Kontakt 7 breaks libraries

sdfgsdfg · 2023-03-02T12:41:29+00:00

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So I've opened up an old project in my DAW that has some MIDI parts played through Kontakt 5 with a great Prominy SR5 Rock Bass 2 library. I've installed Kontakt 7 for upgrade purposes, added it to my project and put those MIDI parts to it with the same library, and noticed, that they sound wrong. Some samples are played, some are not. The whole sections like "FX scrapes" and "FX scratches" in SR5 Rock Bass 2 became silent. That was weird, and I reverted back to Kontakt 5, but the instrument was still broken.

Then I spent like 2 days trying to figure out what's going on, including clean installations of Kontakt standalone into Windows Sandbox etc, and finally found out that Kontakt 7 alters the library while loading it. Check out the screenshot - 13:51 is the time of files creation, and all the .nkc files got different time when the library was loaded. The library became half-muted, and can't be played even in Kontakt 5.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening, any of your suggestions will be much appreciated.

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Comments

tmpc

THAT is screwed up! Why wouldn't NI warn users about that?

This is the reason I never update to new software if I don't have to.

I hope you had the old libraries backed up.

Monochrome

"Why wouldn't NI warn users about that?"

NI can't test every single library out there. It's simply impossible. And considering that many libraries work fine, the error has to be elsewhere.

It's also important to know what these files are and do (EvilDragon may correct me):

NKC are Kontakt Cache files, storing some information about a loaded Kontakt instrument. They're not essential to make the library work. You could even delete them as they get recreated.
NKX are monolith container files, containing all the samples.

Based on your information, only the NKC got changed - which makes sense. But, they're likely not the culprit.

Have you checked that the Preload buffer size is (still) set appropriately, as mentioned in their manual?

tmpc

But, could changed NKC files affect tweaks that were made in the original library? sdfgsdfg isn't saying that the library doesn't work, only that it sounds different.

tmpc

By the way, one of the things that I got out of the old forum were definitions for the different file types. I believe that EvilDragon supplied this info. Here is the list . . .

KDB - Kore Database

KSD - Kore Sound

NCW - lossless compression audio file

NDX - generated when analyzing samples to create AET layers

NICNT - indicates a licensed library and will show up in the browser on the left

NKA - used for storing array data from scripts

NKB - instrument bank

NKC - cache file (contains list of start position of each file within a monolith).

The NKC file will be regenerated if it is deleted. This sometimes

needs to be done if something isn't right after an update.

NKI - instrument

NKM - multi

NKP - preset

NKR - resource file (holds graphics, scripts, and IR samples)

NKX - protected monolith (replaced NKS)

EvilDragon

Indeed, delete all NKC files and open all NKIs from that library so that they all get regenerated - use Kontakt 5 for this. Then it should all be fine, in either version of Kontakt.

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