Hey -- CPO of NI here. Thanks for doing such an in-depth review. You're right, theres (at least!) two audiences for Kontakt -- it's one of our most-used products and used by people scoring movie soundtracks right down to people using it for one sound on their tracks. In K8, we've added things for all our key audiences. Conflux is a serious sound design instrument but is really a demonstrator of the new synth engine inside Kontakt. And Tools and Leap are, yeah, to spark creativity, overcome writer's block, and help more people get started with music-making. If you're a long-time Kontakt user, you don't need to use any of these tools if you don't want to, and the classic view is there behind a setting in the menu. We're really pleased with the feedback so far, and looking forward to seeing what our builder community does with Tools, Leap, and the new synth engine inside K8.
Jeff a wonderful and informative demo into Kontakt 8. As a retired teacher I recognize gifted teachers and you’ve got that special sauce. Keep up the tutorials as I appreciate how well you cut through the material and important highlights. Thanks!
You're the first I've seen who showed how to drag the chords into the piano roll. I personally haven't found it very intuitive but still only learning, thanks so much for this helpful video.
Nicely explained. Thanks. I've been on board since Kontakt 1, and this new iteration was sorely needed. Now NI has a solid platform from which to offer additional tools. Clearly they were planning to offer scalable architecture that would be serviceable for years. They've ventured down many blind alleys through the years, but they are onto something this time. I don't know that I'll use the "one finger" capabilities since I have a degree in music . . . but who knows, it might be a creative tool that comes in handy.
CPO of NI here -- Thanks for this feedback. Yeah, we focussed on adding some features for new users, but also improving the performance and stability of the core product, and adding features to the platform that create new possibilities for instrument builders for many years to come.
@@simon-cross hi Simon - I read your blog! I’m a limited Native Instruments partner - just some NFR licenses. Can you put in a good word for me with your sales/partnership/affiliate team? I’d love to do more TH-cam reviews and give NI broader coverage on software and hardware and the integration between the two.
It's good to see Native instruments make some long overdue upgrades. Just wish the gui was aimed at musicians instead of non musicians. Your presentation of the update is informative and easy to follow. I notice something I haven't heard in the various reviews - that these circles in the new tools refer to the pitches and durations of the notes - like a piano roll bent into a circle instead of being shown linear. Much harder to understand, just for the innovation of displaying musical information in a non musical way. Reminds me of sonokinetic.
@@tonyr.4778 all techniques to broaden their customer base. In an article in Music Radar, there are 78.5M music creators, forecasts to hit 128M by 2030. Many of these folks are “casual creators” with a home or bedroom studio. Native, Arturia, UAD and others are very focused on how to sell stuff to this expanding group including non-musicians or musicians with no music theory knowledge.
Great thorough overview! I am liking the upgrade... only thing is the new interface doesn't seem to have Quickload option for 3rd party non NKS libraries. Pain to have to switch to classic view for that option.
Good point! I have a lot of 3rd party Kontakt libraries that don’t comply with the NI fees to load by serial number. They work with ‘File Load’ but I didn’t try quick load, and of course they are not persistent - you have to load them each time you use them. I’ll do some testing to see if they persist in a ‘Combined’ saved preset.
Thanks a lot for your demo. If you can have more content on Kontakt and Logic Pro. I have a few question I hope you can help with. I did not get how you use content from leap and move the sample into Logic. Another question, is related to multiple tracks of kontakt instruments. Before you applied a bus or channel to each kontakt instrument and that way you could apply them to individual rows on logic. It seems like you now open a new instance of kontakt for each row in logic? All the best, and keep up your great work 😃💪
To save cpu we used to open multiple instruments on 1 kontakt track. Presumably, only 1 instance of the Kontakt engine would be running. Since the M1 Pro and newer, there seems to be no interest in conserving cpu.
Thanks for the review, consequently I updated from 7 to 8. And after a few days I concluded that "new instruments for you" is really irritating condescending bullshit.
Nothing very compelling. NI seems to be consolidating it’s software into Kontakt, which is pretty lane imo. We used to get new Reaktor content and new products but everything is stagnant and outdated now. Thank you for mentioning there is no midi input into phrases, which is pretty unbelievable considering this is probably the only valid use case unless you want to use someone else’s music. Also, I can create custom arp patterns with several other tools and could use “Blanks” in Kontakt to do similar things as the phrases tool does with my own sounds.
Nice pace to presentation. I have looked at several Kontakt 8 reviews and this is the easiest to follow. Thanks.
Wow, thanks!
Hey -- CPO of NI here. Thanks for doing such an in-depth review. You're right, theres (at least!) two audiences for Kontakt -- it's one of our most-used products and used by people scoring movie soundtracks right down to people using it for one sound on their tracks. In K8, we've added things for all our key audiences. Conflux is a serious sound design instrument but is really a demonstrator of the new synth engine inside Kontakt. And Tools and Leap are, yeah, to spark creativity, overcome writer's block, and help more people get started with music-making.
If you're a long-time Kontakt user, you don't need to use any of these tools if you don't want to, and the classic view is there behind a setting in the menu.
