Chicken Systems Kontakt Assistant User Manual
Kontakt Assistant™
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Version 0.9, Build 67
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Kontakt Assistant™ Table Of Contents
Kontakt Assistant™
Table Of Contents
Introduction.............................................
Basic Concepts.........................................
Windows
Main Screen............................................
Main Screen Lists.....................................
Object List..............................................
Bulk Editor..............................................
Bank/Multi Builder.....................................
Views
Database................................................
Category..................................................
Column...................................................
Folder.....................................................
Common Operations
Organization.....................................
Add/Delete/Edit..............................
Search..........................................
Operations.........................................
Management....................................
Sample Relinking............................
Replace References..........................
Object Naming................................
Bulk Editing.......................................
Compilation......................................
Bank/Multi Builder............................
Object Merger.................................
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Menus
File.........................................................
Tools.......................................................
Help.......................................................
Preferences
Preferences.............................................
Support
Troubleshooting........................................
FAQ........................................................
Bug Reports.............................................
Contacting Technical Support.....................
Updating.................................................
Contact Us..............................................
Credits....................................................
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Kontakt Assistant™ Introduction
Kontakt Assistant™
Introduction
Kontakt Assistant™ is a Mac/Windows utility
to Manage, Edit, and Browse all your Kontakt
Instruments, Multis, and Banks.
If you love Kontakt with its powerful performance
and features, but want a better way to get your
arms around all your Instruments, Kontakt
Assistant™ is for you!
Use as a Browser.
Type in a simple search query in the iTunes-ish
interface and your results come right up. Drag anything off the interface and drop it onto the
Kontakt rack. Four individual customizable views allow total complete ease of use.
No more bad links.
Using innovative technology just developed, Kontakt Assistant™ can re link samples quickly
and easily when the links are broken. But that’s not all: redirect links to new samples, or
change link/sample names using Find-Replace techniques, plus other powerful re-linking
schemes.
Power Databasing.
Any Instrument can be given metadata tags, and searched upon using those tags. Instruments
can be grouped under user-dened groups for later access. Multiple databases are supported.
Kontakt Assistant™ databasing can be synchronized with other sampler’s database schemes.
The other stuff.
Use the Bank Builder to make your own custom Banks and Multis. Merge Kontakt Instruments
using the Object Merger. Rename Instruments, Groups, or Samples. Audition sounds.
Kontakt Assistant™ Features include:
- View All Kontakt Instruments, Multis, and Banks on your system or within a folder
- Integrated intelligent Search Engine; search for Kontakt objects categories of objects using
keywords and regular expressions
- Create Groups and assign Objects to those Groups
- Sample Reference Management - x broken sample links, assign new sets of samples to
Kontakt Instruments with different names, remove duplicate samples and sample data
- Drag-n-Drop loading of sounds directly into Kontakt
- All operations can be done on a Single or Bulk basis
- View and edit the contents of any Kontakt object
- Update Instruments with new Sample loop, length, or loop information
- Edit one, some, or all your Kontakt les to incorporate your own tastes and titles
- Use the oating-window as your browser and load Instruments directly into Kontakt
- View Samples used by Kontakt Instruments and see what Instruments reference them
- Rename samples via references
- Script Librarian makes organizing your scripts a breeze; load one or more Scripts to one or
more Kontakt Instruments
- Modulator Librarian enables you to store your favorite Modulation schemes and apply them
to one or more Instruments at a time
- Macintosh and Windows-compatible
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Kontakt Assistant™Introduction
Some notes regarding the documentation:
This document is synced to the Kontakt Assistant™ version denoted on the cover of this
document. It is a dynamic document and often is revised with every major, minor, or even build
of Kontakt Assistant™.
Some of Kontakt Assistant™’s dialogs are “sheets” on the Mac, meaning that they animate
down from the title bar and are attached to the dialog which they correspond to. Some
screenshots reect this in the document. On Windows these dialogs are separated but they still
are “modal”, meaning that they must be worked with or cancelled to return control back to the
parent dialog.
Since Kontakt regards the middle C key on a keyboard (MIDI note 60) as C3, by default
Kontakt Assistant™ shows the textual representation of MIDI note 60 as C3. This is the nonUS representation. However, if you are more used to seeing C4 as middle C (like GigaStudio or
other US models - or even some varied non-US samplers), you can change this in PreferencesGeneral.
