Kontrol 2024 outlook: what was, what now, what next?

I don't think this is accurate. I could be wrong, but my understanding of the way NKS controls work is that the instrument maker simply provides a map that says something like, "the first knob should be for the filter cutoff frequency, it should use a standard knob control that goes from 1-100, and it should be labeled "cufoff." The second knob is a boolean control labeled "Sawtooth" and controls whether or not the saw oscillator is on." It's a simple mapping of existing plugin parameters to standardized controls NI has created for NKS.

To add visual feedback of envelopes, etc, someone has to make new, custom UI for those visual animations, and they probably need to be unique for each instrument. Take Pigments, for example. If you wanted their cool visual LFO and envelopes on Kontrol's screen, you'd need a) NI to implement an API for Arturia to do this, and then B) Arturia to commit to the work of porting their awesome animations to NI's platform. Would Arturia do that just for whatever percentage of their customers use NI keyboards? Maybe, I don't know. Would all the other instrument makers go to this effort when building new instruments? Would they go back and update decades of older instruments to do this? Some would, some wouldn't. Would Native Instruments themselves commit to doing this for its entire library? That's a ton of work. You'd probably still be left with a lot of "just pretty pictures." 🤷‍♂️

I think I just want point out that idea of showing much more useful information on the plugin screen is more complicated than people are giving it credit for. Of course it would be awesome. I'd love it. But it just seems to me like way too heavy a lift to think we could really have unique, useful stuff there for every instrument in Komplete. Maybe we can hope for a small step, like NI doing it for a few of their own flagship products that would really benefit from it. :)

A revolutionary upgrade of the Kontrol UI any time soon seems rather unlikely. There was plenty of time to get there, but to me it is clear that the more recent NI strategy is to follow the lowest common denominator, aka "deliberately simplify so as to appeal to the largest possible number of people". And there's nothing wrong with that, btw. I enjoy toying with the Play series from time to time, just like everybody else.

But let's not pretend that evolving NKS is some sort of impossibility or improving usability is a rather small issue for a large number of powerful libraries that are currently difficult to control and navigate. This has nothing to do with being a synth or not, many groups of parameters are shared even between the libraries you listed. Currently, any improvement would be significant. So instead of worrying how large the task at hand is, let's remember that NI is no small shop, that they have full control of both the hardware and software stacks, and a ton of experience with both. But more importantly this is their edge. This is what NKS is all about. Let's just hope there is interest and bandwidth in growth, because MIDI 2.0 is just around the corner and 8 text scribbles will be standard - NKS or not.

My point with MicroFreak, MPC and Montage is that visual feedback is important, and both hardware and VST developers consider a rounded User Experience a critical part of their instrument, as it should be. But.. maybe 8 words of crammed text on a large 9 inch screen is great UI practice, and all that is needed.

Yes, one of my suggestions is a complete redesign for a Mk4. Believe it or not you have to decide on the design *before you build the keyboard.

But most suggestions is to move around some things regarding the browser and FL Studio integration. That can be done now. Either way I'm going to wait and use its MIDI mode in FLS and the KK mode for KK. I can do that with Bome's MTP.

My tone doesn't matter. I don't know why anyone would worship a company because they have a business license. If they did something stupid then they will get kind words when they fix it, but not until then. The point about talking to devs it to try and persuade them to change their mind about things. That's all that matters. I'm concerned with the content, not who said it or how they said it. Matthew noted that he doesn't favor an on screen modular system because he "doesn't like it". Cool, I'm glad these guys are building things for themselves only. They're not getting paid to make a product that the paying customers like or anything.

Who is worshipping? I just happen to have a different opinion. I don't think there are so many things that need fixing, let alone a complete redesign. I bought the keyboard for what it is knowing there would be some problems like there were with the previous models.

As @Bodhi Beats said, things are usually more complicated than they seem. I mean some developers don't even care to implement NKS so imagine the adoption something like this would have compared to the effort of implementing such a feature/SDK, dev support, etc.

And yeah some of the suggestions are pretty cool. Something like your last massive mockup would look very cool… but for that specific case a text label does the job just as well if not better (are you controlling the knob or the modulation slots?) and it already exists/works.

regardless of your personal level of browsing experience and efficiency, it still takes more clicks and shows less information on screen than before and you still cannot just flip through presets easily while also viewing the plugin, something some of us like to do.

This is my fundamental issue with the UX of KK3. Having a larger browser that can show more information is great, but that should have been a new, additional view rather than replacing what we had before. The need to browse patches and see the plugin at the same time is quite important if you're comparing presets and want to observe which knobs/sliders change when you load a patch. That's why most modern plugins have two ways of browsing patches — a dropdown or popover list for accessing patches while the plugin UI is visible, and a full browser view for uses cases like searching, filtering, tagging, etc.

The patch sidebar in KK2 and earlier was an elegant way to handle browsing while keeping the plugin visible at all times. I don't want them to switch back to it; just offer it in addition to the full browser view.

And I don't know if it has been mentioned… but on my computer all the thumbnails in the browser look super pixelated and ugly :D

Not at the top of my list for complaining about though hahaha

Oh good to know! It’s a MacBook Pro connected to a 1440p monitor with the lid closed. Every other app looks normal to me.

I’ll take a picture tomorrow.

EDIT: Nevermind here it is