Kontakt 7.5 update

[Guy Rowland]

Somehow I entirely missed this, out a few days ago (and now it's 7.5.1). A fairly significant update with new effects, improvements to zoom scaling BUT minimum MacOS now 11.0.

Some important browser updates too including filtering by brand and sub-bank. The latter is most important, many libraries are arranged in subfolders with identical patch names, which just become a guesswork mess when thrown altogether as a bald list. 7.5's implementation is not perfect, you have to mess with a menu hierarchy, but it's infinitely better than it was. For Brand it's nice and easy, a new tab with the developers, though the catch is it doesn't know the brand for non-Player libraries so it's only a half-useful list.

7.5.0 - 2023-07-10

Lua API, new effects, browser improvements, builder features, bug fixes.

• CHANGED Minimum supported macOS version is now 11.0



KONTAKT ENGINE IMPROVEMENTS

• ADDED Seven new effects: Bite, Dirt, Freak, Raum, Twin Delay, Vibrato/Chorus, Wow/Flutter

• IMPROVED Context menus now follow zoom scaling settings

• IMPROVED Rendering quality of raster images in Native UI based instruments

• IMPROVED MIDI files dragged out of Kontakt don’t have the copyright message anymore

• IMPROVED NKG files are now visible in Files browser and also loadable or importable via double-click or drag and drop

• IMPROVED Maximum number of host automation slots increased to 2048

• FIXED Legato button did not work in any Tone/Time Machine mode except TMPro

• FIXED Clicking on virtual keyboard when Kontakt was in Single view did not respect the MIDI channel setting of multiple loaded instruments



BROWSER IMPROVEMENTS

• ADDED A button for loading the first preset directly from the instrument tile

• ADDED Filtering by brand

• ADDED Filtering by sub-bank

• ADDED User-authored presets can now have sound and character type metadata edited in bulk via multi-selection

• ADDED Warning dialog with a list of files that failed to import

• FIXED Scroll position is set to zero when the result list is resized

• FIXED Resizing the window no longer resets the result list selection

• FIXED Folders beginning with “-” can now be imported

• FIXED Content type does not update with the focused module slot



INSTRUMENT BUILDING AND SCRIPTING IMPROVEMENTS

• ADDED Kontakt Lua API, enabled through the new Developer panel in Options dialog

• ADDED Various options for showing or hiding incoming, script generated and ignored events in Mapping Editor

• ADDED Source module’s playback mode can now be retrieved with $ENGINE_PAR_SOURCE_MODE getter

• ADDED Option to copy sample end setting to all selected zones in Wave Editor

• ADDED continue statement is now available in KSP

• ADDED Real arrays can now be stored to and loaded from NKA files

• ADDED Selection state of a zone can now be queried with $ZONE_PAR_SELECTED zone parameter, and a list of all currently selected zones can be retrieved with get_sel_zones_idx() command

• ADDED set_map_editor_event_color() KSP command, which allows changing color of script-generated events in Mapping Editor, individually per script slot

• IMPROVED Snap to value or zero crossing options in Wave Editor are now retained per instrument, rather than per zone

• IMPROVED Internal modulator and modulation target KSP information is now always shown if Developer Options checkbox is enabled

• IMPROVED TMPro polyphony can now be set to 0 via KSP, in order to match the range of the related parameters in Instrument Options->Voice Handling dialog

• IMPROVED Snapshot files (.NKSN) can now be loaded from the File->Load… dialog

• IMPROVED Reorganized Mapping and Group Editor context menus

• IMPROVED Reorganized effect selection context menu

• FIXED Boolean not operator would not correctly invert a boolean expression that consisted of only literals or constants

• FIXED Function call stack would collapse entirely if exit statement was used at the beginning of user defined functions, rather than only exiting the currently called function

[Guy Rowland]

PS - they've also introduced a batch tag editor. BUT it's not very useful yet, as a) you can only use it on User patches and b) you can only edit Character and Sound Type (not Brand for example).

[Geoff Grace]

Thanks for the info, Guy. Nice improvements!

As for the dropping of Catalina support, it's unfortunate; but Native Instruments isn't the first to do it.

I'm still going to wait to upgrade because it will either cost me the price of the Waves Update Plan, or I'll have to leave most of my Waves plugins behind. (Waves had a 25% off WUP sale recently that would have made the choice a little easier, but they ended it around the same time that Native Instruments dropped Catalina compatibility.)

Best,

Geoff

[Muziksculp]

Hi Guy,

Thanks for posting this topic about Kontakt 7.5

I have been holding back on upgrading to K7, still using K6. But seeing it is at Kontakt 7.5 now, I went ahead, and purchased the V6 to V7 Upgrade. Hopefully I will enjoy version 7 more than 6. I'm happy to see K7 is maturing nicely.

Cheers,
Muziksculp

[wst3]

I'm still going to wait to upgrade because it will either cost me the price of the Waves Update Plan, or I'll have to leave most of my Waves plugins behind.

Hi Geoff,

I went through that dilemma not too long ago, and I discovered Waves is pretty darned smart - in an evil sort of way. Or at least annoying.

I purchased my first two Waves bundles when they still came with those silly parallel port dongles (still have them around here somewhere!)

When they dropped support for the parallel port dongles they made me an offer I could not refuse, so I upgraded to their basic bundle.

Over the ensuing years I've updated during sales when it made sense - meaning it was cheaper than buying additional plugins a la carte.

That has stopped being the case, so now I purchase singles in addition to my Diamond bundle.

The thing is, several plugin developers have popped up since the mid 1990s, and I am able to replace the vast majority of Waves plugins.

Yet there remain a small handful (17 in Diamond plus a couple singles) such that it makes no sense to purchase 17 singles (even at $29 a pop), not to mention my price for WUP would not drop much.

So these days I update WUP only when I absolutely need to, which hasn't happened too often.

I still find 80 some plugins I don't use cluttering up my plugin list annoying, but it is easy enough to hide them. And the whole waves shell thing is equally annoying.

But for that handful of their plugins that I still use, even infrequently in some cases, there just don't seem to be any suitable replacements. I still look occasionally, but I've made peace with them<G>.

[Geoff Grace]

The thing is, several plugin developers have popped up since the mid 1990s, and I am able to replace the vast majority of Waves plugins.

Thanks for your thoughts, Bill. I'm also at the point at which most of my Waves plugins are redundant. It helps that we can choose à la carte which plugins and/or bundles we want when paying for the Waves Update Plan. I may just go with the unique ones that are important to me, like Clarity Vx, for now and leave the others behind, addressing backward compatibility later if necessary.

Best,

Geoff

[wst3]

I do need to think this through - there are about 17 plugins I still use, and it wouldn't be worth keeping WUP up to date for the bundle, except it would cost me more to replace the plugins (even at $29 a piece) and WUP would still be nusance.

Then again, I really don't feel like going on yet another hunt... and of course paying twice for things is bothersome.

[Guy Rowland]

Since we're on a Waves tangent - Bill, check out upgrading the whole bundle. For me to go from Platinum to Diamond is currently $85. Doing it this way you get a year's WUP thrown in, along with more plugins you won't use.... but I have found some surprising gems in there. Soundshifter for example is old, boring, undiscussed and quite brilliant.

Historically, it's always been significantly cheaper for me than WUPping when I need to.