Will Kontakt Instrument Updates Break Kontakt 7 compatibility?
So recently, udpates to Kontakt instruments have broken all existing instances in my songs of those instruments using Kontakt 6 (and on back of course too). The instruments are simply no longer compatible with Kontakt 6, effectily killing those existing song project files. The Native Instruments official solution is to downgrade those instruments, which is insane. We're talking dozens and dozens of random libraries that I can't possibly know which ones are used on which songs, and would simply have to downgrade EVERY library and keep them downgraded forever.
So my question is are updates to take advantage of new Kontakt 8 features going to do the same thing to the instruments loading in Kontakt 7 instances? Because if so forget it. I'm sticking with my Komplete 14 Ultimate installation and never updating ever again. I love the idea of staying up to date with all my software and would have gladly paid to upgrade yet again even though I just recently upgraded to 14 Ultimate. But not if I'm going to go through all this again after my last upgrade broke hundreds of songs.
Comments
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Are you on Mac or PC?
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PC. Windows 11. And my DAW is Studio One.
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I am still on Win 10, so I don't know if the following still applies to Win 11, but you can have multiple versions of Kontakt installed at the same time on a PC (not on a Mac). The only NI product I use is Kontakt, so I know nothing about Komplete.. I have Kontakt v5.8.1, v6.7.1, and v7.8.1 installed on the same machine for compatibility reasons. So, if you had all of those old versions installed, the right ones would load into your DAW.
It used to be that you could download and save the Kontakt installers, but (as far as I know) that isn't possible with NA 2 anymore. However, it's possible that you could get the ones you need from customer service and reinstall the older versions.
BUT, trying to maintain the use of older software is becoming increasingly difficult. It's ultimate Achilles' heel will be not being able to authorize newly installed older software via NA.
Hopefully, someone who knows more than I do will provide info to make both of us happy.
Good luck.
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yes see unfortunately their entire troubleshooting procedure is to send links to download old version installers and just stay downgraded. Which is wild. I have 6 and 7 both installed but some of the instruments have have become incompatible with 6, making all my old projects unopenable
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Yep. It's a mess. This is the reason I try not to update anything. I have multiple duplicate computers (both Mac and PC) with multiple boot drives with everything installed and authorized on them. But eventually, even I'll be screwed. The computer music world is ultimately landfill. It's a race to get your music done before all of your tools end up there.
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Any instrument that doesn't load in K6 - has a "downloadable" prior edition. No existing K6 instruments are incompatible to my knowledge - unless you want to list a few?
The one (and only) time that the main Kontakt libraries have ever been updated in a major way (and on masse) was Sept 2023 with the advent of Komplete Kontrol 3 and the new NKSII S-Series keyboards. Cannot see anything like that happening for a while.
And as far as K8 is concerned - I do not expect any of the existing standard Kontakt libraries (like say Noire or Analog Dreams etc) will need anything different for K8 - at least in next few years or if ever - especially if the library does not access or use any of the new K8 features.
But this will become an issue (as it always does) if a specific library gets a "K8 or higher" designation.
The best practice here as always (IF you have multiple older Kontakt versions in play in older projects) is to tread VERY carefully in Native Access - read ALL Release Notes and do not click Update on any Kontakt library until you are very clear on the Kontakt version it needs to operate.
And of course - leave as many versions of Kontakt installed as you need to cover your projects.
VP
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yeah I believe that's exactly when the updates happened. Which is a sick joke considering I have the older series keyboard and likely won't change till the day it breaks. So the updates are for nothing! But the idea of downgrading everything then never updating ever again just seems incompatible with general computer knowledge. Updates are meant to be good things and I'll literally just live in fear of Native Access.
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I don't understand the whole "living in fear" thing. I upgraded to Kontakt 7 as well as the new KK and all my libraries and projects converted over fine. I still have Kontakt 6 installed but I never use it because anything that didn't convert to Kontakt 7, I just use a comparable Kontakt 7 library and load up the MIDI track in my DAW and save it and it's all good to go. But for the most part my Kontakt 7 will still work with older libraries and files. They just won't have all the new features.
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DunedinDragon
What DAW are you running that allowed you to "convert just fine"?
Are you talking Auto Migration (open old project and K7 "takes over" for K6?) or manual intervention into each old instance of K6→K7?
Some DAWs do this nicely - others - like Studio One over here do not. It is a painstaking process.
But then again - I did not update any libraries back in Sept 2023 until I understood the full impact.
VP
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Everything works great for new songs. But have you ever tried opening unfinished songs of yours that use Kontakt 6? Depending on what instruments those instances of Kontakt 6 are using, They randomly either work, open up in demo mode, claim to be unable to find the instrument and are glitched out with all white interfaces that don't play. Even though I have Kontakt 6 installed too. And even though the instrument is in the folder it is looking in.
The updated versions of a whole bunch of kontact instruments were purposely broken by Native Instruments during the update to not work with Kontakt 6 anymore. And support will straight up tell you to run these legacy installers to downgrade if you really need them to work again. Which is insane.
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yeah It's my understanding that only two Daws allow for any kind of migration. And even in those cases they don't necessarily always work out. That leaves out a lot of customers. Most customers really.
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As an aside, how has Windows 11 been for you? I'm deathly afraid of that change. That's the reason I got away from Apple.
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The DAW vendors have to make this happen unfortunately.
VP
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I've been using Ableton Live 11 Standard for several years now on Windows 10. As I remember (and it's been a while), when I made the jump over to Kontakt 7 and KK I updated most of my libraries that I had been using in most of my projects, and I would update others as I needed to. I kept the older Kontakt around for a while in case I needed it, but I never did. A lot of the libraries I was and still am using were not formally NKS licensed and still aren't and I load those either direct from the file system or through the quick load facilities.
I do vaguely remember going through all my libraries in Native Access and doing some housekeeping before I did any updates to make sure they were all organized and referenced correctly so I had my Native Access in very good shape before I made the main transition to NA, Kontakt 7 and KK.
Every once in a while I run into older projects that still use the older versions, but I pretty much replace those with newer versions immediately so I don't really have much reliance on the older software. Although there are still a few libraries from vendors like Spitfire and Impact Soundworks that aren't fully compatible with the new architecture and probably never will be, but they all work fine even though it can take some time to figure out how to get them listed and accessible in NA.
I don't know how other people do it, but I pretty much run Native Access daily to check on updates and such and fairly frequently move libraries around to even out my storage space across my various SSD drives. If I'm working in the DAW I almost always disable realtime virus scanning so my performance is always pretty good. I only keep a small amount of libraries on my system drive and pretty much move all new libraries onto dedicated SSD's so I don't impact performance by system functions such as paging operations or system background tasks. I think one of the reasons I have fewer problems than many is I'm pretty obsessed with keeping my NA libraries in good shape and referenced correctly.
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i actually really like windows 11. The only annoyance are all the features I'll never use. But I can mostly ignore those. What I love is how much better tabbed folders are and the easy window positioning features and a few other nice little usability things. And I've been 100% stable since building this PC (that I installed all the new versions of my NI software on breaking my songs haha)
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