WARNING! Steven Slate Drums EX and Kontakt 4.0/4.1 problems!

[James Steele]

Man oh man... this is serious and a bummer. I installed my Komplete 6 upgrade last night and this morning I'm going through projects and loading my SSD kits multis into an instance of Kontakt 4.1 instead of the older 3.5 and they're sounding different!!!

I think the Komplete 6 installer installed Kontakt 4.0, and that was okay, but later I installed the 4.1 update and that has HOSED the Steven Slate Drum kits. I'm no the only one who thinks this crept in going from 4.0 to 4.1. Look here:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4128002" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is majorly bad. Identical multi loaded into an instance of Kontakt 3.5 and an instance of Kontakt 4.1. I can listen to them side by side and assign a MIDI track first to one and then the other. SSD in Kontakt 3.5 sounds like it should be... full... well balanced. Direct the MIDI track to same multi loaded into Kontakt 4.1... sounds different...thinner, but oddly enough in 4.1 the same kit will clip the hell out of the VI channel... pegging it in the read with some strange transient even though it doesn't sound louder.

This is really bad news. If you want to use your Steven Slate EX kits in Kontakt 4... do NOT upgrade to Kontakt 4.1. If you do upgrade to 4.1, like I did... you'll want to keep Kontakt 3.5 on your system and just use it for SSD, or downgrade to Kontakt 4.0. I posted at SSD forum here:

http://www.stevenslatedrums.com/forum/v ... =12&t=2544" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This IS a bummer! What's worse is this looks like it's something Native Instruments did going from 4.0 to 4.1, and it's going to somehow be in Steven Slate Drum's hands to fix... which worries me. How can SSD fix something that sounds okay in earlier versions of Kontakt but wrong in 4.1 so that it sounds right in 4.1 but doesn't mess it up in earlier versions????

Anybody know how I can downgrade Kontakt from 4.1 to 4.0???

[James Steele]

Okay... more preliminary information. There's a chance that SSD may have problems with Kontakt 4.0 as well. I downgraded to Kontakt 4.0 AU component by showing contents of the Komplete 6 installer and digging down and extracting just the archive that held the 4.0 AU component. I had to do this because the NI installer wasn't going to let me install because there was a "newer version."

The clipping that was present in Steven Slate Drums EX kits went away by going from 4.1 to 4.0, but... they still sound different in 4.0 than in 3.5!!! They kits are noticeably lower in volume in Kontakt 4.0 even though they are the exact same Multis being loaded in. They also seem to sound more full in Kontakt 3.5 but that could just be the volume difference.

I'm pretty sure this is a Steven Slate Drums EX issue, because I did another test and loaded the identical General MIDI drumkit instrument from VI ONE into Kontakt 3.5 and Kontakt 4.0. Had them right there on the screen next to each other... faders both at 0.00 in DP's mixer. I started playback with a MIDI drum pattern track targeting Kontatk 3.5 and then change the target to Kontakt 4... and they were IDENTICAL. Could hear no difference whatsoever. This really points to an issue with Steven Slate Drums EX and Kontakt 4.0 and later... the worst case is 4.1 with the strange clipping.

I would advise everyone to keep Kontakt 3.5 on your Mac and continue to use it with Steven Slate Drums until such time as they can have a fix and given the odd nature of the problem, I'd be prepared to operate that way for a while.

[James Steele]

FWIW, I'm going to put Kontakt 4.1 back in place and keep 3.5 just for Steven Slate Drums for now. I'm also removing the Steven Slate EX library from Kontakt 4.1 just so I won't forget and mistakenly load it. This way I'll be reminded I'll have to open Kontakt 3.5 to use Steven Slate Drums EX.

[David Polich]

This is indeed a bummer, James. I wonder if it's also a problem on
Windows systems.

A call to NI tech support in LA might be in order...even if it's just
to ascertain whether they're aware of the problem. They've been updating
Kontakt a lot recently, and I think their updates might well be ahead of
some developers ability to catch up.

[buzzsmith]

Thanks for the heads up, James.

I was pretty close to jumping to Kontakt 4, but may wait a while based on your report.

I like the SSD kits for, at least, an easy go-to good sounding set, and in lots of cases, the final drums.

Buzzy

[James Steele]

Thanks for the heads up, James.

I was pretty close to jumping to Kontakt 4, but may wait a while based on your report.

I like the SSD kits for, at least, an easy go-to good sounding set, and in lots of cases, the final drums.

