drive... should cost a little under $300 total, and maybe I'll go for it then. I'll make my 2TB NVMe a Final Cut Pro projects drive since I don't do that much video anyway.

  • Aaron McPherson
    Aaron McPherson Member Posts: 24 Helper

    One possible point of confusion is that the current version of SampleTank MAX on sale at IK Multimedia is V2, which includes all the expansion content (except for the most recent). People who buy the MAX library may be expecting this, so it would be good to clarify that the expansion content would have to be bought separately.

    Otherwise, very excited for this, and thanks for all the hard work!

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert

    Yes this is why the current factory content is available but expansion is separate and being finalized at the moment.

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert

    Expansion content and Syntronik content now available as addon libraries.

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert

    Now Available: Cherry Audio Octave Cat NKS Library

    Latest Cherry Audio Octave Cat NKS library, fully tagged, full controler map with an included control map overview in the PDF for reference. Comes with both VST2 and VST3 libraries

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert

    Sonic Projects OPX-Pro II NKS Library VST3 Update

    Sonic Projects OPX-Pro II NKS Library has now been updated for VST3 compatibility. This required a complete redo as the preset format has changed since the older version used to make the original VST2 version and does not load in the latest version but the presets are exactly the same and all tagging is carried over from the old library however because it was done years ago, the control template has been updated to hopefully be a little more intuitive.

    Because it now supports VST3 and macOS version of OPX supports Apple Silicon, this should now work for mac users where only PC users were able to use this till now.

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