NI Community Drive

[Lizzie Foster]

If you can download the programs with your slow internet connection, yes, it should work to download the libraries elsewhere and just "relocate them" rather than have NA redownload them.  

If your internet is too slow to download the programs, then I wouldn't bother.  If that makes sense?

[Cristian]

On 7/16/2020 at 6:58 PM, Tezza said:

I don't understand what you are saying. Your saying in your first line that you don't need an internet connection to your DAW in order to run Native Access but in your second line you are saying that if the DAW is offline, then there is no solution.

[...]

Can you tell me how you are using native access without an internet connection to your DAW? It has to be on the DAW and it has to connect by the internet. Past K10U you cannot install anything from NI onto your DAW without having to constantly and consistently run Native Access (connected to the net). Even if you are loading from the hard drive, it needs to be connected to the net just to load the programs.

 

By DAW I assume you mean Ableton or Cubase or Studio One. Native Access has nothing to do with the DAW itself, it's a standalone program.

After I've activated the licenses for whatever I've installed, I can take my PC completely offline and have no issues running NI VSTs.

If you have a weak internet connection, one (true, pretty dumb) suggestion would be to take your PC to a friend's house (and if you have a laptop, just go to a local library or McDonald's). Though 100 GB of updates honestly sounds very weird, given you already bought the HDD version of K12U.

Maybe Native Access prioritizes online downloads for you, in which case I'd recommend installing from the HDD by hand. 

As for what I did: when you download an instrument once, Native Access doesn't immediately delete the setup files, so I just copied those setup files to an external drive. Next time I need to reinstall for whatever reason, no more downloading.

And given you have the HDD already, even better, install Native Access and log in then close it.
Then you install everything you have off your HDD manually.
Then you can start up Native Access again and let it activate what you installed.
Even if it prompts you that it has updates, you don't NEED to install all those updates, especially not the bigger ones.

[Tezza]

Thanks, I know what Native access is and what it does, I also know you don't need it running in order to use the programs. Taking the PC to a mate's house and downloading from there is actually not a bad idea, except I live in the country, Internet is expensive and I'm not sure I would like to impose upon others in that way but it would be worth considering if I still had any interest in NI instruments, which I don't. I suppose one idea might have been to sneak the PC into the local library and see if I could get away with that, although it is a big tower PC.

Unfortunately, my DAW is on PC and not a laptop. With Arturia's software center I can download the full programs to my laptop at the library, bring them home to my DAW and transfer them over. Then they only then need to be authorized on the net quickly with the USB dongle. Not a problem. You cannot do this with Native Access because it only installs direct to the DAW. This is the problem.

You cannot install everything off the hard disc manually, it must be connected to the internet with Native Access running all the time or it won't install from the hard drive. On K10U, with Service Center, I could do this but later versions have to use Native Access and you can't do that. Although it says you can prioritize the hard drive for installation, it does what it wants and If you disconnect from the internet at any time during the install process from the hard drive, it fails. Given that it takes such a long time to install anyway, just from the hard drive, it's not possible to maintain a connection. It also creates an ugly mess of what is installed, what is half installed and what is not installed. Unless they've changed something, that is what it does.

About a third of it is not even on the hard drive and must be downloaded, again, a bit pointless buying the hard drive.

I gave up jumping through hoops with NI when there are other vendors who have an installation process more suitable for me. I went through it all with NI support and the shop guy, never fixed it and returned the hard drive. I will keep K10U for now but I can't buy anything further from NI and that's fine. Since moving away from NI, I have found there are other instruments from different vendors that sound better, are more intuitive to use, and have a better installation process for me, so it's no loss.