Change of Leadership at NI - Full Version of Kontakt required?

[antler]

2 minutes ago, telecode 101 said:

i tried to test the sennheinser drum kit. it only downloads a zip file with bunch of data folders. i tried adding it to Kontakt library and rescanning and no go. anyone know how to get it to load in Kontakt? i tried mapping /users/shared/drummic and well as /users/shared/drummic/data . no luck so far.

You can only add instruments with Player licenses to the Kontakt Library. As these are no longer available for that drumkit, you'll need the full version of Kontakt to use this (you can still open it without, but it will only demo for 15 mins). You'll need to locate the instrument's .nki file from the Files tab on the left panel and load that.

[Batwaffel]

6 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

But that will turn people off from sales.

If they want to stay competitive, they should be sweetening the deal for customers, not souring it. If the problem is that people are getting crossgrade pricing for free, the solution would be to keep the libraries Kontakt Player compatible, but also make it so that free Player libraries don't qualify for crossgrade pricing, and make the de-facto price for a full license of Kontakt $249, with crossgrade pricing reduced to $149.

The $399 price tag has been a point of contention and complaint for everyone I have known who makes music for a living, and it's what had been turning people off from NI on the whole, and pushing them to look for alternatives. If they want to win customers back, they should make their flagship products more affordable. Especially in this day and age when affording things is more difficult thanks to COVID shutting income down for a lot of people.

Not really. Their sales still go half off so while it might be a rocky start with grumbling people, they know that they have them by the smalls because if you want access to the mass amounts of libraries out there, you're going to have to buy it. It will be a while before Kontakt becomes unimportant even if a better sampler comes out. People will just suck it up and pay the $200 rather than the $130 or they will start pushing sales more on their own Player libraries to get people to crossgrade through that so they are still making money both ways.  AFAIK, you can still crossgrade from Player based libraries, just not the Sennheiser one anymore. Should find someone who can get Arcane and try it with that to see if it still works there.

The thing with people who do this for a living: we either know the tricks to get it cheaper already from being around the stuff and people so much and/or we still write it off on our taxes so there is much less pain in investing into higher priced tools.

[telecode 101]

2 hours ago, antler said:

You can only add instruments with Player licenses to the Kontakt Library. As these are no longer available for that drumkit, you'll need the full version of Kontakt to use this (you can still open it without, but it will only demo for 15 mins). You'll need to locate the instrument's .nki file from the Files tab on the left panel and load that.

i tried in full version. no luck.

[paulo]

17 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

I also have my suspicions we're going to hear about a new sampler by Spectrasonics soon...

Based on the voices in your head or do you have some info? You can't just come in here and drop a vague hint at a new Spectrasonics product and then wander off again........?

[Batwaffel]

?

[Mánibranðr Studios]

13 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

Not really. Their sales still go half off so while it might be a rocky start with grumbling people, they know that they have them by the smalls because if you want access to the mass amounts of libraries out there, you're going to have to buy it. It will be a while before Kontakt becomes unimportant even if a better sampler comes out. People will just suck it up and pay the $200 rather than the $130 or they will start pushing sales more on their own Player libraries to get people to crossgrade through that so they are still making money both ways.  AFAIK, you can still crossgrade from Player based libraries, just not the Sennheiser one anymore. Should find someone who can get Arcane and try it with that to see if it still works there.

The thing with people who do this for a living: we either know the tricks to get it cheaper already from being around the stuff and people so much and/or we still write it off on our taxes so there is much less pain in investing into higher priced tools.

This is less true this year than it was 5 years ago.

[antler]

On 8/15/2020 at 10:38 AM, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

The $399 price tag has been a point of contention and complaint for everyone I have known who makes music for a living

I'm not entirely sure that lowering the price of Kontakt would make a huge difference to that market as a whole. I'm thinking people who make music for a living want a fairly diverse range of high quality instruments. Some Kontakt instruments can be fairly pricy: I've seen choirs between $300 - $500, a high quality suite of orchestral instruments would probably amount to more than $3000.

