Komplete 13 for £260?

goldtop

I tried an NI product some time ago, and uninstalled it. Think it was Kontakt Player to try some free orchestral library out.

NI has now sent an email with limited-time 50% discount on Kontact 13. Not quite sure which version - Standard, I think - but it's 290GB and includes Guitar Rig 6, and has plenty of stuff that I'd be using with Reaper. Given that I'm switching away from Logic Pro, with all of its included plug-ins, it seems a decent bargain.

I'm guessing that NI is offering the discount on v13, hoping that I will upgrade to v14.

Any thoughts on whether it's worth it? 

(I'd be running it from an external SSD on an M1 Macbook Air, if that makes a difference.)

Sporky

That seems a good deal if you'll make use of enough of it. Kontakt is very handy on its own. 

brucegill

Is it all M1 compatible now? Last time I looked, it wasn’t. Then it became a real cpu hog

goldtop

brucegill said:

Is it all M1 compatible now? Last time I looked, it wasn’t. Then it became a real cpu hog

Good point. Seems that the biggest problems would be synths: Absynth and FM8

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360014683497-Apple-Silicon-M1-M2-Compatibility-News

And the update for full Apple silicon compatibility is only mentioned for Komplete 14. 

stratman3142

goldtop said:

...

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360014683497-Apple-Silicon-M1-M2-Compatibility-News

And the update for full Apple silicon compatibility is only mentioned for Komplete 14. 

As far as I'm aware, I still get the latest updates for my individual Komplete 13 products, even though Komplete 14 is out. I just miss out on the new products that were added for Komplete 14. I'm on PC but I would expect it would be the same for a Mac.

 I might be wrong, but I would expect individual products that existed in K13 would be updated to be in-line with the K14 compatibility.

stratman3142

btw. IIRC Native Instruments usually do 50% off offers around June/July time

goldtop

Ummed, arred ... and bought. It's a shortcut to getting a bit of everything, with Reaper being relatively minimal. With Arturia Analog Lab and Halion SE also available, I ought to be set for a while.

But it's the version whereby they send out a physical USB drive to reduce the need to download 200+GB of samples/etc. So I won't get to play until the New Year.

Snap

You'll like it. Full of just about everything you could want. I buy the upgrades every other release - last one I got was Komplete 13 Ultimate. I won't bother with 14, but I wil probably upgrade to 15 when it arrives, in a sale. 

Best bit of kit I've bought tbh, and you will do well to get familiar with everything that is in there. I'm still discovering stuff. 

PolarityMan

The  only bit i really want from my version of komp[lete which I think is 11 is massive X but not sure i can be arsed paying £250 for it 

PolarityMan

oh and theyve killed absynth too! thats one of my favourite bits

octatonic

PolarityMan said:

oh and theyve killed absynth too! thats one of my favourite bits

Me too, I've done complete tracks with Absynth, it is one of the few soft synths I use all the time.
(Serum is another one).

Check out Plasmonic by Rhizomatic.
https://rhizomatic.fr/

Brian Clevinger (the creator of Absynth) is developing instruments under that name.
It isn't quite the same but it is very, very impressive.
Clevinger has said he is going to develop some products that cover the ground vacated by Absynth. 

goldtop

I'm about 15 hours into what looks like being a 36 hour installation process.  

Get the HDD, I thought. That way there's less to download, I thought. How wrong I was. And even though it's v13, and I'm buying it well after v14 was launched, the software on the HDD is NOT the last v13 software. Despite buying direct from NI. And the f*ck*rs have put the flakiest USB-A to USB-C adaptor they could find from Ali Express in the box - slightest movement of the cable and the drive dismounts.

So install ... works, OK although slow HDD and then lots of "Installation failed" results. At some point, it forgot the install folder - that cause is not mentioned anywhere on NI's website, discovered it by accident. Then - after copying it across, it seems - the installer then decides that everything needs an update. Not a patch, but a whole new multi-GB download.

And this morning I saw dozens of programs with 'Repair' next to their name. (sigh) Not had a chance to try to fix those before coming to work. Left it chugging away at home.

There's a 50:50 chance it's going back for a refund. 

monquixote

goldtop said:

I'm about 15 hours into what looks like being a 36 hour installation process.  

Get the HDD, I thought. That way there's less to download, I thought. How wrong I was. And even though it's v13, and I'm buying it well after v14 was launched, the software on the HDD is NOT the last v13 software. Despite buying direct from NI. And the f*ck*rs have put the flakiest USB-A to USB-C adaptor they could find from Ali Express in the box - slightest movement of the cable and the drive dismounts.

