Subject:Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Posted by: Zacchino

Date:12/25/2007 7:38:10 PM

Oh My Godness...

It's the 2nd time or maybe 3rd time this has happened to me and I bet it's Acid's fault as it never happened with Cuborg SX 3.0

One of my song had a Kontakt 2.0 loaded with 4 or 6 stacks (nki instruments) of horns library, and AGAIN Acid forgot it all, now it only loads gently the Kontakt with nothing loaded in it, and the midi tracks that were assigned to each channels are now pointing to nothing - output off.

I had this issue earlier and I thought it was because I didn't have enough RAM Memory, and that it was the only reason for this to happen (as along with this Kontakt instrument, I load 2 or 3 others Kompakt instruments such as EWQL libraries and other NI Syntths).

Now what ? Acid used to save all my "multi" stacks of Kontakt in the .acd file, and it disappeared like that for NO reasons ???

I mean seriously, now it's getting on my nerve, I spent hours looking for the right NKI instrument to load in my Kontakt sample, and it's all gone so I have to spend an hour to look for it again ?

From now on, along with saving my .acd, I'll save the .nkm that goes with my Kontakt sampler, but how come Acid is so unreliable with a professional and acclaimed sampler such as Kontakt ?

I don't blame anybody, I'm just upset to loose all my work for some kind of bug that should've been rid of anytime from now.

Edit to Sony Devs : contact me via mail - zacchino@gmail.com if you have any idea how to help me out to recover my loss, I can send you the .acd that I didn't touch since then, so you might look into it to fix this problem.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Zacchino

Date:12/26/2007 5:11:19 PM

Alright here's some people in the same boat as I, for those who unfortunately don't take this issue seriously :

[url]http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59228

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Klirrfaktor

Date:12/27/2007 3:55:32 AM

same happens here from time to time... :-/

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Zacchino

Date:12/27/2007 6:12:08 AM

How come we're the only one coming up with this enormous issue ? Especially knowing that Acid is shipped with Kompakt (ouch !).

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Patrick@Denman

Date:12/28/2007 3:25:19 PM

Hey, Zacchino, as I indicated over on the NI forum, I too am experiencing the same problem from time to time. The only thing I've been able to do to avoid it is to save my K2 rack as a preset once I've got the arrangement set. Then, in the event that ACID doesn't load the rack, I can manually reload it. Pain in the neck.

So, let the finger-pointing begin. I too doubt that it's NI's problem - this would be happening with other DAW software as well. Seems to me like a problem with the way that ACID loads (or rather doesn't load) the VSTi. So, Sony Creative, what do you say?

Specifically: ACID Pro 6.0d + Native Instruments KONTAKT 2.2.3.003. Complex arrangements with 6 or more instruments in the KONTAKT rack. KONTAKT VSTi is loaded, but without any of the instruments added to the rack.

One final note: speaking for myself, this is a make-or-break issue. With 7.0 just around the corner, this will have to be fixed if I'm going to continue with ACID. KONTAKT is my main VSTi these days, and if ACID continues to stumble with KONTAKT multis I'll be looking for a completely new DAW package. If I were Sony Creative, I'd take note that there are a lot of us KONTAKT users out here. ;)

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Douglas Clark

Date:12/28/2007 4:17:48 PM

I also experienced Kontakt3 opening "empty" in an existing Acid6d project soon after I bought K3, although I attributed it to my inexperience at the time. I did finish a big project recently using K3, so it didn't continue to occur. Perhaps the Kompakt 3.0.1 update relieved the problem, now that I think of it. That update made K3 much more stable than the initial release. I had alot of problems with K3 together with Atmosphere and/or Hypersonic, before the 3.0.1 update.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: SHTUNOT

Date:12/28/2007 4:47:43 PM

My .02cents...

First off when did it ever work "right" for any of you? IOW:which version # of each...ie:acid 6.0 XXX using kontact 2.0 xxx= works right...then when THIS app [acid OR/and kontact] had a update then it's all F'@cked up.

Really this late in the game with ALL the patches given to both programs unless you marked it off immediately...sorry.

I use Guitar rig...Version 2 worked well with acid. Now version 3 has a gui freeze problem...Acid is exactly the same but GR is updated...Blame sony creative when obviously NI doesn't test against it??? Come on.

I didn't upgrade to GR 3 untill it was patched a bit...my mistake really. I beta test enough as is. I really just didn't want to at the time. Anyway...

