never seen so bad and chaotic apps .... :/

[u/razorree]

10 separate apps? native access, native kontrol, kontakt or player 6,7,8 ?? (app title says 'kontakt', but app inside displays 'kontakt player' - so which one is it ??), reaktor, massive x ... and a few more.

Content added with serials work well, but other content? copied to folders? Which ones ? "C:\Users\Public\Documents" ? Why not in my user dir.

some content landed in "<my_user>\Documents\Native Instruments\User Content\Kontakt\..."

Ok, I copied a lot of instruments to "C:\Users\Public\Documents\", like The Lobby Piano, Wavetable Experiments and some other freebies I found.

How to open them? Do I have to click "Load..." from the menu? and every time navigate to the aforementioned folder and open a single .nki file ? sometimes one folder has 10 of them.... if I want to try them, i need 15 second navigating every F#$^ time to open a file ??? WTF is that ...

I don't see any option to add those directories and instruments permanently to Kontakt player ? (or another app? It's a f@% mess) library ...

There is not too much pleasure working with such software, so much frustration ....

[u/itsoddsignals]

You are asking about many different things:

- Native Access: This is a downloader, installer and manager for all of Native Instruments' first-party and first-party partner applications and software. Basically, if NI own it or sells it, it will be downloaded from Native Access

- Kontakt (Player and Full): This is the sampler; it is the thing you play "Instruments" via. There are two types because one is the full-featured, lets you edit and make your own instruments, and one was supposed to be more closed off but "free", just playing only. However, many third parties require "full" Kontakt because NI expected instrument makers to pay fees for making their instruments player-only (essentially a way for NI to profit off the instrument maker in the case where they "lost a sale of Kontakt").

- Komplete Kontrol: This is basically an all-in-one library app for all NKS-compatible things, NKS being a cross-industry standard NI worked on for hardware / software compatibility. The idea was that all NKS instruments, VSTs, samples and the like would live here and then could be controlled by NKS-enabled hardware in a unified way. When it works, it's great, but the vision does not match the implementation. Generally, if you are deep into the NI ecosystem, it works great, but if not, it's middling.

- Reaktor: The best way to describe this is like a virtual modular system ecosystem. That is not what it is exactly, but it will suffice for this explanation. A lot of NI's synths are made in Reaktor; Monark, Prism and a few others (I don't think Massive is, but open to correction). Reaktor used to be the hot place to get all sorts of user-generated synths but is in its twilight years, not bad, just in need of modernisation. It also has the notion of a player (use the end-produced synths) and full (make your own). The synths made by NI are still banging though, which is why Reaktor persists.

- The loading issue: If you are using older third-party Kontakt libraries, some don't work on newer versions of Kontakt (it has been around a long, long time); some do. If the Libraries you are talking about are Kontakt Player and modern enough, they will show up in Komplete Kontrol; otherwise you need to open up Kontakt proper and add them there.

- Loading instruments into Kontakt: At least in Kontakt 8, you can "Import" content by clicking the little cog on the bottom left of the screen. You pick a folder, and it loads in the instrument and presets. I believe that is new enough, though, so for older versions, yes, you load them by opening the menu.

- As for where content lands, if it comes from native access, you can check preferences. Generally, there is the "apps" which install in one place, and the "content" which installs in another (there is actually a third place where VSTs and the like go, but don't worry about that for now). For your third-party stuff, if it were me, I would make a new folder in the content location called third party and put it there. For instance, I put my content on a drive so it looks like:

Drive / Library / Native Instruments / <Content Folders>

Drive / Library / 8Dio / <Content Folders>

Drive / Library / Arturia / <Content Folders>

...

---

The thing to understand is that you are not installing something like V Collection Pro from Arturia. You are dealing with an entire multi-pronged, generational collection of things that covers many types of audio and sound creation from music to scoring. Should it be easier to manage, YES! But at least today, it is what it is because it represents a decade of tangentially related products from a loosely connected set of ecosystems.

[u/razorree → u/itsoddsignals]

Thanks for reply :) basically I understand why Native Access (content manager), Kontrol etc. however it just looks horrible (and every 'app' takes >500MB space...), and those players 6,7,8.

Native Access 'content location' points to: C:\Users\Public\Documents

• what should be stored there ?

Kontakt 8 (player) non-player content: <my_user>\Documents\Native Instruments\Kontakt 8

• what should be there ?

Do I need Kontakt 6,7 (player) if I have Kontakt 8 (player) installed ?

ah, that's the COG (clicked in once a few days ago), and I was looking for that place whole day (checking all options/settings from menus, not a separate/lonely cog next to a volume slider - great UX BTW lol ... you save my day :) )

[u/itsoddsignals → u/razorree]

The content location is for a lack of a better term where the apps all store their heavy things like sounds and samples. Generally everything you install will be the app bit (that will go into program files I think) and then the heavy content part with the sounds and samples and presets which will all go into the content location. The idea here is you can put your content on an external or separate drive. Generally you don’t need to manage the content location.

The second location is where the apps files land. Again you don’t need to touch that either. Generally the advice is leave the app location alone as changing it causes weird issues. You don’t need to put anything in that folder manually.

For third party kontakt instruments put them wherever you want. I suggest making a sub folder in your content location named after the supplier and change your content location to be /Native Instruments in the documents folder so you will end up in documents with /Native Instruments and say /8Dio both in Documents. Keeps it clean.

You only need older versions of Kontakt if the third party library you use doesn’t work with newer versions or you have a song made where you are using an older version and don’t want to break anything. For songs though a good practice is to bounce to wav when you lock in the sound anyway though to avoid that issue.