Kontakt 7 - First Look Videos

[locrian]

https://youtu.be/sGLAPu20H5k

https://youtu.be/Favv7VkGov4?t=21

Edited September 28, 2022 by locrian

[Niky Serrano]

I like to see how the companies generates a hype of its products

[Spice3d]

Never liked Komplete Kontrol, so this is a welcome improvement. Still wondering if I should wait for BF tho ?

[daveiv]

Hmm, that's a simplified UI paradigm. Big background image + flat vector knobs.

We can adapt to that.

[Sander Verstraten]

Here's an overview from Guy:

 

 

[Carl Ewing]

You can tell they are catering this 7 update to people who never do much else other than click on library defaults. See pretty picture, click on instrument you like and move along. The endless UI / UX problems with Kontakt for anyone who goes beyond this (scripting, sampling, mixer, routing, etc.) look untouched. Which is incredible, because they've been awful for 10+ years and still haven't improved. It's unfortunate, as their have been some excellent UI / UX improvements to Reaktor and other NI synths that have never made it over to Kontakt. Uggh. Looks like they made Quickload of non licensed libraries even more convoluted. Yay. At least we get enormous high DPI instrument panels with 90% wasted space, while doing complex drum routing will still use the 8pt font and teeny pull down menus.

Edited September 30, 2022 by Carl Ewing

[PavlovsCat]

Candidly,  I've been hearing positive things about KONTAKT 7 from sample developers.  That said,  I'm still going to wait until the next big sale on KOMPLETE. 

[Fleer]

Does seem to make it easier to add and list non-Player libraries. 

[topaz]

Anyone worked out how to add user images to 3rd party imports ? 

[Sander Verstraten]

18 minutes ago, topaz said:

Anyone worked out how to add user images to 3rd party imports ? 

Yeah, I think you just wait until NI implements the feature ?

[satya]

What's the size of Factory library 2

[satya]

I just want Short-circuit 2 to load up Kontakt libraries ?

[Fleer]

1 hour ago, satyabrata satapathy said:

What's the size of Factory library 2

40GB

[daveiv]

20 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Candidly,  I've been hearing positive things about KONTAKT 7 from sample developers.

Any details?

[PavlovsCat]

35 minutes ago, daveiv said:

Any details?

I don't want to give details from private conversations,  but the takeaway for me was that there are some nice changes. If you don't already use it, I know that some KONTAKT developers use VI Control's sub forum, so if you can always check there. 

[Amicus717]

I bought the Kontakt 7 update. I have Komplete 13 Collector's Edition, but the new stuff in K14 Collector's Edition doesn't interest me enough to pay $700 for it. But the $129 Cdn update for Kontakt 7 was low enough to tempt me into checking out the Factory Library 2 and the new library browser.

So far, I like it. I regularly use a mix of Kontakt Player and non-Player libraries, and being able to add non-Player libraries to the browser and see all the patches at a glance in the right side window is actually pretty nice. The patch window can be stretched, and you can expand it out so the various patches display in columns. I find this is particularly useful with libraries like the 8Dio Anthology Strings, which have a ton of articulations broken out a hundred different ways. You can  scroll through the patches quickly, and stuff is easier to find. That has been my experience, so far. The new browser windows has already become my preferred view. 

The Factory Library 2 is a pretty solid upgrade to the aged original. Some pretty nice sounds in here:

1) The orchestral ones (created by Orchestral Tools) are quite good for basic patches, with scripted legatos and the minimum fundamental articulations.  Nothing at all fancy, but perfectly useable for mockups or similar.

2) The Choir patches are pretty good, including a nice little set of Strezov-recorded basic vowel sounds. They don't have a ton of character, and I wouldn't use them if the choir was going to be overly exposed in the mix/arrangement, but in a strong, dense passage where you need to pump up the epic vibe, they'd work just fine.

3) I didn't spend a lot of time going through the Band and Acoustic patches, but the ones I did try were good. Not hugely detailed, but good quality samples and they play well.

