[NKS] Freelance Soundlabs 3rd Party NKS Libraries for Komplete Kontrol / Maschine
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Basically
It's been a request forever to allow users to search presets that exist in both the user and factory library together instead of having to constantly switch. If you work within a plugin mostly instead of blindly hunting for a preset it's never really an issue, but for users that have a lot of official NKS libraries form NI and also a lot of custom libraries it can sometimes be beneficial to have it all available in a single search so you can better find something that fits your needs and since NI still refuse after 10 years to address this user request (or for that fact ANY damn suggestion made by users period!!!) we have to pick apart their software and do it ourselves.
That is basically just how you create a factory NKS library entry for a custom path where you can place your custom NKS libraries to be scanned into the factory side. I personally do this on my system so for example you can see that Analog Lab appears with my other Arturia plugins to browse:
And I create a separate folder for each vendor in the factory library purely so if I need to rescan and update files it can be done quickly by selecting just one location since as you can imagine, I ahve a lot of libraries and scanning all of them takes a good 40 minutes:
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And whysoever would I look for it there of all places? (jk)
When I opened the Mac .plist I had, it had been converted from XML to a binary format. Hmm wonder how that happened. I pasted in XML and it got converted back to binary anyway without my doing anything. Maybe the newer MacOS does this to save space?
Regardless, even after reboot, my user folder did not appear in KK Mac 3.4 and the libraries did not scan. I have the XML file inside service center too. This was working fine in Mac 3.3 I believe. Any ideas? I lost 25K presets.
As to why this hack is so useful…we get integrated browsing in a single catalogue this way. And the user files are also separate from the Freelance and Community libraries which are in every way commercial NKS (and I think many commercial NKS are OEM Freelance productions?) but they don't submit to the diktats from Berlin. NI wants to enforce supreme authority over their platform but they do so just by making it brittle and annoying for 3rd parties who don't kiss the ring. It's a really, really bad look for NI, who just now are trying to open up the platform to 3rd party hardware, why not also open up the UX to Freelance-made libraries?
I also see VSL's NKS installs are still broken after several months. They blame NI for breaking it. And Spitfire player still doesn't load. They blame Steinberg of all people! I bought into this thing with S88mk2 and S61mk2 refurbs and I'm best off rolling back to KK2 like the cool kids. I think KK3 is generally a step in the right direction but software quality is outright awful and I urge the 3rd parties to put pressure on the authorities in Berlin.
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macOS is a pain for this kind of thing because, well, Apple make everything a pain outside just switching it on and using it.
Only suggestions I can offer is to keep trying and maybe check small characters that may be missing such as a : or a \. Do not assume the instructions I put are 100% accurate either, I use PC mostly and need to re-test on macOS however I had a frustrating enough time doing it in the first place because you can't just open a plist file and edit it on mac, I have to do things via a mapped connection and edit files via PC. There are ways, just not that I am bothered to dive into.
Not at liberty to say which companies I have worked with or assisted but I have directly spoken with many that are not NKS partners (many that I cover libraries for) and all I can say is, don't expect too much from them in the future around NKS. I think the whole NKS 1/2 makes things even more problematic for developers as they kind of have to generate support for 2 different formats now, then there is the whole approval stage and just a lot that delays and complicates some developers rather simple release processes. Companies like NI are so big that just the approval stage is marred with loads of red tape that most small developers simply don't deal with. It's a big reason why you will see in almost all cases, developers have NKS for 1 or 2 plugins but not the rest and rarely all of them, it is worth their time to get on the list to have promotion by NI, but hardly worth the time to have everything on there (since it's not "free" to have your plugins listed, there is always a price…)
Anyway, can't assist with the integration files. I know it works as I have had people tell me it does with some stuffing around but I have to find time to retest and find out if my instructions are missing maybe something important. Windows, as usual, is very simple and straight forward and simply works, 100% of issues I get asked about are macOS users
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NI should just have you on retainer supporting all the important libraries and testing everything works on both platforms. I mean it's weird. It's unserious on their part. The thing should just work, it sees you have stuff installed, it installs the NKS. Think of how the Mac has all the drivers for all the hardware you would use already there. This is the way…plug & play.
Nearly all creative professionals in the West use Macs, it's fascinating to see people using Windows, there are of course plenty of exceptions e.g. some Cubase composers, hacker types running Reaper, etc. Traditional studios all run Pro Tools so that enforces the Mac thing that way at least. I think you're a Windows partisan but virtually all audio software/driver configuration complaints I read come from Windows. I would say confidently NI rivals only Steinberg in being low quality software on Mac. Everyone else runs better on Mac, which attracts coders that prize usability. Also virtually all software development industrywide is done on Mac these days.
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It's not a mac Vs Windows thing in this case, simply some things are just natively easier on Windows than mac. I use Windows mostly because that is what I learned inside out and hacking and automating things is just easier, mac kind of blocks much of what is required making it much harder to automate things and write custom code.
in days gone by mac was certainly the more stable choice but really depends what industry you are in. Sure many professional studios use macs because they are based around Pro Tools which at one stage was mac only and out of the box, what makes mac a little easier than Win is it is a switch on and go system that has a much better "core audio" system than Windows. However, in things like game development and sound design around games much is Windows based. For longevity of software and hardware Windows is far more forgiving, I mean if you buy a new mac now it will not even work with the KK MK1 keyboard as the drivers wont install, Windows will still work in another 20 years because it is almost always backwards compatible.
