Will Kontakt Instrument Updates Break Kontakt 7 compatibility?

Any instrument that doesn't load in K6 - has a "downloadable" prior edition. No existing K6 instruments are incompatible to my knowledge - unless you want to list a few?

The one (and only) time that the main Kontakt libraries have ever been updated in a major way (and on masse) was Sept 2023 with the advent of Komplete Kontrol 3 and the new NKSII S-Series keyboards. Cannot see anything like that happening for a while.

And as far as K8 is concerned - I do not expect any of the existing standard Kontakt libraries (like say Noire or Analog Dreams etc) will need anything different for K8 - at least in next few years or if ever - especially if the library does not access or use any of the new K8 features.

But this will become an issue (as it always does) if a specific library gets a "K8 or higher" designation.

The best practice here as always (IF you have multiple older Kontakt versions in play in older projects) is to tread VERY carefully in Native Access - read ALL Release Notes and do not click Update on any Kontakt library until you are very clear on the Kontakt version it needs to operate.

And of course - leave as many versions of Kontakt installed as you need to cover your projects.

VP

I don't understand the whole "living in fear" thing. I upgraded to Kontakt 7 as well as the new KK and all my libraries and projects converted over fine. I still have Kontakt 6 installed but I never use it because anything that didn't convert to Kontakt 7, I just use a comparable Kontakt 7 library and load up the MIDI track in my DAW and save it and it's all good to go. But for the most part my Kontakt 7 will still work with older libraries and files. They just won't have all the new features.

As an aside, how has Windows 11 been for you? I'm deathly afraid of that change. That's the reason I got away from Apple.

I've been using Ableton Live 11 Standard for several years now on Windows 10. As I remember (and it's been a while), when I made the jump over to Kontakt 7 and KK I updated most of my libraries that I had been using in most of my projects, and I would update others as I needed to. I kept the older Kontakt around for a while in case I needed it, but I never did. A lot of the libraries I was and still am using were not formally NKS licensed and still aren't and I load those either direct from the file system or through the quick load facilities.

I do vaguely remember going through all my libraries in Native Access and doing some housekeeping before I did any updates to make sure they were all organized and referenced correctly so I had my Native Access in very good shape before I made the main transition to NA, Kontakt 7 and KK.

Every once in a while I run into older projects that still use the older versions, but I pretty much replace those with newer versions immediately so I don't really have much reliance on the older software. Although there are still a few libraries from vendors like Spitfire and Impact Soundworks that aren't fully compatible with the new architecture and probably never will be, but they all work fine even though it can take some time to figure out how to get them listed and accessible in NA.

I don't know how other people do it, but I pretty much run Native Access daily to check on updates and such and fairly frequently move libraries around to even out my storage space across my various SSD drives. If I'm working in the DAW I almost always disable realtime virus scanning so my performance is always pretty good. I only keep a small amount of libraries on my system drive and pretty much move all new libraries onto dedicated SSD's so I don't impact performance by system functions such as paging operations or system background tasks. I think one of the reasons I have fewer problems than many is I'm pretty obsessed with keeping my NA libraries in good shape and referenced correctly.