4) The Synth patches and similar aren't on my radar, for the most part, so haven't even looked in those folders yet. I'll get around to them eventually. 

As for the high DPI interfaces: I work on a 55" 4K monitor, so bigger interface windows are usually better, and the high DPI ones in the Factory 2 library are nice to look at. But the control elements are not really any different, at least from the perspective of button/dial size and font size -- really just the same size controls, but spaced further apart. I can see this being a useful feature down the road when someone creates instrument panels that utilize it properly. But at the moment its neither here nor there. 

But overall, I'm happy with the update. 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Amicus717

[Fleer]

I’m on KU13CE as well and not enamored by KU14CE. 

Upgrading to Kontakt 7 may be the way to go. 

[daveiv]

1 hour ago, Amicus717 said:

I bought the Kontakt 7 update. I have Komplete 13 Collector's Edition, but the new stuff in K14 Collector's Edition doesn't interest me enough to pay $700 for it. But the $129 Cdn update for Kontakt 7 was low enough to tempt me into checking out the Factory Library 2 and the new library browser.

So far, I like it. I regularly use a mix of Kontakt Player and non-Player libraries, and being able to add non-Player libraries to the browser and see all the patches at a glance in the right side window is actually pretty nice. The patch window can be stretched, and you can expand it out so the various patches display in columns. I find this is particularly useful with libraries like the 8Dio Anthology Strings, which have a ton of articulations broken out a hundred different ways. You can  scroll through the patches quickly, and stuff is easier to find. That has been my experience, so far. The new browser windows has already become my preferred view. 

The Factory Library 2 is a pretty solid upgrade to the aged original. Some pretty nice sounds in here:

1) The orchestral ones (created by Orchestral Tools) are quite good for basic patches, with scripted legatos and the minimum fundamental articulations.  Nothing at all fancy, but perfectly useable for mockups or similar.

2) The Choir patches are pretty good, including a nice little set of Strezov-recorded basic vowel sounds. They don't have a ton of character, and I wouldn't use them if the choir was going to be overly exposed in the mix/arrangement, but in a strong, dense passage where you need to pump up the epic vibe, they'd work just fine.

3) I didn't spend a lot of time going through the Band and Acoustic patches, but the ones I did try were good. Not hugely detailed, but good quality samples and they play well.

4) The Synth patches and similar aren't on my radar, for the most part, so haven't even looked in those folders yet. I'll get around to them eventually. 

As for the high DPI interfaces: I work on a 55" 4K monitor, so bigger interface windows are usually better, and the high DPI ones in the Factory 2 library are nice to look at. But the control elements are not really any different, at least from the perspective of button/dial size and font size -- really just the same size controls, but spaced further apart. I can see this being a useful feature down the road when someone creates instrument panels that utilize it properly. But at the moment its neither here nor there. 

But overall, I'm happy with the update. 

Thank you for the detailed review.

Is there anything bothers you about the new GUI paradigm? HiDPI support is welcome, but I imagine those big background pictures can be distracting.

[Amicus717]

9 minutes ago, daveiv said:

Thank you for the detailed review.

Is there anything bothers you about the new GUI paradigm? HiDPI support is welcome, but I imagine those big background pictures can be distracting.

So far, the hiDPI libraries I’ve loaded up look fine, and to my eyes are non-distracting. However, the only ones I’ve got that have this interface are in Factory Library 2, and none of them are animated. They’re just static. 

The stand-alone Omnia Choir library has animation that reacts to the mod wheel(?), but I don’t own that one and haven’t experienced it directly.. 

[daveiv]

15 minutes ago, Amicus717 said:

So far, the hiDPI libraries I’ve loaded up look fine, and to my eyes are non-distracting. However, the only ones I’ve got that have this interface are in Factory Library 2, and none of them are animated. They’re just static. 

The stand-alone Omnia Choir library has animation that reacts to the mod wheel(?), but I don’t own that one and haven’t experienced it directly.. 

Ah, Omnia Choir looks cool, even though it's just a non-functional/non-interactive animation.

This actually makes my life easier as an aspiring Kontakt GUI developer.