Komplete Kontrol now works seamlessly in Ableton 12 after Rosetta but....

SJRocks

Ok NI,

I had the issue forever where I wouldn't be able to load certain things like Monark or Massive X or its sounds when trying to load it through Komplete Kontrol in Ableton. It would tell me some VST 2/3 migration mumbo jumbo that it wasn't supported on Apple Silicon chips yatta yatta yatta and some other times trying to open those sounds would completely crash Ableton.

I installed Rosetta and opened Ableton in Rosetta and my Komplete Kontrol works seamlessly now (yay!) but all my VST 2 and 3 plugins are gone??

I'm not too well versed in this stuff but does opening Ableton in Rosetta to use Native Instruments programs mean that I'm forced to only use AudioUnits? I would love to have the option of using VSTs at some point to collab with friends who use Windows. Help!

• 2023 Mac Studio 64GB
• M2 Max Chip
• Sonoma 14.4.1
• Ableton Live 12
• Native Access (with all instruments and banks) and Ableton both up to date

JesterMgee

No.

You have kind of mentioned the reason to run in Rosetta in your post already, in regards to the VST2/VST3 migration mumbo jumbo… However this gets even more complicated with the latest V3 of Komplete Kontrol…

[deep breath to explain again how VST2/3 works]

It can help a little to know about the history of VST and why we are in the current state. The tldr is VST3 is a new standard that is not backwards compatible with most VST2 iterations and the current V3 of KK only supports VST3 on M1 Mac (but can load VST2 plugins when you operate in Rosetta mode). VST2 is now defunct on Mac running the Apple Silicon architecture.

When VST Released

VST1 came out in 1996 and was designed to allow effects to be compatible between DAWs and across operating systems so a DAW developer did not have to develop effects specific to their own DAW and for a specific OS. This was the first real step to making music production a cross platform possibility. By 1999 VST2 was released that supported the VSTi specification allowing Instruments to also be supported. I remember all this at the time as I just started into production in 1996 using trackers and became fascinated at the possibility of using instruments on a PC.

VST2

VST2 has been the standard right up until 2008 where VST3 was released, however it was a very slow uptake by DAW developers to adopt the new format as it was a little more complex than VST2 and many had already become familiar with VST2 and for the most part, there wasn't all that much groundbreaking in the VST3 format so it really didn't start to crop up as a supported format in DAWs until around 2012 when VST2 was announced as being discontinued and no new licenses would be granted for new developers (existing devs tho could still develop new plugins)

When Komplete Kontrol first came out right up to I believe V2.8 it only supported VST2 and although we all asked for years for VST3 support so we could load unsupported plugins and also prepare for the end of VST2 but NI being NI decided to ignore users right up until their hand was basically forced by Apple introducing the M1 processor and Apple Silicon.

This is the point where all software developers had to update all their software for this new architecture and since VST2 was already a discontinued format, most DAW developers decided to drop VST2 support which forced developers to now update and switch to VST3.

VST3

For those watching the VST2 to VST3 path and preparing for this, it was all expected that we would have to start updating things by hand however not everyone invests time in preparation so for many, things just stopped working after updating to a new mac and the reason is VST2 is not supported natively. macOS incorporated "Rosetta Mode" which is an emulated intel environment that allows intel based code to run tho be it with a performance hit but this is what is needed to open a DAW and have it work with VST2 plugins.

The reason you want to be able to do this is because even if you have the VST2 and VST3 versions of a plugin on your system, your DAW project asks for the VST2 version and of course in native M1 mode it cannot find it so it causes the "migration" error.

The VST protocol has what is a "Migration Path" feature built into it where developers can program their VST3 plugins to launch from a VST2 call allowing VST3 to open in place of VST2 making it "backwards compatible" however there are many issues around this and most plugins do not support this feature mostly due to how the parameter resources are completely changes so all prior mapped and recorded parameter data cannot work with the VST3 version so to avoid that mess, many devs don't enable this feature.

So all interesting but what does it all mean?

If you have older projects on macOS that you created using VST2 plugins they will likely not work on a M1 based mac at all. The VST2 plugin instance needs to be deleted and replaced with the VST3 version of the plugin and any automation needs to be remapped or re-recorded. Of course many people want to know what preset or sound was loaded so launching your DAW in Rosetta mode allows you to reload VST2 versions, backup your settings and switch it all out so when you open in native Apple Silicon mode, things should now be updated with VST3 versions and no longer throw those "migration" or missing plugin errors.

none of this is an issue for Windows users (for the most part). Windows always maintains backwards compatibility so most DAWs still support both VST2 and VST3 at the same time so as for your question as to compatibility with your windows friends, as long as you don't use the Apple Only AU plugin format, you are fine.

So basically what you need to do is open things in Rosetta mode and switch any VST2 plugins to VST3. This includes Komplete Kontrol instances and the plugins loaded within KK too.

What is the issue with Komplete Kontrol V3?

Well, this is where NI decided they would double down and make things even harder for poor mac users.

While you can launch your DAW in Rosetta mode to get VST2 plugins back to update your projects, Komplete Kontrol V3 does not actually have a VST2 version anymore meaning if you were using KK V2 and updated to V3 without knowing, you still cannot open your old projects. You have to locate the manual installer for V2 on this forum and install that, ideally removing V3 first so as not to cause issues then proceed with what I detailed above.

Many people choose macOS because it is the more "simple" operating system to understand and work with but ironically, in this case it is just painful to try and understand what is going on especially if you really don't have much knowledge on how VST2/3 play together or the fact VST2 was completely dropped in V3 of KK.

Hopefully that makes sense because that is as clear as I can make it and all the time I have for the forums today. Beyond that, take a ticket and hit support like the millions of other users are likely having to do because of this mess.