I just got my paws on Native Instruments Kontakt 7, which installs in parallel to Kontakt 6. I'm still discerning 7's matters of incompatibility with older Kontakt libraries, but for the most part, it seems okay. The new design of the browser window (switchable in parallel to the older-style browser) is easily on the eyes, although the "wallpaper.tga" images of libraries that are compatible with the browser have to have the new short-rectangle format in order to not display as blank "folder" images.
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Kontakt 7's new browser GUI |
Another thing I've noticed is that the differences between the original Kontakt Library and the Kontakt Library 2 (the latter designed for Kontak 7) are in how the latter's details are dumbed-down. There is apparently no change to the libraries themselves apart from their display graphics, GUI designs, and their simplified nomenclature and controls.
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Kontakt Library 2 vs. original Library |
Above, I have the Library 2 loaded on top and the original Library on the bottom. The new version's native display size is considerably larger – which is unsurprising, since Kontakt had been originally released in 2002, when standard screen resolutions were smaller. Both libraries have the Oboe instrument loaded. The name of the root library has been abridged, and the number of instruments more than halved. Not only that, but the controls for the instruments have been simplified or redacted – and rendered in a "flat" design. These reductions are made even more glaring by the "ORCHESTRAL" logo encumbering most of the frame, with the dinky, piddly controls down along the bottom. It's fortunate that, if one is using Kontakt 7 exclusively, one can still use the original library if the more-complex controls' details are important. It's good to see innovation occurring, but when it's at the expense of sophistication, it's unsettling. Kontakt 6 had been introduced in 2018, but Kontakt 7 seems to have been re-designed to appease the cries since then for an updated-style GUI. Still, it retains, alternately, the old-style browser, because it might have alienated too many users to have to adjust to the new interface entirely.
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| Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 |
NI's new Guitar Rig 7 follows this design esthetic, and though I find it appealing, I also find the design of Guitar Rig 5 to have more of a visual "feel" of using real effects, amplifiers, and cabinets. Guitar Rig 6 is somewhere in-between, being the first version to use flattened graphics and the tag-cloud for styles and sounds and such. GR7 adds a looping feature, an IR loader (for cabinet sounds), and a signal-chain diagram in the right sidebar. It also adds a bass amp and new effects like a scanner vibrato (rotary-cabinet effect) and "lo-fi"-ifying effects – both of which are hardly as novel as NI's publicity makes them out to be. However, other developers – who had seemed to followed NI's earlier example in this line of product – have made amp/cabinet simulations at least as good as Guitar Rig's and more realistic-looking graphics. NI just seems to be trying to maintain its place among those who buy its Komplete suites of software. Then there are those people who get this stuff "for free," so at that price, why they complaining?