Maschine Mikro MK3 Stuck on ‘Busy… Loading?’

haski

Hey all, this is an issue on two separate PCs (windows 10 and windows 11). I think I’ve drilled it down to Kontakt instruments..

Basically, when I try to load a Kontakt instrument from the browser on Maschine 2, my Mikro MK3 screen shows ‘Busy… Loading’ forever, and I have to close Maschine 2 and relaunch to get it working, after which it will often load correctly. It totally kills the workflow, and if I haven’t saved the project, I lose it (can’t seem to save when it’s in this state, even though the GUI still reacts to my mouse input).

Have had the Mikro less than a week, and have tried on two fresh installs of Native Access and Maschine 2, across two PCs (an i7 16GB laptop running Win11, and an i5 16GB desktop running Win10). Kontakt 7 is fully up to date, as are all the plugins/instruments. The latest lockup has happened when trying to load Ethereal Earth into a second group, Pad 1 on a new project.

Has anyone else experienced this and knows of a fix? I’ve tried all of NIs troubleshooting steps as I did initially reach out to support.

Cheers!

haski

UPDATE 2: I know nobody has replied yet, but I figure I'll just keep the info here for anyone that stumbles on this if they have the same issues.

I think I've solved it in Maschine 2. After reading some other peoples issues and experimenting, it seems as though loading Kontakt 7 (all the newest version of things) was causing issues through the Maschine 2 browser (NOT loading as a plugin, as mentioned above). I read people using Kontakt 6 instead and it worked. What I've found, is; unchecking the option to 'Always use latest version of NI Plug-ins', seems to have done the trick. I tested by installing a massive sample instrument (Rickenbacker Bass), as the larger instruments seemed to be having the most trouble. This has a file size over 7GB, so was sure to freeze - but it's loaded perfectly fine with the browser. All presets are loading quicker too. All working great after unchecking that 'Latest version of NI plug-ins' option.

It's worth noting that I don't have an older version of Kontakt installed, so not sure why this works, but it seems to be good so far (touch wood). Hopefully this helps some people!

haski

UPDATE: I've done tonnes of testing on this. It seems it is a problem with Kontakt 7 or the fact that it's a VST3 and trying to load it from the Maschine 2 browser. It only happens with sampled instruments (which use Kontakt). If a load Kontakt 7 as a plugin under the Sound menu, it works without issue every time. I can then browse my Kontakt library that way.

This is far more cumbersome than using the built-in Maschine 2 browser, however.

Would still like an actual fix though, and not a workaround!

haski

UPDATE 2: I know nobody has replied yet, but I figure I'll just keep the info here for anyone that stumbles on this if they have the same issues.

I think I've solved it in Maschine 2. After reading some other peoples issues and experimenting, it seems as though loading Kontakt 7 (all the newest version of things) was causing issues through the Maschine 2 browser (NOT loading as a plugin, as mentioned above). I read people using Kontakt 6 instead and it worked. What I've found, is; unchecking the option to 'Always use latest version of NI Plug-ins', seems to have done the trick. I tested by installing a massive sample instrument (Rickenbacker Bass), as the larger instruments seemed to be having the most trouble. This has a file size over 7GB, so was sure to freeze - but it's loaded perfectly fine with the browser. All presets are loading quicker too. All working great after unchecking that 'Latest version of NI plug-ins' option.

It's worth noting that I don't have an older version of Kontakt installed, so not sure why this works, but it seems to be good so far (touch wood). Hopefully this helps some people!

haski

UPDATE 3: Looks like the fix didn't actually work long term. I don't know what's happening and am at a loss, but it seems to only affect Kontakt instruments in Maschine. Everything else works perfectly. If Kontakt takes some time to load (around 30seconds or more), it's like the Mikro gives up waiting and just sits on 'Busy… Loading'. You can turn it to MIDI mode and back, but upon switching it back, it's like it has lost SYNC with the software. Restarting the software fixes it.

Interestingly, once you load the software back up and try to access the Kontakt library again (for example, I opened Hybrid Keys, waited 30seconds for it to load into Pad1, crashed/froze, restart software and reload Hybrid Keys into Pad1), it loads ok the second time, and doesn't have that ~30second load time. Maybe it caches the instrument the first time, and that caching process is what's throwing the Mikro out of whack, then the second time it doesn't need to re-cache. Obviously restarting the PC puts you back to square one, with no instrument loaded/cached.

As mentioned in my first update, loading Kontakt 7 VST3 as a plugin on a sound slot seems to be a workaround. It's like it takes the Maschine 2.0 software out of bridging between its instrument browser, and the Kontakt 7 libraries. Browsing and loading from the Maschine 2.0 browser itself seems to be where this problem lies. A real shame this is happening on two different computers with the NI Kontakt stuff, considering these instruments are meant to be the most compatible, but I can't imagine it's simply coincidence if it's happening on different computers with different versions of Windows…