Native Instruments GUIs all disappeared after update

[thesoundsmith]

I am running DP 7.12 with a PCI424-2408 and MTP/AV on a G5 running 10.5.8, Dual 2.7G PPC, 4.5G RAM. plenty of disk space on both drives.

I have a bunch of NI VIs - both B4s, EWQLSO, Garritan Jazz and GPO, KP2, AfroLatin Slam, StormDrum and Virtual Grand, and they all worked great till I updated. Now the GUI is gone, all I have is a blank DP info- except for the B4s (which use a different GUI, so it's not a total surprise.)

I saw James Steele's posts about this issue in DP6, has there been ANY new useful infro from either MOTU or NI? Or anyone else? I've just lost 2/3 of my production capability, and can't finish any of my current projects...

[James Steele]

Well, you're on a G5 running Leopard. That combo has problems with older NI plugs. Kontakt Player 2 is rather old. What did you update from? You didn't say. If you updated from 5.13 to 7.12, then I'm not surprised. I found the only solution to his was to update your NI plug-ins or go back to 5.13... or switch to Tiger, but I don't know how Tiger works with 7.12, but I think it's okay.

I'm guessing the plugs that you're having problems with are old versions? Again, I know Kontakt Player 2 is definitely no go. Kontakt is up to version 4 now, but I know Kontakt 3 works.

You may need to either update your plug-ins or roll back to DP 5.13 and get your project done. More and more of these issues are going to continue to come up with PPC Macs.

[thesoundsmith]

I did indeed update from 5.13, and I don't really mind losing Kontakt, I didn't use it that much. But I updated all the NI apps. Just discovered that Arturia Jupiter8 shows up, but Korg Wavestation does not (that may need an update, tho...).

I believe I have the latest updates to NI successfully installed - at least I went through the motions; download, install, register, etc. and they seemed happy - but I don't know how to check without the GUI visible. And I can't go back to DP 5.13 without losing my Spectrasonics updates (the synergy between Trillian, RMX and Omnisphere is killer.)

Is there a way to instantiate the VST versions instead of the Audiounit versions? I saw a reference to the MAS Audiounit Support.bundle being in two places, I had version 1.7, but only in the main Library, the User Library had none. I copied the bundle there, but it made no difference. If I can turn off the AU versions, maybe VST will fly?

[HCMarkus]

7.12 runs great under 10.4.11. So does NI. That's why I run DP under Tiger on my Quad G5.

[James Steele]

Some of those NI apps might need to be paid upgrades in order to get them to work (if at all)... not just updates. The reality is here (and I was there till recently) that you're using a machine that was released at a certain period of time, with an OS that came later, with a DAW that came much later, and these are the sorts of incompatibilities you run into with what is essentially an unsupported system. I know it sucks, man... I do. Been there.

My ultimate solution was to scrape together what I could and buy myself a used Mac Pro... and I'm talking first generation 2006 era. I saw one locally on craigslist for $900 and they're going to drop lower when the new Mac Pros hit any day now. I thought I'd saw just a small improvement over my G5. Wrong... I was surprised. Projects that were choking my dual 2.3 G5, run at about 20% CPU with occasional bounced up to 25%.

I really wish I had better advice. I know that I bought Komplete 5 when it was on sale and all my NI stuff worked on my G5/Leopard/DP7 combo.

[James Steele]

7.12 runs great under 10.4.11. So does NI. That's why I run DP under Tiger on my Quad G5.

Yep.... you're right. I spent an afternoon downgrading to 10.4.11 after waiting months and getting sort of stalled and pushed off by NI on the subject of compatibility with Leopard. All my stuff started working great again. I never did 7.12 with Tiger (10.4.11) but good to know it works. Probably the best solution short of finding a deal on a used Mac Pro.

[thesoundsmith]

Well, I upgraded Kontakt Player to version 3, version 4 won't run on PPCs. But when I did, and let it find all the NI libraries, it did so. I don't know how much detail I can get from this version, if any of the scripting will play, but I can indeed load, and appear to play my JABB instruments, though the JABB GUI still shows blank. But I believe I can now access most of my old instruments, so this was a major improvement.

So for those in the same boat, this may be a usable, if clumsy, work-around.

[thesoundsmith]

Have to update my update - not everything shows up in the KP3 list, and some of it is saying it can't be found. But it's still better than none...