At this point it's a NI problem IMHO due to acid not being patched anymore. I wouldn't worry about version 7 though. I'm sure there will be a beta tester on top of this particular problem.

Ed.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Patrick@Denman

Date:12/28/2007 10:04:52 PM

Hey man, don't shoot the messenger. ;-)

We're just pointing out the existence of a problem, hoping Sony will take note. For me, I only noticed this problem within the last month - quite a while after I installed any updates - and it only happens with some projects, which makes it really frustrating. The bottom line here is that there is a problem.

I do take your point about GR 3 vs. GR 2. It could in fact be an issue with NI, but it's curious that this problem doesn't seem to appear in the KONTAKT forum for the other DAW hosts...there may be something about ACID that doesn't get passed to the plugin properly.

I'm afraid I don't share your optimism about a beta tester being on top of this. I'd rather know that Sony is aware of the problem NOW.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: SHTUNOT

Date:12/28/2007 11:13:55 PM

I'm afraid I don't share your optimism about a beta tester being on top of this. I'd rather know that Sony is aware of the problem NOW... ;) sorry inside joke dude. Trust me they are aware of this thread. Sorry I can't say more due to NDA and stuff.

Again like I said it seems that other hosts get alot of attention instead of acid. Since acid doesn't use[ie:steal] other peoples code then it's safe to say that they could be doing some things a bit different.

Any other vst instruments having this multi out disappearing act should be hunted for first imho. That way if acid is screwing the multi outs for everyone then it's a few steps toward acid we take in the blame game.

Again I'm not saying acid is perfect...but if you go reading about the NI forums for even a minute you will find some pretty sick stuff people say about their support for NI plugins.

Ed.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Zacchino

Date:12/29/2007 10:07:27 AM

Indeed Ed I was a little angry and I shouldn't have thrown the stone toward anyone but It's just that I'm in the middle of big projects and it was really not the time for me to spend hours trying to repro correctly this one. I know I'm being a lame BetaTester right now but I'm a music composer first and that's what I do.

So I just looked for people having the same issue to get more attention from Acid Devs, as I know they're probably focused on something else (hopefully).

I didn't know -they- were aware of this issue, and how could I know ? We have no news from our saviours since the middle of 2007 so I thought I had to yell it louder to get some attention.

And Ed, you know me, I'm not the kind of guy jumping on every updates of VSTfx / VSTi that is out. I follow the "when it's not broken don't fix it" rule. But Kontakt 2.0 was a MAJOR update I couldn't avoid, And it's been out for an year or so now (or a little less I don't quite remember). And since then, there's been no support from both sides (NI / Sony). Hence the post on NI's forum.

And I'm totally aware that Acid seems to be the n°1 application that is not taken into account for deep and serious tests, even for company as brilliant as NI.

Now my only hope is, not a bugfix, as I don't have the time to wait for AP7, but at least a .acd project fix by the team. This is what I would call decent support. I've not been always kind toward my preferate sequencer, but I've always supported it.



Edit for Ed : It's not an output issue, it's the whole Kontakt that loses its stacks of instruments, and when there's no more stack, there's no more input.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: SHTUNOT

Date:12/29/2007 2:16:16 PM

I follow the "when it's not broken don't fix it" rule. But Kontakt 2.0 was a MAJOR update I couldn't avoid....Again so what version always worked?

So what version of kontact are you using right now?
Does kontact 1 have the same problems???[or even the same features?]

Can you try to get a earlier version of kontact installed to see if that still has the problem...ie:the one that was shipped with it?

It sucks catching a bug when you least expect it AND need to get work done in the worst way. Hell it's the holidays too so any help from anyone is moot. Sorry bro.

Ed.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Patrick@Denman

Date:12/29/2007 3:24:27 PM

...what version always worked? I can't tell you, since this problem is intermittent; maybe I was always lucky before it did finally happen. K2 is the first version of KONTAKT that I've ever used.

So what version of kontact are you using right now? As I said above:

Specifically: ACID Pro 6.0d + Native Instruments KONTAKT 2.2.3.003. Complex arrangements with 6 or more instruments in the KONTAKT rack.

As for getting a copy of K1, not gonna happen at this end. If NI or Sony wants to do that, more power to 'em.

Again, the workaround is to save all K2 instrument racks as custom multis after each change so that when/if it happens that the K2 instance(s) are empty after the ACID project loads, then at least I can manually reload. And this is part of the frustration - sometimes the project loads fine and sometimes it doesn't, and there is no error message generated. And there MUST be an error somewhere - it may be that the code that instantiates the plugin just catches the error but suppresses an exception or user message.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: pwppch

Date:12/31/2007 10:36:08 PM

Patrick,

Are you runing ACID on Vista when these problems with NI Kontakt occur?

