Hi ,
a thread to talk about NI Kontakt V-Instrument
and the no way to convert in other format the sound banks,

What could be done with all sound banks used on "ocean" of projects
f one day it appeared. the tragic word:
Discontinued

Reply from ED coming in any second..

One could utilize the Kontakt Lua API to transfer the mapping of instruments to another format (say sfz or something XMLish like S1 Presence XT or Bitwig .multisample format).

Of course, you won't be able to do anything with instruments that are locked for editing or which have samples packed into NKX monoliths. Or any intricate scripting would not really transfer to other samplers easily or at all.

But considering Kontakt is the biggest revenue earner for NI, you have nothing to fear, really.

....never say never ?

from Akai the options are many
also few are from Roland and EMU

but from Kontakt ?

I didn't say never. But for the conceivable time y'all should be just fine.

You can extract samples from nkx monoliths just fine. NI surely doesn't appreciate that but it's easily done, and has been doable for several years.
However you'd have to re-program the entire library from scratch if you wanted to convert it to another VI format. So I would argue that in the vast majority of cases, even if NI was okay with it, this wouldn't be worth the effort. I convert mine to load in my Prophet X, so it's worth it for me so I can play the sounds live without a laptop.

You can do that for older libraries, but not newer ones which have encrypted NKX.

if Kontakt were to be discontinued, there would be chaos. Too many 3rd party devs have made their expensive libraries specifically for Kontakt - which I hate BTW. There'd have to be a lengthily "end of sale" then "end of life" to give all those 3rd parties time to partner with and port their libraries, or build new libraries.

I'd be mad as I have a decade's worth of custom libraries of my own that I have created.

How new? I've bought libraries released in the past year and extracted them no problem.

More and more toward the abyss ?
( )

Do you really think that it could happen
only in case of the end of the universe ?

It is understandable that completely converting sound banks
of Kontakt for other V-Inst wich are not provided
of a same or more enhanced "engine" / full features
(at least until "someone" decides to get their hands on it....)
would be an exaggeration....,

but a conversion with at least
the samples assignement layout on the keys,
velocity settings of multy layers banks,
and ADSR settings,

without claiming
modulation matrix assignement,
Filter and Lfo settings,
and obviously the fxs section (reverb,dekay,& co. ...)

really would be an "indecent" request ?

That really would only cover the basics. Many of the fancier Kontakt libraries feature heavy scripting, and without them, your fancy instruments would sound just like any old soundfont. Like, some of the instruments imitating acoustic instruments, the heavy lifting their scripts do to shuffle the samples around under your keys, its not for the faint of heart

Which libraries would those exactly be? Don't confuse NCW, which is just Kontakt's lossless audio format, for which conversion to WAV exists directly in Kontakt, with NKX, which had several file format iterations, latest of which encrypts the contents so you cannot really extract them without knowing the library ID and the hash used for salting the encryption (this was possible for st least 7 years, if not more)...

Other 2 steps toward the "abyss" ?

No, not really. You should stop crying wolf.

You're comparing 30 year old samplers that existed in a completely different type of marketplace than Kontakt lives in today.

Should've bought Halion, it converts all sorts of things including my old EMU and Akai cds heh.

Yes, these are libraries which include Kontakt Player and .nkx files. The library keys you mention are inside the .nicnt files, so this app simply reads the contents of those and then uses it to open and extract the archives...then I convert the .ncw to wav after.
I've actually had some developers (including one you've done scripting for) just send me the raw wav samples so I didn't have to worry about doing this, and most companies are cool once they understand what I'm doing and for what purpose. I'd argue the samples are more secure inside my synth than they are on a computer in most cases.

I don't get the OP.. What are you proposing, we all go back to ASR-10's and EMU rack samplers..?

The stuff you can do with Kontakt, you can't do with many of the competing samplers, thats the long and the short of it. If you don't want to use it, you dont have to.

Difficult to stay in "panties" with those old tank samplers
and various options still available to have ready to use
all the old banks,

as already wrote above
it would seem that "someone" is delaying to put their hands on the thing...
at least for
the samples assignement layout on the keys,
velocity settings of multy layers banks,
and ADSR settings,

And as mentioned, you wouldn't really get a lot of use out of that because a lot of modern Kontakt libraries are much more elaborate than anything that ever existed before. Mapping is literal step zero, but so much of the behavior of the libraries is in the scripting. That's the watershed.

I still don't understand the obsessions with all the old 'classic' sample libraries. Sure there's some neat sounds here and there but sample libs have come thousands of miles since then. Like everybody seems to think 'Oh hey X-Static Goldmine's never been used before'.

Folks that never used samplers before don't realize even those 'import' jobs weren't perfect either and you had to spend a lot of time redoing panning, envelopes, filters, etc that didnt translate from one machine to the next.

It's not much about the use of those standard sound libraries,

but that there are thousands & thousands of songs
produced in the 80s , 90s , and early 2ks,
with those old tank samplers
wich include sound samples, multi sample, layers, combi layers, etc..,
created from scratch
(drum sounds and loops, fxs, vocals, gtrs, etc...)
before the appearance of early V-Inst samplers
Exs, Halion, Sample Cell, ,.....

the difference is in the fact that from those old tank samplers,
and various V-inst samplers,
the conversion is still possible in various formats,
then the songs produced with them
can be retrieved with more or less recent DAWs,

from Kontakt and songs projects made with it
where can you go ?
Only in the "abyss" ?
(...for now..)

You can also air-gap the machine (or have several such machines, for redundancy) and keep it running for as long as possible, if you need to be able to open old projects. This is a pretty standard practice.

It is really a non-issue cry wolf scenario. Kontakt is not going anywhere any time soon.

Also, smart people render stems out and freeze the tracks. So even if Kontakt is not installed or available, the projects will still be fully functional. Maybe start doing that.

Kontakt sound source and the onboard processing options apart
that all in all as concept would also be interesting
and convenient especially for live sessions,

the thing that could make to think about something ridiculous
is the patches-banks list view on the left side

that to be able to read it in a 15" laptop screen
(..but also in some more large screen..)
require something like a telescope,
(..things to compensate for eye damage from stress)

but it really wouldn’t be possible to add some infamous code line
to add to the preferences an option like:
"sounds list zoom view on-off©" ,
so that when you move over it with the mouse it zooms in ?

About the sound banks conversion to other formats
to be able to use them with others soft or hard samplers
it would not be enough to exclude in the format conversion process
the fxs routings,
and the other Kontakt exclusive play sound processing options?

Halion can convert the old Kontakt files and likewise according to the Kontakt 3 manual I just pulled of my bookcase Kontakt could convert Halion files as well. So basically, the software had the same kind of cross platform conversion coolness as the old hardware samplers until they decided to change all that.

If we are going to be concerned about any of this, it should be all the proprietary players developed by individual companies, which are only used by said companies (Spitfire, Orchestral Tools, VSL, etc.) Kontakt is used by literally hundreds of developers. These other ones are used by one each.

That is indeed a very good point

The sound libraries producers have no problems
as already they have their hands
on the various formats from years,

who would have something very unpleasant in the back
is the user that use/used Kontakt for his projects ?

Again, no practical issues at all as long as you keep rendering tracks to audio.