In any event, things are what they are. I use both Windows and mac and like both for different reasons, just prefer Windows for its versatility and openness, and it can also play games.
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I really wonder how they got hardware partners to sign up for this thing. To use the 3rd party hardware, the user still has to use the Kontrol software wrapper thing? And with such waning support for the format among software developers, they still signed up for this? And NI would rather run a bureaucracy, trying to herd 3rd party cats, than just write some code, hire a contractor (you) or two, and make things just work for their platform?
We in this industry solve problems with technology, not with enforcement of human compliance under someone else's vision.
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Well, my view is many wont sign up with NKS being such a closed system only available to NI hardware, I mean in some respects NI is a competitor. It is also a sign (IMO) that NKS is just not doing as well as hoped so with more devices out there able to take it on, makes it more wildly usable and more appealing I guess. Just not sure how well it will work and the big thorn is still the software, it is still terribly inefficient at browsing.
Thing is, Korg have been NKS partners for 10 years but still have compatibility only with a couple of plugins. You kind of have to wonder why this is. Well, there are many things I do know, but can't really disclose.
It's all been said and discussed before, this industry is very slow to change in some areas and everyone wants to be the leader in some new technology. Just keep in mind NKS was more a system to tie in other developers more than it is to be useful to users, it's kind of failed to really do that well IMHO.
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Actually I hadn't considered the hardware strategy, now that I do, I see what NI are after. They want to sell their software titles to people who have 3rd party hardware anchors. And so making it onerous to use 3rd party software, and for 3rd party software to comply with the platform at all, is a feature not a bug to NI. The big profits are selling their catalog of VI titles. Partial fulfillment of the platform concept isn't a crisis to them. That's just part of a sales pitch they don't really follow through on.
Still doesn't explain why the third party hardware makers signed on. I don't see what it wins them specifically? It isn't an open standard where the bureaucracy would be limited to the standards making process. It means a few people won't be as eager to buy NI hardware instead of theirs, but the price difference already enforces that.
The vision of the user experience is solid (from at least 15 years ago, long before buyout, iirc). The implementation, and overall strategy, absolutely isn't. NI had terrific innovators in the 90's and aughts and only did just enough to keep going since then.
The hardware however is nice. So naturally….NI undercut their own hardware's must-have! Genius.
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The hack itself probably still works but if it involves putting anything in a factory location, even if it’s just a shortcut, then it always runs the risk of that file being removed by an update. Just keep everything backed up if you are going to do this sort of thing. Personally I prefer to keep my own stuff out of factory and in user where I know it is safe
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It does still work, it's not really a "hack" it is using the exact same method used by official libraries. It's creating a custom factory location and nothing gets deleted/overwritten since it's a registry entry (or .plist on mac, same thing) that just points to the custom location so worst thing that can happen is it doesnt work and the path doesn't appear in the factory browser. I've had mine setup this way for 10 years and it is (IMO) far easier to browse libraries all together than switching between libraries. Also for my needs, much better to have the user library empty as possible for generating libraries since I have to autonomously rescan the user library which takes a while to do if it is full.
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The benefit is likely exposure and advertising and being able to add the "NKS" certified logo. There are people out there who likely want to use the NKS system but have no interest in purchasing a NI keyboard, there are far more flexible keyboards out there and in many cases, some better quality keybeds too. It's a good move, one I actually asked about directly with the devs 10 years ago, at that stage they were not planning anything with other hardware partners. My hope/suggestion was to allow Ableton and Push to directly read and load NKS files since Push has a full browser and the same 8 touch encoders. That would have really made an impact.
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I ran into an issue similar to this with the "fake" factory preset method when installing the most recent version of Komplete Kontrol on Mac.
Here is what ended up fixing it for me:
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Thanks for the info. Never had to make a link to a specific plugin just a folder location then anything inside the folder is scanned as expected.
I actually created a tool that can generate the files and load them in automatically for Windows (never released) but can't create the same tool for mac, basically because i don't know how. Been trying to find time to learn how to better manipulate macOS but time is rather precious and I just don't care enough about my mac to learn much deeper.
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On the subject of VSL, I remember when I "updated" their NKS libraries and it completely hosed everything. None of the Vienna stuff worked in Komplete Kontrol after that. It was so fubar'd, I had to resort to restoring my boot drive from an APFS snapshot to get it working again. I checked and I do have an older Vienna NKS installer. The .pkg file is named "Vienna Symphonic Library NKS 1.0.66.pkg" and the Creation and Modification dates are July 24, 2022. If you're at all interested, I can post a link for you to download it if Vienna doesn't make earlier versions available.
As an aside, I'm continuing to use Komplete Kontrol 2. Don't see a compelling reason for me to go to version 3, unless I were to get a Mk3 keyboard and that would really be just for the nifty trick of browsing Kontakt directly without needing to run it inside of KK.0
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