I commented this elsewhere but thought there should be a thread on the forum specifically dedicated to improvements we'd like to see to the NKS preset editing experience. I generally think the MIDI template flow is well-designed and it's really got me thinking about what improvements could be made to the NKS editing flow to take NKS to the next level. In no particular order, my feature requests are:
1) Button Support for NKS Presets- I really love the button functionality of the MIDI templates, and I would love to see that ported over to NKS presets pretty much 1:1. Basically, you'd get twice as many controls in a single view, and it would be a much better experience. I'd be most excited to be able to set named keyswitch/articulation buttons that are mapped on a per-preset basis. This would be an absolute game changer, and is basically my dream setup for dealing with articulations. But also, it would be an improvement to things like on/off switches, toggles, etc. to push a button instead of turning a knob. Personally, I'd love to see buttons and knobs both be bankable separately, but it would still be a massive improvement if you just added the ability to associate 8 buttons per page that bank at the same time as the knobs. Similarly, I'd like the ability to associate pedal, touch strip, and lightguide mappings with an NKS preset just as I now can with MIDI templates.
2) Support For Different User Preset Modes- The idea here is that I, as an NKS user, sometimes have different preferences for how I want my user-generated presets to work. Generally speaking, my user presets fall into one of 4 camps:
- Fixing the NKS implementation of an existing NKS preset: This happens all of the time, particularly with certain vendors cough Spitfire cough.Where a vendor has NKS presets that they've generated, but they're broken in some way - sometimes for months or even years. In this case, I generally want to Replace the factory presets with my own versions
- Adding Functionality to an existing NKS preset: In this scenario, the vendor has created a mostly functional NKS implementation, but maybe there's a parameter they haven't mapped or something I'd like to remap. In this case, what I'd like to do is Merge my edits with their versions. Basically, this would allow me to still get updates to the NKS implementation from the vendor as they upgrade the plugin, but also to maintain my additional functionality as well. In the case of merge conflicts, I'd say a sensible default would be to prefer the user-generated part of the preset, but maybe this is an advanced global setting in the Preferences. Supporting this mode is probably the easiest way to allow users to add new functionality like buttons, custom lightguide, and touchstrip mapping for existing NKS presets without requiring every vendor to go in and edit all of their existing NKS presets. I know for a fact the User Library community would jump all over this.
- Creating Factory NKS Presets for a Plugin that has no existing implementation: In this scenario, the vendor has not created any NKS presets themselves. I'd like to be able to Create Factory presets myself with all of the functionality as if the vendor had created them. They'd show up as "Factory" presets instead of "User" presets. I could set up things like lightguide, advanced NKS2 "edit" pages, etc. that are not currently possible for user-generated presets. I'd also love to see better tooling made available to users for generating sound previews and images for presets as part of this experience. Some system that scans a plugin's native presets and automates some or all of the process for generating the NKS presets from these native presets would be ideal, but maybe that's a stretch goal.
- Creating New User Presets: This scenario is closest to the existing user preset experience, where I generate new presets for an existing instrument that aren't factory presets, but instead are the product of my own sound design that I want to be able to save and go back to in the future. In this case, I want to Create User presets that are treated differently from factory presets and can be filtered as such.
3) Better Navigation for Factory and User Presets - To better support these new modes for NKS presets, update the KK UI to allow for navigating/searching user and factory presets at the same time (still allowing for viewing them separately if so desired). It's 2024. It's time. Maybe it would be nice to have a little icon associated with user presets so when you're navigating factory and user presets together in the browser it's easy to differentiate between your user presets and factory presets at a glance.
4) Bug Fixes - There are some features that just haven't worked in a long time (or ever?) like user-generated sub-banks, editing of preset metadata like vendor, author, etc.
5) On-Device Editing - Support for on-device editing of NKS presets similar to MIDI templates please.
6) Better Kontakt Support in KK - I'd love to see support for Kontakt multis and user-generated snapshots improve in Komplete Kontrol, in particular.
7) Bulk Apply Template/Metadata Changes- Add support for an easy way to apply knob mappings, metadata, etc. as a bulk operation to multiple presets at once.
At first glance some of these suggestions these may seem like power user-focused/niche features, but I actually think a lot of regular users would create and edit their own user presets if it weren't such a wonky, technical procedure as it is today - which would very quickly expand the NKS ecosystem well beyond what it is today and add tremendous value to users. Feel free to add your own NKS editor-focused suggestions to this wishlist.
