Komplete Kontrol - Accessibility Improvements Wishlist (new)

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  • ScottChesworth
    ScottChesworth Member Posts: 1 Newcomer


    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/31645#Comment_31645

    I'd +1 both. Expected to find deeper NKS support across NI's offerings when I picked up KK13 Ultimate, but in general, it seems like the NKS protocol could use some love. More things need to be controllable, such as menu selections within GUIs, mappings, outputs, performance settings per instrument etc.

    As things stand, when I find an instrument with NKS support, there's still inevitably a journey of discovering what can and can't be done accessibly, and often times, the can't do list ends up being longer than the can do. Here, purchasing an instrument and finding out that I'm able to get anything close to full leverage over its capabilities has been the outlier. I'd like to see that UX become the norm.


    Thanks in advance for any movement you can get going!

  • Jim Homme
    Jim Homme Member Posts: 16 Member

    Hi,

    Answering for myself, Both. The GUI's are meant, as I understand it, to control the individual applications, while NKS is meant to control the sounds, once they are made. For me, the big three are accessible GUIs for Komplete Kontrol, Kontakt, and at least one synthesizer, such as Massive or FM8. I get the lack of accessibility put in front of me any time I read a manual and realize that I can't really get control over a lot of things. We have to take what's mapped to NKS at this point and make the best of it. And I don't mean for any of this to sound ungrateful for the accessibility we have. I'm still very much a beginner at grasping this stuff, but my day job is accessibility, so I tend to notice it without really trying.

  • Jim Homme
    Jim Homme Member Posts: 16 Member

    Hi,

    Total silence speaks lowdly. Any news?


    Thanks.


    Jim

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 3,382 Expert
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/47531#Comment_47531

    News?

    This is a wishlist thread. Like most wishes these are hopeful things with zero guarantee any suggestions will even be considered so not sure much news will flow back I wouldn't think, just the more people that chime in on the same suggestions may mean possibly something could be considered for the future.... at some stage.... maybe... If ur lucky.

  • Jim Homme
    Jim Homme Member Posts: 16 Member

    Hi,

    With the new Kontakt Factory Library 2 and Kontakt 7 full, are more NKS parameters mapped across the various instruments than with full Kontakt 6? An example of few parameters mapped would be the orchestral instruments, where there only a few NKS mapped pages. Thanks.

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 3,382 Expert

    I don't believe anything further has changed in adding additional mapping.

    I have had this discussion with a lot of visually impaired users over the years (and some that just want deeper control) to look at adding better templates to Kontakt instruments but issue is Kontakt NKS files are not actually NKS format files, they are just the NKI files so all the tools and methods I have developed won't work with the format for 1, and second it's not all that simple since you have to enable host automation first so it's kind of too hard for me to add additional support.

    NKS was designed as a "performance controller" to offer just a few pages so has parameters designed to simply adjust the main timbre of each instrument. I am not even sure if accessibility was initially a thing but seems there was no real forward thinking to allow for this deeper control or we would have things (that have been requested over the years) like the ability to easily switch an instruments template between maybe factory/user so a user could create their own and have that applied whenever a NKS file was loaded and of course a quicker way to cycle through pages or just the SIMPLE ability to scroll backwards through the pages when you are at page 1...

    Problem is, Komplete Kontrol has remained largely unchanged in 7 years now and the consensus is with all this VST3 update business and Apple Silicon compatibility work to be done and the fact it appears there is just a single programmer in NI that does all the work and only works on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons if it isn't raining in his enclosure, no new features will be considered this year.

    Suggest away but set the expectation bar to minimum, then kick it down the stairs and that is prob about how realistic one should be that a suggestion will be considered based on the current track record of zero community suggestions being implemented in that time... You kind of just give up hoping for anything more.

  • lobi
    lobi Member Posts: 1 Newcomer

    Heyho this is my first comment in this community. What I do not understand at all is the fact, that even the Preset browser of the KK software is not accessible at all using the integrated Windows screen reader.

    From my point of view this is a unnecessary restriction to always use the NI hardware just to be somewhat accessible. We have not KK keyboard here but we have a maschine mikro mk3. I was unable to get it working accessible on Windows. I found posts about NI accessibility helper - but there is non in NI Access. We already have good Keyboard Hardware so the question is, why the hell should we buy NI hardware just to be able to browse NI presets and how can we trust that we do not invest in things that will be plastic garbage in a few years.

    Sorry I am completely aware that my words are a bit harsh, this is not my intention its just the state of play.

  • nightjar
    nightjar Member Posts: 1,313 Guru

    I think the plans for KK3 going forward do not include people with non-NI keyboards.

    In the past, there were efforts to make KK a broader organizing tool... free for all to download and methods to incorporate non-NI MIDI controllers.

    But with KK3, a new thinking for our fingers is afoot. 🙃

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 3,382 Expert
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/116903#Comment_116903

    Just to add salt to the wound, the new version of KK didn't even release with ANY accessibility functionality at all, even if you have A KK keyboard, due to (and I quote) "Statistics", there just aren't enough blind people using it to warrant it to be important enough for initial release...

    TBH you would NEED a KK keyboard to gain the appropriate accessibility because the keyboard has touch sensitive encoders that can read the names of the parameters when selected, tho I would suggest you install and test with KK v2.9 from here:

    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/17840/komplete-kontrol-2-9-6-last-vst2-supported-version#latest

    If v2.9 does not do it for you, then nothing will but using Maschine is not as accessible at all than using Komplete Kontrol and sorry to say, it is designed to work with NI hardware to get the full experience and dealing with many Blind users myself, the combination (with the prev software version) works very well when you have decent NKS libraries for the plugins. My signature has a link to my site where most libraries for 3rd party plugins I develop are with input from blind musicians as to the parameters they wish to easily access so goes a little deeper than typical official mappings do.

  • Matthew_NI
    Matthew_NI Product Team Posts: 1,840 mod

    Accessibility for Kontrol S MK3 is coming in Q1.

    We're transitioning to using the NI Accessibility Helper App we shipped this year, that works with Maschine.

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