Komplete 12 Ultimate Collector's -- can't install from USB?

[mhschmieder]

Turned out there was still another background process running, so it got confused. I rebooted and it cleared it up.

I may have to reorganize my libraries and VI's tonight once home. Everything completed overnight, but it doesn't know to update old stuff, and thinks a lot of stuff (third-party mostly) is lost.

I prefer to store patch libraries by product, but NI doesn't like that. So all these EDM packages that I'll never use, installed under my Kontakt folder. I may have to just have a Native Instruments folder on its own, including Massive and Battery, vs. a Native Instruments folder under my Kontakt folder.

Other vendors are like that too; it's inconsistent. I just find it makes it easier for me when doing backups and updates on my library drive -- especially as sometimes I have to split to multiple drives, such as when converting to a more expensive new technology like SSD's, before eventually recombining to just one library drive.

It still seems advisable not to install libraries on the system drive, in spite of having over 1.5 TB free. I mean from a performance point of view, and page-swapping between the application itself and the library loading.

I had never done an auto-update before from Native Access, so it was a little strange to set a preference that only applies to Native Instruments. At the top level of my library drive, I have a "Kontakt" folder, and then a folder within for each vendor, including Native Instruments. This really helps me figure out what I have and do proper upkeeping for updates, outmoded stuff, etc.

Another thing I'll do tonight is finally sort out the confusion over different versions of NI products. I thought deleting pref files would be enough to cue Native Access not to keep thinking I haven't installed stuff like the old Kompakt version of East/West RA, and also NI's own older versions of some of the effects plug-ins before they renamed them and changed how/where they install. There may be other remnants to find though.

It's possible that the USB drive was being used to do the installs after all; NI's user feedback is not as helpful as it could be. As it isn't very safe to interrupt the process though, I didn't want to unplug the internet or the USB drive to find out. But it did seem rather fast overall, considering how much data was involved (almost 1 TB altogether).

[FMiguelez]

I'm mostly interested in Kontakt 6.

At this point I'd save my money. My 2 cents. (change available).

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=65410

Ha! Thanks for the heads up, cuttime!

I'm happy with Kontakt 5, actually. I saw a video with a couple of nice new features for K6, but nothing to die for.

Hmmmm.... I might get Falcon instead... It's more like MachFive, and I actually know it and like it better. I'd buy MF4 from MOTU in a heart beat, but since they chose to abandon it and leave it to die a lonely death...

There’s a $199 upgrade price from Komplete to Komplete 12 and $399 from Ultimate to Ultimate 12. These prices have been around since November.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=Komplete

They’re supposed to end soon.

Oh, so those ARE the already-discounted prices! .... And the sale ends soon...

Nah! I'll check out if Falcon has some kind of sales-promotion...

I really love NI stuff (and their download system), but I still have stuff from them I haven't even opened yet...

I DO NEED to replace MF3 with a great sampler because MF just hates its DP bother. It's never been reliable and MF keeps crashing any version of DP I use it with all-the-time.

[mikehalloran]

It still seems advisable not to install libraries on the system drive, in spite of having over 1.5 TB free. I mean from a performance point of view, and page-swapping between the application itself and the library loading.

If you were all-SSD, I'd disagree but you have a Fusion drive with a very small SSD and a sloooow HDD.

[mhschmieder]

Mike, that's what I thought -- thanks. I only recently saw a detailed diagram that shows just what a tiny portion of the so-called "fusion" drive is SSD -- just enough for bootstrapping the computer (probably during secure startup etc.).

Yeah, I'll leave all the NI stuff on external drives, and hopefully get more SSD's over time or even upgrade the internal drive to SSD at some point (but only with the dual approach, I think, as it would still at least make it easier to decouple Time Machine backups from manual backups as I don't want sample libraries to be incrementally backed up since they can be re-downloaded if corrupted).

The Collector's Edition is now 100% installed, including re-installs last night of all unchanged older products after carefully analyzing and deleting all relevant files (including preferences and other support files). A lot of crud had built up over 10-12 years and it made it too confusing to know what's what regarding relevant files vs. obsolete files. Now I am very confident of what is needed still, and where it should sit.

I haven't had a chance to try the orchestral percussion or anything else yet -- I had a few hiccups here and there due to service interruptions and Native Access crashing if I tried to multi-task (not always, but sometimes).

It's still not clear to me whether it was using the USB drive for the installs, as I had it plugged in the whole time and kept hearing a ping noise now and then that I think was coming from that drive. The user feedback is less than perfect, but it has improved, and if you clean out a lot of old files like I did, Native Access gets better at eliminating dead products from its display.

