Ask me anything: Kontrol S-Series MK3
Comments
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It sure is! I thought I'd use it sometimes, but I've really begun to use it all the time. It feels much more organic - as an analogue instrument like the piano, guitar, or voice do. It's been exciting exploring existing implementations of Polyphonic Aftertouch (uHe's Diva and Arturia's CS-80 are excellent) as well as beginning the process of bringing it to a lot NI's pre-existing instrument libraries.
Of course, it's not a new technology, but it's nowhere nearly widely adopted enough. We hope to change that. We certainly have an eye on expanding to MPE as well. We've made investments in MIDI 2 that I'll talk about later on, and there's a general theme of expressivity woven into the instrument controller experience.
Advanced microtonality? Say more about this. I assume you want to go beyond the current set of non-microtonal scale types in Play Assist, but there are many tonalities - have you one in mind?
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Mainly not being limited by a curated selection of alternate tunings but being able to import our own including fully microtonal scales. Ideally I would like to see Komplete Kontrol being able to act as a host to MTS-ESP enabled plugins which seems a good approach to making microtonal music more accessible. As you have found already poly aftertouch opens up so much in terms of musical expression but it would be such a shame if that was constrained by such a limited set of scales with no possibility of extending those.
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Sure thing!
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Let's start with NKS. Until now, the NKS SDK was on v1.7. With the launch of these keyboards, we're launching v2.0 of the SDK. All NKS products, regardless of which version of the SDK they're up to, are compatible with the new keyboard. If they're updated for v2.0, which some already are, they get access to the new features. For reasons, we call NKS 2 "next gen NKS".
The changes are focused in three main areas, with some bonus cherries on the top.
Parameter Descriptive Information
NKS 1 was good. NKS 2 is great. Now, content authors can specify parameter types in detail. With that information, the keyboard can display the right kind of icons and expected user experiences. Whereas NKS1 was a long collection of continuous rotary encoders, NKS2 looks like this. Additionally, thought has been paid to the tangible aspects. If a control is binary, or you're scrolling a list, you should not have to endless scroll simply to turn something on, or off. It is now a quick turn and you're done. Added to which, the rotary encoders are capacitive, so you can touch for state without adjusting settings.
Immersive Navigation
I pick our friends uHe and Arturia out above not just because they're two of my favourite plug-ins (and companies), but because CS-80 and Diva are notoriously powerful. With NKS 1, you'd have to navigate page after page, eight controls at a time. When a product has hundreds of automatable parameters, this only works so well.
With NKS 2, there is a Performance mode and an Edit mode. Performance mode is up to 16 of the most important performance modifiers for quick adjustment. Edit mode organizes the parameter groupings into logical collections of pages, navigable quickly by the buttons atop the screen. One press to hop to your VCOs, your VCFs, so on and so forth. It's so much quicker and more modular than using the mouse, and also scrolling pages.
We also lifted a number of other arbitrary constraints. You can scroll pages in increments of 1 (hold SHIFT and LEFT or RIGHT) rather than 8. Useful if... IDK... you wanted to see the 7th and 9th parameter at the same time. You can also have parameters appear as many times as useful in the list, rather than only once. So if you want your Filter Cutoff on every page (I do), this is possible.
Visual Identity
"All they've done is put a pretty picture on a big screen!" - the internet, sometimes.
Well, yes, in addition to everything else. We allow the content authors to specify how their instrument shows up, so it's clear and obvious which product you're controlling. We also let them specify the colours they wish the keyboard to use (Diva in red, CS-80 in white). It really helps make things fluid, fun, and simpler. Users in testing spend far less time looking at the computer, and more time expressing themselves with this instrument controller... almost as if it was embedded (I know what you're thinking... hold this thought for another day).
Bonus Features
Such things never get a ton of airtime at launch, but tend to show up as incredibly valuable elements of the user experience. Two things to highlight:
1) The new keyboard supports VST3 ParameterInfo. This means that any (correctly implemented) VST3 exposes a limited amount (less than NKS2, but still good) of enriched parameter metadata, which we're then able to translate into relevant UI (e.g. a toggle is a toggle). As such, even non NKS VST3 products will look better on this keyboard, as we're trying to make things as open and as fluid as possible.
2) The Kontakt scripting language also contains a certain amount of such metadata. You will find that all of our NKS1 Kontakt instruments already look massively improved on the new keyboard, with artwork and a limited amount of enriched controls (e.g. a toggle is a toggle). It doesn't have all the features of NKS2, such as the navigation, waveforms, etc, but it certainly helps make for a more cohesive experience.
There is a load more info, but the above is the gist of NKS 2. It's been quite hard to convey over the interwebs just how much of a significant workflow improvement it is, so any feedback on how best to do this is welcome. One of those, once you use it, you get it type things.
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Komplete Kontrol 3 is coming out soon! It has so many improvements, some long awaited, such as HiDPI support, resizing, and so on. It also has our new Browser, on which we plan to build more useful search functionality, such as text and semantic search. Here is Diva as hosted in KK3.
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Q1: Yes, this is abundantly and overwhelmingly likely. Kontrol S MK3 introduces a brand new tech stack on which we plan to build many products. Up, down, side to side. Hardware takes time, but expect more.
Q2: I mean... I want one? It's definitely not a thought we're ignoring. Absolutely feasible but it's a non-trivial proposition. And would certainly be more expensive due to the increased component cost (you're talking to a guy who owns far too many standalone keyboards, none of which were cheap).