If you are a registered owner, you are qualied for free updates for the life of the program.
You can download these from your program using the Check for Update feature, or from the m
Chicken Systems Update Area.
Kontakt Assistant™ is consistently supported by Chicken Systems, with updates appearing
frequently.
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Kontakt Assistant™ Basic Concepts
Basic Concepts
Kontakt Assistant™’s features can be
broken down into four different areas.
Organization
List your Kontakt Instruments and Samples
of any format; search and display small or
large subsets of entries, attach properties
to these entries for easy recognition and
information value. For more information, go
to the Organization page.
Management
Fix Sample References in Instruments,
update Sample Parameters, or reassign new samples. For more information, go to the
Management page.
Operations
Drag Instruments or Samples off the interface and onto external areas, such as external
Samplers, the Finder/Explorer, or DAW “bins” - anything that takes an external le drag. For
more information, go to the Operations page.
Compilation
Create custom Banks, such as Giga les, SoundFonts, or any other “Bank” format from single
Presets. Read and write from Proprietary disks (Akai, Roland, etc.) For more information, go to
the Compilation page.
Basic Usage
The principal interface for Kontakt Assistant™ is the Main Screen, shown above. It is a visual
representation of the internal database. For more information, go to the Main Screen section in
this document.
The rst step is to add your Kontakt les (Instruments (.nki), Multis (.nkm), and Banks (.nkb)
to the database. You do this by dragging them onto the Main Screen, or by adding them using
the menu or popup-menu operations. You can do this one at a time or in bulk.
You view database entries (all or in part) principally via a large list, called the Database View.
You can customize the columns to see what you want to view. Each entry shows you it’s
inherent properties, along with some user-set parameters, like Category, Genre, Keywords.
Entries can optionally be assigned a picture, a movie, and/or a demonstration sound.
After you do this, you can start actually using the program!
If you have a lot of les, they take up a lot of space in the list. There are several ways to make
your views more manageable. You may want to use the Search function to narrow down what
objects you are looking at. (Remember, what you view in the master list can be a subset of
what is actually in the database.) Or, create some Groups (think “playlist” in iTunes™) and put
your favorite Instruments there (or group by project, it’s up to you). Another handy way is to
use the Column View, where you can make your own “virtual volume” of objects. The Category
View is also handy for seeing objects of a specic type.
Once you have what you want in front of you, try using Kontakt Assistant™ as a superbrowser for Kontakt itself. Keep Kontakt Assistant™ open, and open up Kontakt. Drag one (or
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Kontakt Assistant™Basic Concepts
more) objects from a list to the Kontakt rack - it loads right up!
You can use Kontakt Assistant™ to manage edit your Kontakt Objects too. Click the Object
List disclosure triangle/plus-sign to expose it, and select a Kontakt Instrument on a list. All the
samples will show up below. If they are in RED, they are improperly linked. Use the Reference
Manager to re link the samples properly. For more information on Sample Relinking, see the
Sample Relinking section in this document.
Perhaps you want to edit your Kontakt Objects. Use the Bulk Editor to view the internal
parameters of your Kontakt Objects, and you can edit them en masse or one at a time, very
efciently and quicker then Kontakt itself can do. For more information, go to the Bulk Editor
page.
Creating Multis and Banks in Kontakt itself requires loading everything up and can be time
consuming. With Kontakt Assistant™, it’s a snap. For more information, go to the Compilation
page in this document.
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Main ScreenKontakt Assistant™
Main Screen
The Main Screen in Kontakt Assistant™
is the interface to a single Database which
you attach to the dialog. You can have
multiple screens up within a single Kontakt
Assistant™ application, to edit multiple
Databases.
A Main Screen shows:
Kontakt Object Lists
The Main Screen contains four different lists.
Two of them (Database View and Category
View) relate to Kontakt Objects in the
database. Folder View lists the les on your system (local disks or network drives), and Column
View shows the contents of your own “virtual volume”.
There is also a Object List at the bottom, which can be shown to hidden using the triangle/plussign. This shows the Samples that are referenced by the currently-selected entry.