Peter

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Patrick@Denman

Date:1/1/2008 5:07:12 PM

Hi Peter. Thanks for responding.

Yes, indeed...I am running ACID Pro 6.0d on Vista Ultimate. I know that this is not a supported platform, so I may be SOL. I only responded to Zacchino's post to confirm that I have experienced this. I don't know what platform he's running on.

Also, I can attest to some problems with KONTAKT 2 under ACID on Windows XP, which I was running up until April '07. I often noticed that when I would change a KONTAKT parameter (such as volume) in a plugin instance inside ACID, sometimes these changes were not saved with the ACID project. I mention this because it seems related to how ACID handles KONTAKT parameters (as a VSTi plugin), which could be related to this issue. (FYI, I never did report this problem to Sony when I was having it.) I do have a relatively large ACID/KONTAKT project that I worked on for a month that had this problem, and I had to work around it constantly.

I'm curious if you're thinking that the problem may be related to the fact that I'm running ACID Pro 6.0d under Vista - or perhaps you're just trying to find out if I was on a supported platform?

I'm resigned to the fact that Vista support will not come until ACID Pro 7.0 is released. But if you have any other light to shed on this issue I'd be very interested!

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Zacchino

Date:1/1/2008 7:50:19 PM

I had this bug also (Acid not detecting changes of volumes / pans and other stuff within Kontakt). BTW I'm using XP SP2.

I also had another bug that's really irritating :

When I add more Outputs to Konakt, well, it just doesn't work with Acid. Acid displays the output correctly in its Mixer window (Output 3/4, Output 5/6 etc.) but whenI route an instrument (stack) to more than 2 different output, it just doesn't work (e.g. routing Instrument 1 to Output 1/2 is Okay, routing Instrument 2 to Output 3/4 works times to times, but routing instrument 3 to Output 5/6 just won't work).

I didn't have the time to report this one, which is really an very important one, but better late than never...

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Tim Tyler

Date:2/5/2008 2:19:26 PM

Hi Patrick and Peter and Zacchino.

My problem is not with Kontakt. I finally got a registration issue resolved with the Kontakt player provided with Acid Pro 6.0. I couldn't register it with Vista as the operating system. The answer for registration issues is to start Vista in Safe Mode, register the plugin, then reboot. After that, it worked fine.

My problem is with Groove Agent. I purchased Groove Agent III (latest version) and it won't sync with Acid. I went back to Groove Agent II. At least Groove Agent II plays, but it doesn't respond to time signature changes. It used to respond. I chalked it up to a Groove Agent problem, but not anymore. Something happened to Acid and I don't like it.

Patrick, I finally saw your kind post to me in the thread about Groove Agent III. You're quite a gentleman and I appreciate the assistance.

Tim

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Patrick@Denman

Date:2/5/2008 5:37:51 PM

Tim, thanks for your very kind words. :)

FYI, as a slight aside here, I found that I'm not having as many problems with ACID and KONTAKT since I went into the Windows registry and assigned full control permissions to all users for the registry keys used by both ACID and KONTAKT. I'm not saying that this will fix your problems with Groove Agent - I'm just mentioning this because I used to have to run AP in Administrator mode, and now I can run it in user mode (KONTAKT as well).

I'm wondering of Groove Agent needs to run with elevated permissions in order to work properly; are you running ACID in Administrator mode and still experiencing your Groove Agent problem?

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Tim Tyler

Date:2/6/2008 2:02:26 PM

Patrick,

Yes, sir. Definitely running in administrator mode.

I've tried running Acid in XP compatability mode and that doesn't work either. Groove Agent still won't respond to time signature changes. Steinberg is no help at all. If having problems with Groove Agent in Acid would induce me to switch to Cubase or Nuendo, a little cogent tech support from Steinberg might help - but nothing...

Thank you, Patrick.

TT

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Patrick@Denman

Date:2/7/2008 9:29:56 AM

Man, this is a real bummer, being stuck between vendors with very little prospect of help.

Don't know if you tried creating a project in Reaper as I mentioned in that other post...at least it would tell you if it's a host problem or Groove Agent III.

Other than that, I'm out of ideas. :(

Good luck in your efforts...

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Tim Tyler

Date:2/20/2008 4:05:04 PM

It's an ACID problem. REAPER works flawlessly. I'm amazed.