I do hope to find out why products that haven't been on my last two computers are showing up still, such as the Kompakt versions of EWQL libraries like RA and Colossus, but might have to go to my account page on the NI website to figure that out as I no longer think this is related to Native Access finding certain files on my computer as cues.

[mhschmieder]

Everything is pretty well sorted out now, and I just installed the 64 GB of RAM when I got home tonight, noticing an IMMEDIATE snappiness in the browser and no more glitches in streaming KDFC's luscious broadcast of Bach's Christmas Oratorio just now.

I still haven't tracked down why Native Access thinks it should install old, canceled, obsolete products and versions, but it's better than it was, no doubt due to how much cleanup I did. So I'll log in to my actual web account and traverse to a page that allows a more manual approach decoupled from Native Access and see if I can delete or remove licenses for stuff like V1 of SampleModeling's libraries.

I still haven't tried an y of K12, as I've been focused exclusively on preparing all of the prerequisites for having the most productive 11-day break from work possible (as a manufacturing company, we often shut down end-of-year when it's not cost-effective to open for a day or two at a time between mid-week holidays). I am sure my sessions will run more smoothly and thus I'll be more inspired.

[mhschmieder]

I am now 100% done with all housekeeping tasks, and for the first time have a consistent, logical, and well-understood installation strategy and organizational scheme for all files related to the basic installation of every Native Instruments product, including add-ons from other vendors and personal files.

Things have changed a bit, and it's almost gotten back a bit to how things were with Kore, so if I was starting over and/or had the energy and concentration to yet again manually change the installation paths of well over 100 products managed by Native Access, I'd probably make a top folder called "Komplete" and then divide by vendor.

I have one remaining mystery, even after a clean reinstall, which is that Transient Master shows up in Guitar Rig Pro 5 in Demo Mode only, even though it is fully registered. It may just be that GR isn't its main host, so I'll see if it pops up standalone as its own AU plug-in tomorrow when I load a DP project to start testing things and getting them in sync with KU12.

I decided to have top level library disc folders for Kontakt (now including Battery as well, as that library folder includes a Kontakt version and as there are no additional Battery libraries since all vendors gave up on it after the incompatibility introduced in Battery 4), one for Guitar Rig (the three "modules" that NI added later on: Rammfire; Reflektor; Traktors 12), and Reaktor (previously spread chaotically across the system by NI themselves, but all on the main system drive prior to KU12).

Other products organize their add-on libraries on the system drive under the user directory's Documentation folder using the Native Instruments sub-folder. I can't find a way to redirect where those products look, and they're small files since they're synth-based patch libraries anyway.

My new 2 TB SSD has 50% to spare, but so far has VSL Synchron Player and Synchron Pianos, and the most demanding Kontakt libraries, such as all from Soniccouture, Scarbee's new 88-key Rhodes, and C Bechstein's not-well-known recent library of their premier grand piano. I'll move more stuff to the SSD piecemeal when I encounter load time issues or CPU performance problems.

[mhschmieder]

Minor update, and I'm done for the night (or done for, more likely):

Transient Master was debris in a hard-to-find folder, so I deleted it, and it cleared its 17 presets from Guitar Rig Pro 5, not even showing them in Demo Mode anymore, which is great (less confusing).

Transient Master FX is the current version, and is standalone from Guitar Rig. I think that was true of many of the early effects from NI, and I had already successfully removed the broken older versions of others that got relaunched later as standalone effects vs. being hosted by Guitar Rig.

My recollection is that NI decided it was poor marketing strategy to give across the impression that their effects are just for guitar.

As for Battery, I was mistaken about its factory library being in both formats; that was only true of Battery 3. So I moved it to its own top-level directory on the external library drive and correct native Access's path.

The thing that's a bit frustrating is that the new products NI is making are along the lines of Kore Packs way back, where they might have settings for multiple NI products, including Battery, but I'm leaving alkl of those under the Kontakt library directory for now as it could complicate updates if I pull them apart to separately move the directories that are for Massive vs. ones for Kontakt vs. Battery etc.

The good news is that the library managers are now fairly consistent across the products (not completely, but greatly improved), so everything is found easily by the products themselves, and the file search approach rarely has to be used for anything anymore.

That no doubt is tied in with the Komplete Kontrol conversion of the past few years.

There's also a browser app that searches across all product installations and categorizes by style, sound, etc., but I forget what it's called so will look it up tomorrow. It might indeed become a time-saver now that NI's offerings are so large in number and scope. At least for finding what is wanted, and then launching the product directly on its own -- unless it actually behaves like Kore Player did, meaning you can combine engines.