We're really pleased with the feedback so far, and looking forward to seeing what our builder community does with Tools, Leap, and the new synth engine inside K8.
Great overview of the functions
Jeff a wonderful and informative demo into Kontakt 8. As a retired teacher I recognize gifted teachers and you’ve got that special sauce. Keep up the tutorials as I appreciate how well you cut through the material and important highlights. Thanks!
Thanks! I’m trying to make these videos as useful as possible.
Wonderful presentation thank you
Thanks! I'm trying to improve.
You're the first I've seen who showed how to drag the chords into the piano roll. I personally haven't found it very intuitive but still only learning, thanks so much for this helpful video.
Glad it was helpful!
If I'm not mistaken, the chords you dragged into the DAW at 5:40 are the first three chords to the Spinal Tap classic, Lick My Move Pump.
@@superdeluxified exactly
Perfect speed on the presentation, I followed seamlessly Thanks Boss
Thank you for an easy to understand presentation. This will be my go to when learning Kontakt 8! I look forward to more of your videos.
Awesome, thank you!
Nicely explained. Thanks. I've been on board since Kontakt 1, and this new iteration was sorely needed. Now NI has a solid platform from which to offer additional tools. Clearly they were planning to offer scalable architecture that would be serviceable for years. They've ventured down many blind alleys through the years, but they are onto something this time. I don't know that I'll use the "one finger" capabilities since I have a degree in music . . . but who knows, it might be a creative tool that comes in handy.
Agreed!
CPO of NI here -- Thanks for this feedback. Yeah, we focussed on adding some features for new users, but also improving the performance and stability of the core product, and adding features to the platform that create new possibilities for instrument builders for many years to come.
@@simon-cross hi Simon - I read your blog! I’m a limited Native Instruments partner - just some NFR licenses. Can you put in a good word for me with your sales/partnership/affiliate team? I’d love to do more TH-cam reviews and give NI broader coverage on software and hardware and the integration between the two.
Good overview. I like the new filtering option.
Thanks! 👍
It's good to see Native instruments make some long overdue upgrades. Just wish the gui was aimed at musicians instead of non musicians. Your presentation of the update is informative and easy to follow. I notice something I haven't heard in the various reviews - that these circles in the new tools refer to the pitches and durations of the notes - like a piano roll bent into a circle instead of being shown linear. Much harder to understand, just for the innovation of displaying musical information in a non musical way. Reminds me of sonokinetic.
@@tonyr.4778 all techniques to broaden their customer base. In an article in Music Radar, there are 78.5M music creators, forecasts to hit 128M by 2030. Many of these folks are “casual creators” with a home or bedroom studio. Native, Arturia, UAD and others are very focused on how to sell stuff to this expanding group including non-musicians or musicians with no music theory knowledge.
Great thorough overview! I am liking the upgrade... only thing is the new interface doesn't seem to have Quickload option for 3rd party non NKS libraries. Pain to have to switch to classic view for that option.
Good point! I have a lot of 3rd party Kontakt libraries that don’t comply with the NI fees to load by serial number. They work with ‘File Load’ but I didn’t try quick load, and of course they are not persistent - you have to load them each time you use them. I’ll do some testing to see if they persist in a ‘Combined’ saved preset.
Thanks a lot for your demo. If you can have more content on Kontakt and Logic Pro. I have a few question I hope you can help with. I did not get how you use content from leap and move the sample into Logic.
Another question, is related to multiple tracks of kontakt instruments. Before you applied a bus or channel to each kontakt instrument and that way you could apply them to individual rows on logic. It seems like you now open a new instance of kontakt for each row in logic? All the best, and keep up your great work 😃💪
To save cpu we used to open multiple instruments on 1 kontakt track. Presumably, only 1 instance of the Kontakt engine would be running. Since the M1 Pro and newer, there seems to be no interest in conserving cpu.
Heck! I'm going to have to upgrade now, aren't I 😱
Wait for a sale?
@@JeffyG I have thought long and hard about it and I am not going to upgrade at this time for a few reasons (possible video coming soon) 😊
Thanks for the review, consequently I updated from 7 to 8.
And after a few days I concluded that "new instruments for you" is really irritating condescending bullshit.
I’m on the fence about upgrading.
NI's main target audience is actually the index finger, play by numbers crowd nowadays it seems.
"New instruments for you" can be switched off in Options/Interface.
They should focus on instruments and not tools my daw can do. I can play progressions. They should of gave us more sounds.
Nothing very compelling. NI seems to be consolidating it’s software into Kontakt, which is pretty lane imo. We used to get new Reaktor content and new products but everything is stagnant and outdated now. Thank you for mentioning there is no midi input into phrases, which is pretty unbelievable considering this is probably the only valid use case unless you want to use someone else’s music. Also, I can create custom arp patterns with several other tools and could use “Blanks” in Kontakt to do similar things as the phrases tool does with my own sounds.
Terrible software, overly complicated and too radically different from each version.
I think the software itself is not bad at all but UI sucks Kompletely