This is really too bad. I've been a Sound Forge/Sony user for years. I've already done two projects in REAPER and Acid is slowly fading into the sunset...

It's a shame.

TT

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Patrick@Denman

Date:2/21/2008 10:16:25 AM

I hear you. I'm starting to think that way too. It is indeed a shame. It seems pretty evident that the amount of development and support resources for ACID have been shrinking steadily. It's pretty clear that Sony Creative sees Vegas as the real money-maker, and ACID just takes a back seat to everyone. It is taking them SOOO long to come out with a Vista-supported version of ACID Pro that when it does finally come out, I'm going to seriously re-think my choice of DAW software. An AP upgrade is not necessarily a given for me; I'll look really closely at the new features to see whether there is really any significant value in it for the stuff that I do with it. But unless the new version is revolutionary, I'm going to seriously consider other tools.

REAPER is really great. There are some things that it can't do that AP can, like automatic pitch shifting (there's no concept of a project key) and a few other things, but so far these haven't been issues for me. And it looks like it will stick around for a while...it's currently being bundled with Open Labs' MiKo. What I like the most about it is that there are meters on the tracks, and the mixer is automatically configured; in ACID I need to route all my tracks to buses on the mixer to get the control I need.

But I still like ACID, so I'm trying to keep an open mind. If Sony prices the upgrade reasonably and delivers some significant new value, I'll still consider it.

Sony, I hope you're listening.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: gunga

Date:2/21/2008 12:49:14 PM

My 2 cents... I noticed that a project which included Kontakt Player (Garritan JABB and GPO) was not loading the instruments at start up. Read this thread and fired it up and lo...problem here, too.

Love this stuff when it works and is useful....too much time attending to problems, some days.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: gunga

Date:2/21/2008 12:49:21 PM

My 2 cents... I noticed that a project which included Kontakt Player (Garritan JABB and GPO) was not loading the instruments at start up. Read this thread and fired it up and lo...problem here, too.

Love this stuff when it works and is useful....too much time attending to problems, some days.

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: Hitime

Date:3/21/2008 6:00:45 AM

I dont often visit this forum -- sorry if I am duplicating -- but here is my work around for the disapearing Kontact settings. Kontact installs 3 versions of their plugin your the VST directory, Kontakt 3, Kontakt 8 inputs and Kontakt 16 inputs. You can see the full names in Tools|preferences, but they do not appear completely when selecting a vsti plugin, so you dont know which you have selected!!

On startup, Acid (v6d) seems to enjoy choosing a different version to the one you originally selected. If it does this you cannot load the saved settings even manually because Acid sees it as a different plugin.

I have removed 2 of the plugin dlls from my plugin directory and now I get no problems.

sorry if I am duplicating -- but qucker to write than read the thread !!

Subject:RE: Acid 6.0d and Kontakt 2 Multi : Gone ?

Reply by: thenoizzbox

Date:3/21/2008 7:29:37 AM

Glad to know I'm not the only one thinking Sony is taking way too long to release a verion of Acid that supports VIsta and that an upgrade to AP7 certainly won't be automatic for me.

As I stated in the "Sonar to Acid" thread, I too have found solace with Reaper now and I have to admit it handles everything I throw at it (effects, VSTi's, etc) flawlessly and semmingly effortlessly and it performs amazingly well on my machine. There is a lot of things it does better than Acid but Reaper still is rough around the edges in some areas.

After years playing in original bands and trying to break the industry that way, I am now more of a hobbyist musician/composer. No big projects to deliver to paying clients on a deadline so this doesn't affect me like it does some of you. I really feel for those who are in that situation now that Acid is showing its age and doesn't support the current platform more and more people use (Vista and Vista 64-bit).

But it seems that Acid's problems are not limited to Vista as Zacchino is running XP. In a way, I really do not envy DAW vendors like Sony as this is one of the markets where they are at the mercy of all those outside vendors who create software users expect to work well with their DAWs. It gets hard to determin if the DAW or the plugin is at fault when something goes wrong. But Acid's last update was released in december 2006. That is an eternity in software development, especially in the music software industry.

It does indeed look like resources behind Acid are not what they used to be or that it's become less important for Sony. It's sad really as I really love Acid too. It's a phenomenal platform for people who create music. Fast and intuitive with as little UI junk as possible getting in your way. I really hope Acid Pro 7 delivers a real punch but, if it doesn't, at least now I'm covered and Reaper grows more and more on me everytime I use it...