Kontakt 7...i upgraded today.

[Nebulon Ranger]

FL template I'm working on for CSO takes over a minute to load.

I have three instances each of REQ2/REQ6, Berlin Studio and K7, split among three Patchers. Most of that time is the first open of K7.

This is silly LOL

 

[rAC]

@Shad0wLandsUK I find I am using less and less Kontact stuff and agree K7 is probably the ‘end of the line’ with NI for me.

 

[jbuhler]

@Shad0wLandsUK I find I am using less and less Kontact stuff and agree K7 is probably the ‘end of the line’ with NI for me.

Given how aggressively NI seems to be forcing developers to use the most current version of K7 I wonder if it will be possible to quit the updates without also leaving behind adding any new Kontakt library.

 

[charlieclouser]

Wasn't there something to do with NKS compatibility that was slowing down k5 and k6, but could be erased if you were never going to use Komplete Kontrol or any of the NI keyboards? Like, a folder full of NKS files that allowed every plugin in the world to have its controls auto-mapped to NI keyboard knobs?

I seem to remember having super-slow instantiation times on k5 and k6 and then trashing a folder with a zillion files buried deep in MacOS Library somewhere, which sped things up quite a bit. But it's been a while... and I'm just getting rolling with k7 on a new system so I haven't been testing / digging yet.

And FYI - I have k5 + k6 + k7 all installed side-by-side on m2ultra + MacOS Ventura and all seem to be working, but I have not tested rigorously yet....

 

[MartinH.]

I like the Library view functionality and the search functions too
But the speed and demand of the new application is not worth the trade-off for my older system
I don't have the spare cash of 2K+ to throw down on Apple Silicon either
And the machine I would get to replace all my systems would be a 5-6K Mac Studio + 192GB RAM

I have a Ryzen 9 5900x and it's still very noticably slower to load than K6. I don't think even an expensive system upgrade would eliminate the problem.

Wasn't there something to do with NKS compatibility that was slowing down k5 and k6, but could be erased if you were never going to use Komplete Kontrol or any of the NI keyboards? Like, a folder full of NKS files that allowed every plugin in the world to have its controls auto-mapped to NI keyboard knobs?

I seem to remember having super-slow instantiation times on k5 and k6 and then trashing a folder with a zillion files buried deep in MacOS Library somewhere, which sped things up quite a bit. But it's been a while... and I'm just getting rolling with k7 on a new system so I haven't been testing / digging yet.

And FYI - I have k5 + k6 + k7 all installed side-by-side on m2ultra + MacOS Ventura and all seem to be working, but I have not tested rigorously yet....

This seems worth investigating. Maybe make a thread called "Let's make Kontakt 7 great again" and brainstorm some ideas with @EvilDragon and other Kontakt experts.

 

[jtnyc]

Wasn't there something to do with NKS compatibility that was slowing down k5 and k6, but could be erased if you were never going to use Komplete Kontrol or any of the NI keyboards? Like, a folder full of NKS files that allowed every plugin in the world to have its controls auto-mapped to NI keyboard knobs?

I seem to remember having super-slow instantiation times on k5 and k6 and then trashing a folder with a zillion files buried deep in MacOS Library somewhere, which sped things up quite a bit. But it's been a while... and I'm just getting rolling with k7 on a new system so I haven't been testing / digging yet.

And FYI - I have k5 + k6 + k7 all installed side-by-side on m2ultra + MacOS Ventura and all seem to be working, but I have not tested rigorously yet....

It's unfortunate that they have tied Kontakt so closely with their hardware. I get it and I know some people love it, but I wonder what percentage of Kontakt users use NI hardware. I don't and probably never will. The idea of making adjustments while staring at a small screen on a keyboard opposed to looking at a 32 inch monitor is not attractive at all and I don't need a light guide or preset scales. I suppose for live use it could be quite handy for some, but now Kontakt is becoming bloated with things that many users have no use for or interest in, and it seems K7 is a step backwards in terms of loading time and efficiency. I personally dislike the Komplete Kontrol look and functionality of the new browser. For a large collection of Kontakt libraries, there is no beating a well thought out personalized Quickload. I would be way more excited if they used the real estate that the new browser uses for a larger, improved Quickload.

 

[Wunderhorn]

I have the feeling that NI have simply waited to long until they realized that Kontakt will have to be re-written from the ground up eventually. Last ditch effort to buy more time was the awkward new browser that is in essence completely superfluous but provides the notion of some partial modernization. However, I totally understand that re-writing Kontakt would be a mammoth undertaking. It should have started 10 years ago or earlier.
I think NI has maneuvered themselves a bit into a corner there. It will take a bit more than a few new icons on a resizable GUI in order to stay market leader among the sample engines.

What we need is a modern engine, with an open and friendly platform to all library developers that can be an industry standard and minimize the rampant wild-west growth of horrible proprietary engines and players that are plaguing composers with increasingly large and diverse projects and templates.

BTW - The only thing that made Kontakt7 attractive to me is the "purge all" function. That was genius.

 

[Shad0wLandsUK]

BTW - The only thing that made Kontakt7 attractive to me is the "purge all" function. That was genius.

Yeah, this addition is great

 

[MartinH.]

I have the feeling that NI have simply waited to long until they realized that Kontakt will have to be re-written from the ground up eventually. Last ditch effort to buy more time was the awkward new browser that is in essence completely superfluous but provides the notion of some partial modernization. However, I totally understand that re-writing Kontakt would be a mammoth undertaking. It should have started 10 years ago or earlier.
I think NI has maneuvered themselves a bit into a corner there. It will take a bit more than a few new icons on a resizable GUI in order to stay market leader among the sample engines.

I think you might have that backwards. I was under the impression they already did a rewrite of large parts of kontakt for k7 and those are the parts that are now unbearably slow. Old software typically is a lot faster than new software because it's written for hardware that was waaaay slower than what we have today and was using less abstraction layers and frameworks in the development process. That is what made it hard to maintain and hard to react to changing requirements like high-dpi screens, but it was faster. Now fixing the maintainability issues with a re-write of significant parts of it - presumably unifying them accross several NI plugins that all are slow to open their UI now - has created new problems. The question is whether they can be fixed within the new limitations they've boxed themselves into. May the many programmers among us correct me if I'm wrong.