Kontrol 2024 outlook: what was, what now, what next?
Comments
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I own the mk3 s88, but bought it as I was about to upgrade my s61 mk2 to the s88 mk2 when the mk3 was announced, and it made sense to buy the latest.
i do fully agree and support those mk2 owners who feel angry. The email most of us got in October 23 said support was ending for the mk1, but in all honesty it seems like support has ended for mk2 owners too. Doesn’t matter how many times NI tells us it isn’t and mk2 works fine with kk3, NI’s version of fine is obviously different to the average mk2 users version.
This thread, based on NI not stopping support for the mk2, should be just as much about what’s happening for the mk2 users as it is for the mk3.
The Mk3 was only publicly announced on September 12th 2023, so someone could have walked out of a shop with their brand new MK2 on September 11th, just 6 months ago. Of course they have as much right to be involved in the KK path as MK3 owners, and I think NI are morally obliged to fully support the MK2 due to this.
To me, simply saying the MK2 will work with KK3 right now, isn’t fully supporting it at all.
I do realise that the NI employees on this site will be extremely limited on what they are allowed to disclose though.
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Holy truth.
Unluckily, the fact we already said all of this (and also many things mentioned before) but we don’t have any answer, makes me think there are no ears ready to listen. Or that simply they don’t care
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I think people are missunderstanding my comments - I've also corrected a typo. This thread is totally about Kontrol - apologies for that.
I was trying to get this back on track - it's not a complaints thread, it's a discussion about the roadmap, but I'm not a moderator. I just find reading the same complaints to not be condusive to the intended discussion; What would you advocade for and against?; posed at the end of the upcoming section of the roadmap in the original post.
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I have had the S61 MK2 for 5.5 years and am a huge fan. I play live performances and the #1 feature that drove me to the MK2 was being able to individually (quickly) select a DAW track for my next patch/sound. I love being able to see the name and select my track. This is the #1 feature I would like to see in the MK3. Or has it been added?
The MK3 has taken that feature away. The only way I'm aware of to select a track on the MK3 is to scroll with the arrows until you land on the track you want. It has definitely made the MK3 much less interesting for live players (IMO).
The other important feature to me are Templates which I feel is a standard. If I recall, the original MK2 did not have MIDI Templates completed, either. Do I remember that correctly? So there is definitely hope it will be added to MK3 at some point. But why it was neglected from the start doesn't make sense to me.
My most important features were all met by the MK2. There were still a few wants left undone, but it has met my needs tremendously. I really enjoy my MK2. The MK3 surprisingly seems to have gone some steps backwards, compared to how I use my MK2.
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The roadmap at the top of this thread specifically mentions MIDI Templates, and why they're coming when they're coming. There doesn't need to be hope that it is coming - I have literally said that it is coming.
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As a general statement to the last cluster of comments:
Yes, this is a thread in which I've laid out the current roadmap and the reasoning behind it, and invited comment. And that discussion is ongoing. We're discussing what's up next, and what else you want to see done. We're discussing the priority of certain issues. We're getting deeper into the why of some issues too.
But please recognize what @Vagus is trying to highlight -> that there is a useful and constructive way to have a dialogue, and ranting and raving is entirely unhelpful. That isn't dialogue.
It creates noise, extra comments, makes it hard for others to read, makes it harder for me to follow and respond, turns others away from participating (three users have private messaged me as much since midday), and results in the same 5 to 10 people saying the same 5 to 10 things in the echo chamber they've just created... again.
All of you are heard, but please recognize your role in maintaining a respectful dialogue, and approach things as constructively and politely as I feel I'm doing in return. This started as a roadmap discussion thread. I hope it may continue as one. Let's get back to that.
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The intent is expressly to allow drag and drop to internal plug-ins, as that's the main frustration we've heard.
There are many ways this could be done, including transparency, temporary show/hide on drag, right click to deposit, floating windows, and yes even side-by-side windows. I can't comment on how it will be done yet, other than to say as I have that it's on the list of to-dos, albeit struggling for priority with other things on the Browser team's list (see the initial post outlining team by team focus).
Additionally, I hope you don't see me as misconceiving anything regarding usage types. I'm well aware of the impact some users have on the ecosystem, and desire for that to continue over time. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be talking about bringing the features back. But as I've said before, it was a consequence of priority, and those things fell by the way until, well, they come back as I intend for them to.
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Of the speculative cluster, this is the last I'll respond to.
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The team and I run the Kontrol and NKS portfolio.
That we're accountable for the portfolio succeeding is about the extent of the direction we receive from any leadership beyond us.
I say this not in defense of anyone else, but rather to make it abundantly clear that the things we elect to do, up to and including posting our roadmap and inviting comment so that we may or may not adjust as needed, are things the team and I have the autonomy to do. Accountability where it's due. If anyone wants to point fingers, I'm here so that you may poke and prod for answers.
Sure, this poking and prodding may even include decisions that aren't universally popular, as well as those that land well. Some of the changes between KK 2.9 and KK 3.0, for instance were not well received by some, which I've continued to acknowledge. At risk of sounding like a broken record, we've a shared language at this point as to what was changed, why it was changed, how that felt to some, and what we're doing next. KK 3 has already been updated 7 times since launch, with more to come, as the roadmap has stated.