[Mánibranðr Studios]

12 hours ago, antler said:

I'm not entirely sure that lowering the price of Kontakt would make a huge difference to that market as a whole. I'm thinking people who make music for a living want a fairly diverse range of high quality instruments. Some Kontakt instruments can be fairly pricy: I've seen choirs between $300 - $500, a high quality suite of orchestral instruments would probably amount to more than $3000.

...and chopping off $150 from that gate would help get more people started. Far less people can afford $400 compared to $250.

(If people could just fart out $400, they'd be buying Omnisphere sooner than Kontakt anyways)

[chris.r]

14 hours ago, antler said:

I'm not entirely sure that lowering the price of Kontakt would make a huge difference to that market as a whole. I'm thinking people who make music for a living want a fairly diverse range of high quality instruments. Some Kontakt instruments can be fairly pricy: I've seen choirs between $300 - $500, a high quality suite of orchestral instruments would probably amount to more than $3000.

I understand that if someone is making live choir or orchestral sampling that's a huge challenge and there are too many people to pay for their work so the high price tag is fine (although I can't afford these libraries). Where things are ridiculous for me is all the free kontakt libraries that you have to shell out $400 to be able to play them but they won't play in the free kontakt player. And if a developer want's to make it kontakt player compatible then it's not free for him. What a brilliant business model.

[Batwaffel]

5 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

...and chopping off $150 from that gate would help get more people started. Far less people can afford $400 compared to $250.

(If people could just fart out $400, they'd be buying Omnisphere sooner than Kontakt anyways)

The people who pay $400 for Kontakt are extremely minimal. Most people who look into buying it now get information on it first and one of the first things they are told is to wait for a sale. On top of that, NI's goal isn't to sell them Kontakt; it's to sell them Komplete. That is where their money is these days and again, people are told to wait for sales so that's what they do. I've never seen a single person in the past 5 years or so who paid full price for Komplete.

[Promidi]

1 hour ago, Batwaffel said:

 I've never seen a single person in the past 5 years or so who paid full price for Komplete.

Or anything from any VST company for that matter...

[Starise]

The Komplete sales model hasn't given me much incentive to update since version 10 . I value Kontakt  the most since I'm free to choose libraries from either them or 3rd party libraries using it.

I am noticing more and more companies making their own VST plugins and breaking away from Kontakt. As I have said about the vst standard, I think the same applies here. Both come from German companies who while independent license selling entities , promote and allow their standards to be used by 3rd parties. At this time, either the more expensive route as in paying for a title on the main list page or the less expensive route, writing a sample library that isn't in their company browser.

I think a lot depends on the next generation of engineers/musicians. Will they keep blindly following a corporate behemoth or will they  be buying more into the independents who are breaking away from Native Instruments? Unlike the vst standard, there is plenty of active competition. Lots more than a handful of choices. It can be done. It has been done. Just not in a universal way.

Similar to vst standard, if the industry could adopt a universal open source standard in both sample players and as a substitute for VST/AAX/AU , I think the market could open up. More money would go to developers. To be fair a fee should be paid to the developers of this standard to continue to support it across all platforms. The trade off is it would not be a corporate entity but a non profit whose only interest is to keep the standard working well in all DAWs. 

Most people working with DAWs are users and not in any way developers. They don't care how it works so long as it works. They probably don't think about the hidden fees they pay every time they buy a library. The main benefit here is to the developers who save money on fees and don't need to develop as much for a continually moving target that isn't always backwards compatible.

While I like Kontakt...If you gave me a similar universal option that didn't tie me to Native instruments which could also run any library I wanted to buy for it, it would be bye bye Kontakt.

