Kontakt 8 by Native Instruments - First Impressions!

[@marvin1574]

Thank you!! I needed help and you answered all my questions--Appreciate it!!!

[@ChristopherSiu]

Glad it was helpful!

[@scott7521]

Thanks Chris!

[@ChristopherSiu]

My pleasure Scott!

[@MeExpressing]

Thank you for this video. I just recently purchased the top tier 88 keyboard and ultimate. The order was stuck in processing for over two weeks. I emailed them and requested that they refund my expedited shipping that I paid for. When they sent the unit out, the top of the box was sealed, but the bottom had already been cut open. Someone used the unit, and then placed it back in the box and taped it with two strips of packing tape. The protective film over the glass was missing, left hand corner of the unit was worn down, the feet underneath the keyboard also were worn. I took pictures and emailed them all of this.Their customer service is HORRIBLE. I have received multiple ticket numbers and right now. I am counting down for 30 days if they do not resolve my issue I will elevate the situation. Once again thank you and I really appreciate your video

[@SelvaTheMusician]

this is like the scalar 2 inbuild in kontakt

[@ronnyb5890]

yep, but scaler is more powerful, and it has it's own sounds, also, most if not all DAW's have this in their arsenal, so this addition to kontakt is worthless, including the three UI's (default,komplete, and rack) wich makes kontakt even more confusing with the steinberg 40y anniversary i went for the halion 7 vsti instaid of kontakt 8, its a lot more powerful and user friendly cheers Selva

[@stizan9185]

Its worse

[@michaltanay2315]

I paid for Kontakt 8 update and Full version Kontakt 8 but there is nothing like is Alicia Keys Signature piano tones or Vocal Colors and much more

[@music-drive]

Does the migration feature they introduced to Kontakt 7 work with Kontakt 8…?

[@dfizzbom]

Can you just grab the full version with minimal instruments to keep the size of it limited? I think factory must be downloaded or something? Just want full k8 without the bloat.

[@ronnyb5890]

hi Chris, for me personally kontakt is getting worse with every major update, certainly with three UI's default view, komplete UI view, and rack view making it less user friendly, i always return to the rack wich i'm familiar with paying the upgrade for just a phrase and chords tool, wich all DAW's have as a stock tool, and an improved wavetable module is'nt worth it for me, they did'nt change their KSP editor to a bigger font size, make creating your own instruments/libraries easier so i switched to halion 7, wich is undoubtably more powerful with it's new spectral synth module you can make instruments by coding in LUA (a bit like kontakt) but you dont have to, you can simply drag & drop ready made sliders, knobs, and menues onto your background and link them to evrything possible, cheers Chris

[@ChristopherSiu]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Ronny!

[@music-drive]

@@ronnyb5890 I personally won’t be moving away from kontakt until all the third party developers do. Halion 7 is nice and all, but at the moment there’s only one orchestral sample library for it, while pretty much all my orchestral libraries are for kontakt.

[@NeuroPete]

Thanks for this review. I will probably only get Kontakt 8 when I upgrade to Komplete 15 CE. I’m waiting either for a sale, which will probably only happen next spring, or for a project that can benefit from one of the new instruments in CE, or for a stunning new library that will only work with the full version of Kontakt 8 and above. So far, I’m not that impressed with the new chord and phrase tools, though I might change my mind once I’ve learn to use them. What interest me more are the UI changes. I was able to check these out somewhat with the new Kontakt 8 free player. When I am auditioning presets, I prefer to have the full instrument view with all the controls. Before, when I wanted to favourite a preset, I had to switch to the library view. Very annoying. Now, I can favourite presets and also filter to favourites from the new side panel. The only problem is that when you double click on a preset to load it, the search disappears. Maybe there is some setting to change this, or hopefully Native Instruments will change this in a future version. Finally, there’s one feature that I’m still hoping for. With Komplete Kontrol, I can play any NKS compatible instrument, not just ones from NI, even though I don’t have one of their keyboards. Perhaps someday they can merge these two products so that if I am searching for a particular sound, I can audition and play presets from all my NKS compatible instruments. I’m also waiting for the ability to have the library and instrument views open in separate windows, which for me, would negate the need for the side panel.

[@cachelesssociety5187]

I don't know if anyone else has this complaint, but I used to depend on the loader in the earlier Kontakt versions - to let me know that the library was in process of loading. I don't believe there's this needed feature in Kontakt 8 for some reason. East West Opus even has this kind of loader (in their case it's a circle that fills in to a complete pie when the samples for that patch are finished loading. I can't tell you how many times since Kontakt 8 was released I've frozen my computer by thinking the samples were not loading. Batch re-save needs might make a library take longer (not clear on why this happens sometimes) but consequently it would be essential to have the GUI give feedback about the speed of loading. When I'm in a DAW like FL Studio, if I hit any part of the screen during this mystery loading process, I can often freeze my DAW. Which isn't healthy and is a bad metabolic syndrome in the musical universe.

[@floflow1024]

Either you uploaded the wrong file, or forgot to edit the intro I think

[@ChristopherSiu]

Thanks for the heads up - fixed!