NKS Implementation

[John Montgomery]

Does anyone know if CbB Sonar is going to implement the NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) protocol?  Native Instruments is acquiring/partnering with several larger vendors (iZotope, being one of them). and lack of hardware protocol support appears to be a real loss of opportunity.  I would think it would be a really big bang for not a huge programming task.

[Glenn Stanton]

given that NI parent company bought Izotope, it makes sense they would consider it, but since Izotope is only software, having hardware protocols (mainly for instruments) seems unnessary. NI already has services running on your system to interface with the software on your machine (to wit: my S49 Mk2) using the NI host integration services to link up with my CW (as a MIDI device) and my NI Komplete Kontrol software (including the Komplete Kontrol DAW which can drive things in my CW DAW) and which let's me handle my NI products like Maschine, Kontakt libraries, and other NKS compatible products like AAS suite, etc directly via the keyboard (which is handy when i'm looking around for things to augment productions with)...

the problem with NI - their Native Access product sucks. big time. of 20 or so other companies which use a "product manager", besides Softube (who also have a crap product manager tool) they all work fine. very few troubles ever. with NI Native Access - i dread ever opening it - esp when you hit the "cancel" on the notification and it still goes ahead and begins disrupting/removing/installing the products and thus anywhere from 4 - 12 hours of lost productivity when using their tools. all so they can post new ads. their Native Access team seems unable to handle updates properly - incompatible with their services, so you need to track those down - usually special builds posted on the forum when 100K other users scream. 3-6 reboots and restarting services (until the next build is posted - oops, so sorry) and it just basically is amateur hour for what is otherwise a decent set of products.

so i'd not want to "integrate" that experience into my DAW any more than it already is until they get their act together. same for the softube folks who have such an elaborate set of ilok and cloud "protections" that it usually takes an hour to square things away. just dumb ***** architecture & programming.

[OutrageProductions]

NKS keyboards already operate pretty well as control surfaces IME (no <Loop> function). It would be nice if there was bi-directional operation when selecting a track/channel that the HW would automatically focus & open the Plugin GUI and reflect the light-guide simultaneously. Currently have to click on the GUI and manually focus, and I've become innured to that.

[ptheisen]

As others have been more or less saying, NKS integration is mostly something that plugins and hardware controllers implement, not DAWs.

Another thing to consider is that NI wants you to buy their controllers, not someone else's. So Komplete Kontrol has been programmed to allow only NI controllers to use their endless encoders as endless encoders. Endless encoders on competitors' controllers are treated like ordinary potentiometers by Komplete Kontrol. And to make it worse, the Takeover function that they offer to help with potentiometers (or endless encoders) on competitors' controllers only works when Komplete Kontrol is in stand-alone mode. When using Komplete Kontrol as a plugin in a DAW, the Takeover function is lost, leaving only the dreaded jumping parameter behavior when using a non-NI controller.

These kinds of things have turned me off of Komplete Kontrol.

[azslow3]

On 5/30/2024 at 6:55 PM, John Montgomery said:

Does anyone know if CbB Sonar is going to implement the NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) protocol?  Native Instruments is acquiring/partnering with several larger vendors (iZotope, being one of them). and lack of hardware protocol support appears to be a real loss of opportunity.  I would think it would be a really big bang for not a huge programming task.

You first need to understand what NKS is... It is NI proprietary API extension for plug-ins. I have never seen any proposal from NI to integrate it into DAWs (does NI allows that?).  It is not "hardware protocol", it is a protocol to communicate with NI software.

What DAWs can support is KK (Komplete Kontrol) protocol, used by NI keyboard (throw software, "hardware protocol" is proprietary, not documented and not foreseen to be used by anyone outside NI). That is usually implemented by DAWs "control surface extensions". Possible features are DAW API dependent, but that is true for any controller.

If you have M32 or Axx controllers, you can use https://www.azslow.com/index.php/topic,604.0.html. It provides more functionality then "standard" implementations then in other DAWs. I don't have Sxx, so related features are not supported and existing not tested. And I don't know if that will work with new Sonar/Next, currently I have no plans to use them.

[XBaker]

On 5/30/2024 at 1:56 PM, OutrageProductions said:

NKS keyboards already operate pretty well as control surfaces IME (no <Loop> function). It would be nice if there was bi-directional operation when selecting a track/channel that the HW would automatically focus & open the Plugin GUI and reflect the light-guide simultaneously. Currently have to click on the GUI and manually focus, and I've become innured to that.

I'm looking for the bidirectional communication between my Kontrol S88 and Sonar per this NI statement.

"Kontrol S-Series MK3
A MIDI keyboard controller that can control a DAW's transport, track selection, and mixer. It can also be used to search and audition presets, adjust track levels, and record MIDI. The Kontrol S-Series MK3 integrates with many DAWs, including Ableton Live, Bitwig, Cubase, Digital Performer, Logic Pro, Pro Tools, and Studio One."

Thanks for your consideration!

Tom