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Hi , very excited about the new controllers. Is the pre-order sale price only for a short period of time or of this be the prices for the controllers. Will this work with all major DAWS (Reaper) and VSTs and VST3. Thanks
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I'll try and keep it focussed on Kontrol S MK3 topics. We'll talk more about Maschine later, as there are questions regarding the Kontrol S MK3 integration (there isn't one).
However, we can all understand why people have questions. Maschine has so many varied users and needs, that even though we continue to update the product (several times this year) there continue to be others disappointed in a lack of whatever features they'd asked for.
The simple answer to your question is YES. I'm looking at my desk, and a version of the existing Maschine Plus running with polyphonic aftertouch fully implemented. We hope to get this (and more features besides) to beta this year, and either release this year or early next if beta goes well.
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So Massive X will also be updated to support Poly AT then?
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1) I'd refer you to the comment I made above. We continue to support and add value to Maschine, and support all of our products. I do understand where users are frustrated we haven't done enough of the things they want when they want - when you've so many varied users and needs it becomes almost inevitable that solving for one disappoints another, given finite resourcing.
2) Your second question has been asked in several places, so I'll paraphrase. Kontrol S MK2 had an integration with Maschine. Kontrol S MK3 does not. Why not? Simply put - very very few people ever used it. That's not just because we have a huge number of Kontrol users outside of the Maschine world, but even those that own both rarely if ever use the integration. So whilst it was great for the users who use it, for everyone else (a significant majority) the keyboard had redundant buttons that appeared broken, and we found ourselves unable to resource building additional features for the majority, because of the integration slowing us down.
It is never easy to disappoint. If someone has Maschine, but wants to buy Kontrol S MK3 and use the integration, they would likely be disappointed. Which is why we're being as forthcoming as we can in letting people know. Worth noting too that Kontrol S MK2 is still supported, indefinitely. So we have not taken anything away, even if we've not prioritized it moving forward. Such decisions are always subject to change, and I recognize the frustration when you're in an affected group, even if it is a minority of users. But I hope that helps explain - even if not to your liking.
3) Ones to our liking, I suppose.
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This is a great question!
The next-gen NKS technology will make things massively easier for users who use our Accessibility modes. Here are some examples:
1) In particular, we've introduced the concepts of parameter groups, assigned to the soft buttons atop the screen. So you'll be able to navigate quickly to groups, have the group and page name read out, and find your way around a plug-ins interface without having to endlessly scroll pages.
2) The new encoders are capacitive, so you can also touch and get a response without changing parameter values to best understand what you're interacting with.
3) People forget that visual impairment isn't binary. We've made the screen bigger, clearer, with plug-in artwork and parameter UI more prominent, so that it's more accessible for a range of users. Given how powerful the screen, and the utilities on it actually are, particularly for the visually impaired community who make up more than 5% of our active users, it is a bit disheartening to see people criticizing "all they've done is make it bigger". We put real thought and care into how ALL users can make music.
Also worth noting, is that we're changing the way we deliver Accessibility. Much like the recent updates we made to Maschine (hey, another Maschine update that we shipped this year!), it will use the NI Accessibility Helper app.
Last, but by no means least, it is very very important to state that Accessibility will not be implemented at launch (mid October). However, it will be implemented in Q4. It's our number one priority. Ideally it would have been implemented at launch, but we had to first get the tech stack to market, and indeed even get content to NKS 2, to then proceed with our Accessibility implementation. So, you heard it here first. Coming in Q4 2023.
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No, unfortunately not.
The Kontrol S MK3 has a new on-device rendering engine, capable of rendering metadata and graphics, well, on the device.
This enables us to do things like the Direct Connection API, for which Kontakt 7 and Komplete Kontrol 3 are our first clients. The keyboard talks directly to the plug-in, but otherwise handles the parameter mapping and graphical representations.
The Kontrol S MK2 does not have this capability. The logic is hard coded into Komplete Kontrol, which does all of the rendering and processing, before sending the information down the pipe to the keyboard's display. It's "dumb" in a manner of speaking. So it is not as simple as enabling it.
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S25 is not coming later.
Other key sizes larger than 25 but smaller than 49, with the same capabilities... might be...
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There are no plans to do this, no.
Deprioritizing the functionality was a tough decision made on account of it being a high resource commitment, for a very low adoption rate as evidenced with Kontrol S MK2, which we do still support. We wanted to build other things for other users first.
Priorities can change, and as products mature sometimes more niche capabilities can be added, but as said, there are no plans at present, and it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
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Can you today? No. Will you be able to? Soon, yes.
I'd encourage all prospective buyers to evaluate the product on the merits of what it's currently capable of doing, but for those in wait and see mode, there are a few things I can be open about us working on.
One of them is full MIDI template management. Creating, saving, browsing, loading, etc. It may not get done in Q4 2023, as there are higher priorities, but I'd hope to get to this in the first half of 2024.
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Potentially.
Each of the four pedal inputs can be Continuous or Switch.
If Switch, you can have the Tip, Ring, or both in Trigger mode.
In this mode, you can send Control Change messages on the channel of your choosing at the value of your choosing upon press/release of the pedal.
That is not the same thing as sending a Note On/Note Off, which I think is really what you want, but depending on the DAW, you can transform the MIDI information to your needs (e.g. Logic's Environment).
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Big time.
New UI, support for HiDPI and hosted content resizing, the new browser (improved from Kontakt 7), an enormous amount of bug fixes, and much more besides. It will be available to existing users and install in place (overwrite) as prior versions have done, to ensure session recall continuation.
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