So install ... works, OK although slow HDD and then lots of "Installation failed" results. At some point, it forgot the install folder - that cause is not mentioned anywhere on NI's website, discovered it by accident. Then - after copying it across, it seems - the installer then decides that everything needs an update. Not a patch, but a whole new multi-GB download.

And this morning I saw dozens of programs with 'Repair' next to their name. (sigh) Not had a chance to try to fix those before coming to work. Left it chugging away at home.

There's a 50:50 chance it's going back for a refund. 

This is why regardless of what offer they have I avoid NI stuff. 

It seems like their software is very crufty and outdated and I worry about it's support going forward.

stratman3142

@goldtop when you say 'forgot the install folder' and 'copying across', did the new location match the original location? The paths can be set in Native Access preferences, which you've probably worked out by now.

I keep my NI stuff on an external hard drive with my other music libraries. Over the years I've outgrown my music library drive a couple of times. When that happened I've copied my libraries onto a new bigger hard drive, and then renamed the new drive with the same letter as the previous drive. It worked OK without needing to update everything, as I'd kept the drive letter and the path to the libraries the same.

Copying the files to a new drive did take a very long time though.

stratman3142

Also, when you say the v13 software isn't the latest version do you mean the individual products? I'm using Komplete 13 Collector's Edition and continue to get updates for the individual products to the latest versions, which I see as a good thing.

goldtop

stratman3142 said:

@goldtop when you say 'forgot the install folder' and 'copying across', did the new location match the original location? The paths can be set in Native Access preferences, which you've probably worked out by now.

I keep my NI stuff on an external hard drive with my other music libraries. Over the years I've outgrown my music library drive a couple of times. When that happened I've copied my libraries onto a new bigger hard drive, and then renamed the new drive with the same letter as the previous drive. It worked OK without needing to update everything, as I'd kept the drive letter and the path to the libraries the same.

Copying the files to a new drive did take a very long time though.

Yes, I selected the new location folder (it's on an ext SSD) at the beginning of the process, and the first few programs copied over as expected. Midway through the process it failed, I eventually checked the Preferences and saw that the Native Access app had forgotten this location, so I selected it again.

A quick browse of NI's support section shows how to address the Repair issue - reinstall (!) or relocate. Fingers crossed.

(Good tip about changing to a bigger external drive - I presume the same would apply on MacOS, albeit without drive letter.)

goldtop

stratman3142 said:

Also, when you say the v13 software isn't the latest version do you mean the individual products? I'm using Komplete 13 Collector's Edition and continue to get updates for the individual products to the latest versions, which I see as a good thing.

It probably is, although I assumed (always dangerous) that the v13 software components were older and therefore all done/dusted. The HDD was packed with the last v13 versions = no need to download anything other than bugfix patches and minor functionality improvements.

I now see that Native Access is downloading hundreds of GB of the exact same sample data that I already have.

Will see how things look when I get home tonight.

stratman3142

If the paths set in Native Access match the path locations on the hard drive, I wouldn't expect that to happen. I would expect it to only update the stuff that's already there, and not completely redownload it.

octatonic

goldtop said:

stratman3142 said:

Also, when you say the v13 software isn't the latest version do you mean the individual products? I'm using Komplete 13 Collector's Edition and continue to get updates for the individual products to the latest versions, which I see as a good thing.

It probably is, although I assumed (always dangerous) that the v13 software components were older and therefore all done/dusted. The HDD was packed with the last v13 versions = no need to download anything other than bugfix patches and minor functionality improvements.

I now see that Native Access is downloading hundreds of GB of the exact same sample data that I already have.

Will see how things look when I get home tonight.

I routinely have to repath an old installation to a new data drive- you can do it but it is fiddly and NI don't document it well.

You do it here in preferences- you have to change 'Content location'.

IIRC you have to path it *somewhere else*, close the app and then put it back to the original path but I am working from memory here, I'm not at the studio, this is my laptop, not my desktop which has the full install on the RAID array.

Do it BEFORE you run the update otherwise it downloads everything twice.

joeW

Sorry it’s being a pain for you.  I found 13 installed pretty smoothly and it all works well on my silicon (studio). 

Hopefully resolved as it’s a lot of good kit 

stratman3142

Thanks for chipping in @octatonic .

I hadn't realise that things were quite so different between a Mac and Windows, so I apologise if I've confused you @goldtop

It's quite easy in Windows because the drive letter is part of the path. My current Native Access preference settings are as below in Windows

I also avoid the temporary download location for music libraries being on my system drive (which hasn't got a huge amount of free space) because the files can be very big.  So I've set the temporary download location to the external drive as well.

https://i.imgur.com/1ItpCY8.png