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This preamble serves to illustrate the following point.
A thriving user-base is critical to any successful business. Ergo the team and I are accountable for ensuring the former so the latter may result.
You ask "why waste time, talent and money keeping a MK2 user happy?".
The MK2 user base is by far our largest active hardware user base. The MK2 users are also a significant consumer of our NKS software. I genuinely don't think people realize quite how large these communities are, given how familiar we become with one another's names on this forum. Even in our wildest dreams, it will take years for MK3 to reach similar user counts. Of course we build new products capable of new things. But it would be extremely bad for morale and for business if we left our largest user base behind.
We undertook a major tech transition. Decisions were calculated, and priorities determined with deeply thoughtful analysis as to the overall end user impacts. As I've consistently said before, and here again too, some of those priorities may now rise up the list where they could not prior.
So please, stop asking me to rip band aids and invent untruths. Let's get back to talking about the roadmap I posted. What's on it, what's not. What's coming when, and what's coming later. Why it is the way it is. How it could change.
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The design(ers) called for an overlay browser prioritizing content browsing, which had hitherto always been crunched into a space many complained about.
Hence, KK 3.
There is no technical issue inherent to browsing that prevents simultaneous display, there is only a design decision to maximize the content browsing experience in the way that we've built.
We had just as many if not more users complain about the old way in feedback. No single design solution appears to be the one size fits all, at which point a stance must be taken, and was, prior to my time, but a stance I can understand. Kontakt still has both the old and the new browser approaches, allowing the user to choose. This has some end-user benefits for sure, and may be something we do eventually, but it's also added a lot of extra support and maintenance that's slowing that team in other ways. Right now, I'm trying to focus the team on iterating and adding more, and more quickly than they've been able and empowered to do for years.
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- Yes, it's true that Mute and Solo replaced Select. That's been more useful to more people, but we have on our backlog a minor improvement to allow Select with a Shift+ modifier.
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@Matthew_NI One thing which I would like to see on the roadmap, if technically possible, is a way to double tap a knob to get back to default value. Many times when tweaking pitch data, for example, it is next to impossible to quickly get back to default in a similar way ‘command clicking’ in the KK GUI does. I’m thinking this can be achieved since the knobs are touch sensitive but I could be wrong. Any insights?
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But please recognize what @Vagus is trying to highlight -> that there is a useful and constructive way to have a dialogue, and ranting and raving is entirely unhelpful. That isn't dialogue.
I agree. This isn’t dialogue. And it’s entirely unhelpful.
But maybe it is because, even without intentionally doing it, you don’t notice that what you are doing is answering only what you want and not giving consideration to other users. Try to read beck the thread: some people come with complaints, try to put them out in a “constructive” and polite way…but what they see is them just being ignored. Then, as soon as someone more positive towards the decisions taken comes, or someone with a question where you can answer with a positive “we are working on it and it will come”, all of a sudden you are more willing to answer. At this point the others, the ignored ones, out of frustration start to write things (always politely) in a less constructive way. Does this seem so strange to you?
I assure you that calling other people “ranting and raving”, “speculative cluster”, “noise”, “the same 5 to 10 people saying the same 5 to 10 things in the echo chamber they've just created... again.”, that they “invent untruths”… is not helpful to prove you are “maintaining a respectful dialogue, and approach things as constructively and politely”. Even accusing others to not doing it while you “feel you are doing it in return” is just a way to discredit those criticisms by saying “I’m good, you are bad”.
Why instead not just answering those 5 to 10 things to those 5 to 10 people without them having to write them 2-3 times and begging for an answer? I know it’s easier to respond immediately to the “can we have X” questions when the answer is “yes it’s coming’, but…
Let's get back to talking about the roadmap I posted. What's on it, what's not. What's coming when, and what's coming later. Why it is the way it is. How it could change.
I know you don’t like it…but this is exactly what we are doing. Maybe we misunderstood the thread and what you meant with your questions was “only for things that will prove that everything we are doing is on the right path. All the other things will be underlined as untruth”.
Asking to be honest and direct with some “we won’t do this simply because we decided we won’t do this” so that users at least knows it doesn’t correspond to “inventing untruths”. It’s just dangerous for the company because allows informed users to take decisions.
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On one thing you are right: you are in any case here, you are giving answers (some in a more easy way, some requiring a lot more to be obtained) and you are putting your face on all of this.
On this I must give you credit.
What I’m calling for here is a more transparent approach on the “uncomfortable for the company” answers.
Once also those will be part of the equation, I’m sure some of those 5 to 10 echo chamber creators will stop repeating the same questions (btw: it’s not that only 5 to 10 users are saying those things: many many more have complained about them…just the vaste majority of users simply come, write things one time and then don’t come back (probably also because they don’t see that what they say is taken in consideration). Those are the ones that receive less attention. The 5 to 10 are the ones trying to assure their voice isn’t forgot)
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Thankyou for clarifying this and confirming drag and drop will be to hosted plugins too
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tbh I was hoping single tap on knobs would be used to sub for buttons and other binary functions that pots are not great for. If there was also a double tap reset that might make it too easy to mix the 2 functions up
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