Kontakt 5 in MacOS Ventura 13.5/M2

This sounds like one for NI support to tackle.

VP

@Calagan

"I mean, K6 was released in November 2018. It's only 5 years ago. How much people do have sessions pre-2019 that they would like to be able to recall without any headache?"

The world moves on (five years is a lifetime in computer years) and the choice falls to all of us is either move forward OR hang back.

You want to recall a 2018 session without a headache? No problem - simply do not update anything whatsoever and you can recall everything as easy as the day it was created five years ago.

It is not on any vendor to ensure everything you ever create is recallable until the end of time. It is also on you to decide if you want to upgrade or not - no one is twisting your arm.

The only surefire way that I know of to preserve everything (as is) is to render to audio and then you can 100% recall any session until the end of time.

VP

Each time I'm complaining about NI and stupid planned obsolescence or compatibility issues, I get this kind of answers. I actually don't get why some NI users don't want NI plugins to be easier to use, and prefer they make their life harder. Maybe they don't use these tools professionnaly, maybe they've got huge free time so they can spend their day managing NI plugins instead of delivering or maybe they are masochists and like the pain, I don't know...

The thing is, it's not about being stuck in the past or having to accept all what the devs do in order to earn more money from us. Especially that most devs I know earn money with their business without screwing their customers (iZotope being an exception maybe). How do you explain I can recall anything from more than 5 years ago without absolutely no pain, from an Intel mid-2012 MBP to an Apple Silicon M1 pro ? Doesn't it mean that the world is not moving the same way for all devs ? What do you think about that ?

The only issues I had when upgrading my laptop were with Sonimus (it took them ages to update their plugins, and finally delivered new versions instead of updating the old ones - it's pretty painful to be obliged to replace each instance when the purpose of these plugins is to be the first processor on EACH track, but settings were usually very basic so it only take some mn for each recall).

And of course Native Instruments...

Native Instruments has a tradition in messing with updates, and Kontakt is among the worst exemple. I started to use it 10 years ago with Kontakt 5. I was obliged to update to Kontakt 6 (without seeing any benefit for me, but I guess the library devs saw the benefit of added features) few years ago, and there's no way to go simply from K5 to K6 but just saving the preset in K5 and opening it in K6, doing it for each track and checking if it sounds the same (sometimes it's not, sometimes it's difficult to know when there's random FX in the preset).

Reaktor is even worst because there's no clear value for the output volume and it's not saved as a preset, so you actually can't replicate R5 in R6 precisely, but at least R6 did bring a lot compared to R5, and it doesn't change version each 3 years (and there's much less bugs than with Kontakt - when I had a sudden noise blast in Kontakt on stage last year, I was a bit angry at NI. Some users experienced that also, and NI doesn't even recognize it as an issue because they can't reproduce).

Finally, the NI plugins have the smaller window of operation I know in the plugin world : they were among the last of the devs I use to update their plugins to be compatible with Ventura (I'm still on Monterey so I don't care), but the first (by a long way) to ditch old OS, like Catalina. Actually, among the plugins I own (and I've got around 400 files in my VST3 folder), I don't know ANY that is not compatible with Catalina. ANY !

Only NI !!!

And I remember that in the past, in few occasions, the only reason I updated my OS was because NI obliged me. Not any other devs from the 400 plugins I own. The drama Queen NI !

So of course, you can use the pretty traditional trope of "don't be stuck in the past", "evolve", "update your apps and machine"... etc. etc. But it's only an ideology that serves other people interests. Why do I need to update to Sonoma ? New emoticons ? I upgraded my machine to an Apple Silicon one and I'm very happy about that, but I don't care about Sonoma. Monterey works great to me, and I will upgrade to Sonoma if it's more stable and more efficient (actually, it may be, according to some feedbacks I can read here and there). But I will not jump on Sonoma 2 weeks after the initial release, like anybody knows...

As a musician and sound engineer, I don't want to spend hours each day to manage my plugins, apps and OS, because I've got other things to do and time is money. Time is actually not only money, it's what makes the difference between pros and not so pros : if I need to spend twice the time to deliver because I'm obliged to manage compatibilities of my NI tools, update my OS and then discover plugin x is not compatible and plugin y is making troubles, next time my client will find someone else for the work.

So in conclusion, jumping on the very last update is actually not professionnal. Obliging users to update all the time is not professionnal. Messing with the versions each 2-3 years is not professionnal. Especially when the new updates are buggy and coded with the feet : is Native Access 3 finally working ? Is Komplete Kontrol ok ? is Kontakt 7 stable ? From what I can read on this forum, it doesn't seem to be the case.

Now, when I recall a session with FabFilter plugins or U-He synths, I NEVER have any issues. No crashes, no strange bugs, no version issues. Even when Fabfilter is releasing an upgraded version, it's super easy to save the preset and use it in the new version : it sounds exactly the same (beecause they managed retro-compatibility) and you can even see the preset folder from old versions. These plugins were updated regularly in the last years, and work on any OS I know, any version of Ableton Live, any laptop I use (Intel or Apple Silicon). Same with DMG Audio, Soundtoys, Tokyo Dawn Labs, AudioThings, Fuse Audio Labs, Klanghelm, Valhalla, Voxengo... etc. etc.

So you could tell me : "if you are not happy with NI plugins, don't use them". The problem is I like NI plugins, and even worst, my old sessions are full of them. They only started to become what they are right now in the last years. So I'm trapped in a toxic relation, because I can't cut the rope like that. I just would like they change their absurd policy... But from what I can see after the Francisco Partner deal, I'm not that opitmistic...