Buzzy

Buzzy... I wouldn't necessarily want anybody to hold off on going to Kontakt 4. It seems to be working well for other instruments and it's just a problem so far I've found with Steven Slate EX. The problem is severe and obvious with Kontakt 4.1-- more subtle with 4.0. Still, it's easy enough to leave Kontakt 3.5 in my system (it can work right alongside Kontakt 4.1) and just use it to run the Steve Slate EX drum kits and they're fine. I think Kontakt 4.1 is working okay for everything else.

[James Steele]

This is indeed a bummer, James. I wonder if it's also a problem on
Windows systems.

A call to NI tech support in LA might be in order...even if it's just
to ascertain whether they're aware of the problem. They've been updating
Kontakt a lot recently, and I think their updates might well be ahead of
some developers ability to catch up.

That I don't know. I do know that I posted it to Steven Slate Drums' forum and I think as more reports come in, I'll leave it to them to work out the issues and just keep Kontakt 3.5 on my system just for SSD.

[pencilina]

James & Co.,

There must be someting funky or inconsistent with K4's interpretation of the instrument programming compared to k4. I just upped to K4.1 and am starting a new project with SSD (which I'm finally using for the first time after the no brainer deal) and it seems to be fine. Maybe its thinner then it would be in K3.5 but I wouldn't know......

Best,

B

[James Steele]

James & Co.,

There must be someting funky or inconsistent with K4's interpretation of the instrument programming compared to k4. I just upped to K4.1 and am starting a new project with SSD (which I'm finally using for the first time after the no brainer deal) and it seems to be fine. Maybe its thinner then it would be in K3.5 but I wouldn't know......

Best,

B

I am absolutely getting different sound and strange overloads. What expanders do you have. I get it with Perfect Rock Kit, Meat & Potatoes off the top of my head. Totally can't use them in 4.1 but fine in 3.5. I'll have to look at your system specs and see what our differences are. Cannot see in message creation window right now.

[James Steele]

Maybe it's a Snow Leopard thing?

[pencilina]

Hi James,

I just have EX- from the no brainer. I'm using the metal hybrid and it seems fine. It seems weird that it would be a snow leopard thing. Does K4's mixer look the same to you as 3.5?

Best,

B

[David Polich]

You know what? I'm gonna go ahead and say that the blame for
this situation probably lies with SSD themselves.

I just downloaded and installed their FGX plug-in demo - followed
the instructions exactly. The plug-in is a total no-show in every
DP, Peak, and Logic. The VST and AU versions show up in their respective
folders, but - the plug-in does not show up in my list of AU plugs.
It does show up in Peak as a VST plug-in, but when I try to instantiate
it, I get "error - Peak cannot access this plug-in". Their website
says the requirements are PPC Mac running 10.4.x minimum, so it isn't
an Intel-only or Leopard only issue.

Coupling this with the unhappy experience of trying to download that
AudioMidi SSD drums "no-brainer" (without success), the reports of this
problem with SSD drums in Kontakt 4, and now this FGX fiasco, I'm
kind of done with this company.

[Dan Walsh]

and so far after 2 or 3 months, they still haven't released a fix for that bad Paiste 18 MIDI file that causes Kontakt to crash. I know the no brainer deal was cheap, but is this not an easy fix?

[David Polich]

and so far after 2 or 3 months, they still haven't released a fix for that bad Paiste 18 MIDI file that causes Kontakt to crash. I know the no brainer deal was cheap, but is this not an easy fix?

Yes, that would be an easy fix - fxPansion would be all over that if it
was a bad sound file for a BFD2 pack.

Just thinking again about the "thinner" sound of SSD kits in Kontakt 4 -
knowing what (little) I know of mapping samples to create waveforms,
"thinner" usually means that sample velocity layers are somehow overlapping
instead of switching, and the result is phase cancellation.

I have a lot of Kontakt libraries and so far, none of my older ones
(Symphobia, the SampleModeling instruments, Sonic Couture, Pettinhouse,
Vir2) sound any different in K4. Software developers with NI licenses always
receive updates from NI ahead of their commercial release, so I can only
conclude that if there was a change in the way Kontakt interprets velocity
switch points or mapping regions, SSD should have been able to address that.

Side note - it's been five days since I sent SSD an email explaining
that their FGX demo doesn't work on my system - no response.

[Dunc]

FG-X is intel only right now. Slate has said that they are working on a power PC version
but it won't be out for another week or so.

Dunc