I wouldn’t say the interface is ugly, but I’ve seen better and cleaner looking things in my days. There are some very handy things about it though. For instance the explanation window you get when you click on any module, or other detailed data that can be accessed in various ways.

The instrument themselves are loaded into a rack. The normal view is to just view the instrument header, but with the click of a button you get tons of more options at your disposal. A nice move by Native Instrument is that a few important parameters are available even with these extra options hidden. This is a good solution, but you’ll still probably do a lot of work with most of the options visible, and while there, things can get rather messy if you have alot of things loaded.

The browser (found to the left of the instrument rack) is almost a chapter in itself and I have both good an bad things to say about it. Starting with a few good things, you can access files via your typical disk browser or via a database that only shows files relevant to Kontakt 3. When using the database you are able to filter the search results to multis, banks, instruments or samples. Speaking of the search function, it has that lovely Spotlight feature. You know, where it actually updates it’s search with every written letter. Excellent solution. A not so excellent thing about the search functions is that it don’t seem to find folders. This could have been a good thing to implement IMO. Since Kontakt 3 ships with a shit-load of instruments and samples, and since a few of us might have a couple already before installing it, the database and search function might not be enough. Luckily for us, there’s a quick-load menu at our disposal, to which you can add whatever instruments you like.

The mixer is not very impressive. i guess that’s OK since after all, it’s not a DAW. You can create or delete channels which can be routed differently depending on your DAW. In Pro Tools I found it rather disappointing that the output to Pro Tools was limited to using the four auxes. In an ideal situation I would have preferred using the auxes within Kontakt 3 and having different outputs routed to Pro Tools.

Samples, zones, effects and modulation

Kontakt 3 supports a huge amount of formats, but just loading the samples isn’t enough many times for a lot of users. The edit capabilities in Kontakt 3 work well, with one feature tooted a little extra by Native Instrument, this being zone envelopes. This is a great idea. You can pretty much create envelopes to control any modulation target. Volume and pan is the no-brainers, but there are a lot of others. Modulation is done by dragging and dropping. You find the modulation options in the left side of the plug-in screen where the browser is located. Simply pick your modulation and drag it to the parameter you want it to control. It’s possible to use both internal and external modulation (for instance your MIDI keyboard).

Kontakt 3 is also pretty good at slicing loops. You simply load your loop, slice it up by beat or time, auto-assign it to your keyboard and - if it’s your cup of tea - click ‘n’ drag the MIDI of your loop to the sequencer. That’s right, since the loop is now sliced and mapped to the keys, you can now drag the loop as individual MIDI notes straight to the sequencer.

There are plenty of effects and some of them are high class in my opinion. Of course Native Instrument have a history with good effects, not least from their B4 and Guitar Rig plug-ins. It’s pointless for me to go through all of them as the list would cover pretty much everything from a reverb to full-blown guitar rigs.

As previously mentioned, Kontakt 3 ships with lot of instruments and samples. I found the overall quality of them to be really good and certainly useful. They are divided into six categories: band, orchestral, synth, urban beats, vintage and world. Most notably is perhaps the orchestra category, as it is a special edition of Vienna Symphonic Orchestra.

Are you done yet?

Yes! There are more to cover, really. Kontakt 3 is an entire production package and this is just scratching the surface. For instance: for the really tech-savvy you can do scripts, if you want to be destructive it includes a proper (destructive) sample editor. I have actually given rather shallow descriptions of what you can do because it’s just so much to write about!

Conclusion

The first thing that struck me with Kontakt 3 was that the library included was generous indeed. It includes some great sounds, and there are a fair number of effects and modulation capabilities. On top of this, Kontakt 3 can load pretty much any sample format, making it an interesting choice for anyone with sample libraries in other formats that might be hard to integrate in a new DAW world. While it was fairly stable on my home Pro Tools LE Mac rig (it crashed once, and I’ve used it a lot) there have been several reports on major crashes on Pro Tools rigs running Windows. Assuming these reports are correct, this is something Native Instrument must fix. Kontakt 3 allows you to do a lot, actually full blown productions with pretty much nothing else, but the interface can get a little messy at times, and it took a while for me to really get used to it. Finally I would like to give kudos for the scripts and the editing and zone envelope features. Stagnant loops suddenly became so much more flexible. Kontakt 3 is a full-blown solution, and could very well be the only instrument you’ll ever need.

Native Instruments