 

 

[Mánibranðr Studios]

On 8/17/2020 at 2:10 PM, Batwaffel said:

The people who pay $400 for Kontakt are extremely minimal. Most people who look into buying it now get information on it first and one of the first things they are told is to wait for a sale. On top of that, NI's goal isn't to sell them Kontakt; it's to sell them Komplete. That is where their money is these days and again, people are told to wait for sales so that's what they do. I've never seen a single person in the past 5 years or so who paid full price for Komplete.

Again, you're missing the point. The point is that they are resting on their laurels, and this move is just going to remind producers that looking for alternatives is a good idea, actually.

[Sander Verstraten]

For me it's NKS that keeps me on board.

[abacab]

On 8/17/2020 at 9:39 AM, Starise said:

Similar to vst standard, if the industry could adopt a universal open source standard in both sample players and as a substitute for VST/AAX/AU , I think the market could open up. More money would go to developers. To be fair a fee should be paid to the developers of this standard to continue to support it across all platforms. The trade off is it would not be a corporate entity but a non profit whose only interest is to keep the standard working well in all DAWs.

I see the point, but as far as I know all of the commercial sample library formats are proprietary, with the exception of some  sound fonts and SFZ files. There may be some exceptions, but my view is that most commercial content creators benefit by protecting their sample libraries and hard work from theft by using proprietary copy-protected file formats, and linking them with a registered sample player.

Of course, you or anybody else can create your own sampled instruments in SFZ format https://sfzformat.com/ and give them away if you wish. There are several players for that.

 

Edited August 18, 2020 by abacab

[Batwaffel]

3 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

Again, you're missing the point. The point is that they are resting on their laurels, and this move is just going to remind producers that looking for alternatives is a good idea, actually.

I got the point. NI have been lacking in development for a long time now despite us screaming about the issues in plugins like Kontakt but they can do that because at the moment, there is no competition in the market. All we can really do is hope that changes but that also means that developers will have to adopt a new engine and scripting language which many are comfortable in right now with NI products so unless a ground breaking sampler comes out that people want to move to, they know they will keep raking in the money.

Falcon is a good option but barely any developers have moved to it. It also hovers around the $400 mark. Their sale on it isn't nearly as good as Kontakt, either and it's the only sampler out right now that I believe even comes close to Kontakt.

Best Service Engine is another option but right now, it's not even in the same league. This may change when Engine 3 comes out but again, you need to be able to convince developers to make the switch. 

So there are no good alternatives at the moment which is why nothing is going to change.

[abacab]

What about HALion? Seems to be in a similar position to Falcon. Not much 3rd party interest. But both Falcon and HALion have been judged to be excellent products.

[Mánibranðr Studios]

4 hours ago, Batwaffel said:

I got the point. NI have been lacking in development for a long time now despite us screaming about the issues in plugins like Kontakt but they can do that because at the moment, there is no competition in the market. All we can really do is hope that changes but that also means that developers will have to adopt a new engine and scripting language which many are comfortable in right now with NI products so unless a ground breaking sampler comes out that people want to move to, they know they will keep raking in the money.

Falcon is a good option but barely any developers have moved to it. It also hovers around the $400 mark. Their sale on it isn't nearly as good as Kontakt, either and it's the only sampler out right now that I believe even comes close to Kontakt.

Best Service Engine is another option but right now, it's not even in the same league. This may change when Engine 3 comes out but again, you need to be able to convince developers to make the switch. 

So there are no good alternatives at the moment which is why nothing is going to change.

Now that's just quitter talk. I have been seeing more and more developers creating their own bespoke engines, and move to engines like UVI Workstation/Falcon. And keep in mind, the restriction to use 3rd party libraries with the free Workstation isn't as rough as with Kontakt Player and the whole demo thing.

And you know, sometimes, you don't really need the massive glut of features that Kontakt offers, and it would be better to use something simpler.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Freyja Grimaude-Valens

[abacab]

Just asking for a friend, when do you think the next 50% off deal on Kontakt 6 will happen?

[Fleer]

Summer of Sound.