Spitfire Audio VSTi & Komplete Kontrol MK2 not compatible

Do other users of Spitfire Audio plugins also have the impression that the company isn't even close to making sure their products work with KK?

The mapping is incorrect or no longer available, the presets cannot be loaded or can only be loaded indirectly, etc.

I've contacted support several times about these issues, but they don't care. They always make excuses and say they're working on a solution. But nothing has happened for months/years.

I'd love to return all the plugins and ask for my money back. Unfortunately, that's not possible. I invested several thousand € in the plugins.

What can Native Instruments do? Spitfire Audio products are advertised as compatible, but they're not actually compatible, or only compatible with completely outdated versions of MacOS.

What can we do?

Attached is an example of what the mapping currently looks like.

I would be grateful if I could find like-minded people or if someone had an idea about what could be done.

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Comments

JesterMgee

Sadly NI cannot do anything, it is up to developers that take on NKS support to develop and maintain their support and sadly not all are either interested or capable of managing the support side of their integration.

Funnily I have been asked if I can develop better integration for some instruments like this but not something I am prepared to sink my time into if official support is supposed to be available. Just have to keep contact with the dev. Trust me, they will likely be far more responsive to issues than NI are.

Vocalpoint

Just tested this here and yes - any of my Spitfire products that use the actual Spitfire VSTi (items like BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Originals Media Toolkit) load up just fine in Komplete Kontrol v2.9.6 via my S61 (left) screen. I can scroll NKS presets and banks for each but that is it. No light guide and no parameter mapping.

Conversely - Albion One - which is Kontakt based - gives me the full parameter mapping.

To me - it appears that Spitfire claims very basic "NKS" on any instrument of theirs that is NOT Kontakt based - and they would be right. But this is a basic as it gets.

As others have noted - only Spitfire can make this better - but now with their sale of the company to Splice AND the obvious move AWAY from Kontakt and over to this VSTi shell of theirs - I would not hold my breath on any further fancy NKS integration.

DunedinDragon

I own a number of Spitfire Audio products but they do tend to operate a bit out of the typical way most NKS vendors operate. I understand where you're coming from in that in some of the more recent libraries the interface provided for the keyboard bears little resemblance to the interface displayed in Kontakt or Komplete Kontrol and are generally pretty austere and far less functional.

This doesn't bother me that much since I typically have Komplete Kontrol running at the same time and can do my actions through that. The only thing I could advise is to make your complaints known to them as they kind of operate in their own way and I'm not sure they're all that interested in trying to have their keyboard main screen consistent with the KK screen.

Unfortunately they do offer some extraordinarily high quality libraries, so I just put up with it since it's not that big of a problem for me since I have a small display and bluetooth keyboard sitting on the left side of my keyboard which makes things easier in that regard.

The Spitfire VST plugin can sometimes be used as a plugin in your DAW (not through Kontakt or KK), but it's still not going to be consistent with your keyboard display. That's all under the explicity control of Spitfire, not NI.

jottweh

Thanks to everyone for the comments.

Regarding loading the Spitfire Audio plugins: I know that if you don't load most plugins via the KK browser, the mapping is correct (unless it's generally faulty). But that's not compatibility with NKS; it's an imposition.

ALBION COLOSSUS: have a look top right of the screenshot what happens if you want to start a COLOSSUS preset via the official way via the KK Browser (just one example of many).

I realize there's a workaround. But: if you paid a lot of money for the products, it should work. Imagine buying a BMW that doesn't drive on new roads, but only on side streets and gravel roads ;-/

I've submitted another review for Spitfire Audio on "Trustpilot" because it seems like the only possible way to point out the problems. I don't understand why so many other users take these issues for granted. I'm not upset about it, but then Spitfire should just take back the "unusable" products.

Vocalpoint

"ALBION COLOSSUS: have a look top right of the screenshot what happens if you want to start a COLOSSUS preset via the official way via the KK Browser (just one example of many)"

This error is a Mac install error and has nothing to do with Spitfire…

jottweh

@Vocalpoint: … cause COLOSSUS is officially only compatible with MacOS 10.15 to 13 (MacOS 14 is available since 2 years!). So it's a compatibility issue of Spitfire-plugins and not MacOS ist the problem. As I said: I have numerous high-quality plugins from numerous other manufacturers, and none of them behave as badly as Spitfire Audio.

I was already having problems with Spitfire Audio plugins after updating the Komplete Kontrol software on WINDOWS. Then I switched to MAC Studio M2 Ultra a year ago, and things got really bad.

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/242566#Comment_242566

Well - I must have seen this error message posted here about 38000 times - surrounding practically every plugin imaginable. This has nothing specific to do with Spitfire.

And if Colossus clearly states it is only compatible with "A" to "B" - what are you doing trying it on "C"?

Loading it up and expecting it to just work?

jottweh

@Vocalpoint : That's true, and I basically agree with you. That's why I pointed it out. But after two years, you should be able to release a corresponding update. Others have done that, too.

Let's instead consider how to get Spitfire Audio to port its plugins to technical stand of the year 2023 😋

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/242571#Comment_242571

Fair enough. But this needs to come from Spitfire.

And there are no guarantees you will get updates on any product that you buy. Espeically from a company that was just sold to Splice.

This may end up being disappointing longer term - just saying.

jottweh

@Vocalpoint … Hope springs eternal 😪

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