The Database View shows all the entries or a portion of them. This can be based on a Search
lookup, the contents of a Group, a modied list based on adding or removing from the list. You
can drag out of the list and drop into it.
For more information on the Lists and their function, please see the Main Screen Lists section in
this document.
Search Field
This works similarly to the standard iTunes or other applications Search Field. Use this to
increase or decrease the entries you see in the List. For more information on searching, please
see the Search section in this document.
Operation Popup
This gives you easy access to common operations, like adding, deleting, relinking, the
Reference Manager, Properties, etc.
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Main Screen Lists Kontakt Assistant™
Main Screen Lists
The Main Screen in Kontakt Assistant™ is essentially an interface to a single database, and
shows its entries in two primary lists: Database View (the Master List) or the Category View.
There is also a Folder View which shows you Kontakt Objects any area of your system (even
ones not in the database), plus the Column View where you can create your own “virtual
volume” of Kontakt Objects. You can switch modes by clicking on the Mode Selector on the top
of the Main Screen, or by the top menu.
There is also the Object List that can be
viewed by clicking on the trinagle/plus sign
at the bottom. This will be covered in the
next section.
Database View
This reects the current lookup of the
database attached to the Main Screen. For
more information, see the Database View
page in this document.
Column View
Not only does this simulate the OSX
“Column View”, it also allows you to make
your own “virtual volume” by making your
own folders, naming them, and inserting
your own objects in them. For more
information, see the Column View page in
this document.
Category View
This is your Database from another
viewpoint, based on the 3 Categories
dened. Used Categories are in BOLD
and a short Properties pane shows on the
far right. The Category View is ganged to
the Database View, so the Search Field is
operable and updates the Category View to
reect changes made in the Database View,
and vis-versa. For more information, see
the Category View page in this document.
Folder View
This is a simple hierarchical Folder View of
your system. The nice feature of the Folder
View is that you can zoom in on a group
of folder by using the Root Folder popup
at the top of the Folder View. This reduces
clutter. For more information, see the
Folder View page in this document.
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Main Screen ListsKontakt Assistant™
In all Modes, you can drag entries off the lists for several purposes:
Drop them onto Kontakt itself to load that Kontakt Object.
Drop them to another location on your hard drive or another hard drive.
You can drop external Kontakt Objects onto the Database and Category Views to add them
to the database, and also drop objects onto the Column View to add them to a user-dened
“folder”.
The Database and Category views have Columns which you determine which get shown. The
Name eld is the only column that is required to be show. You can customize which columns
get shown by right-clicking on the List or by clicking on the Gear on the Interface and choosing
Customize List... The Customize List dialog comes up and allows you to customize the list,
where you determine what columns get shown and in what order.
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Object List
Kontakt Assistant™
Object List
When you select an Kontakt Instrument entry in any of the views, Kontakt Assistant™
displays the referenced samples in the Object List. You can expose it or hide it by toggling the
disclosure triangle/plus-sign next to the Object List caption.
When the Object List is hidden, Kontakt Assistant™ does not take the additional time to read
in the le or consult the database to display the samples, speeding up your work somewhat.
Having the Object List open tell Kontakt Assistant™ to display the samples, so keep this in
mind while doing your work.
The Object List has several columns that tell you PLENTY about the samples that are
referenced. Each entry is one of the Zones in the Kontakt le, so a sample can be shown more
than once.
If the entry is in RED, that means the sample is improperly linked and will show the Missing
Samples dalog when loaded into Kontakt.
Reference: The name of the sample le.
Size: The size in kilobytes, megabytes, or even gigabytes.
Bytes: The actual size in bytes.
Location: The path to the sample le.
Channels: The amount of channels (1 = Mono, 2 = Stereo).
Sample Rate: The sample rate of the sample.
Bits: The bitrate of the sample
All the following columns refer to the parameters INSIDE the Kontakt le. The sample le may
have different parameters, but Kontakt doesn’t read these anyway.
Loop Type: What kind of looping is imposed on the sample.
Start: The playback start point of the sample.
End: The playback end point of the sample.
Loop Start: The start loop point of the sample.
Loop End: The end loop point of the sample.
The Loop parameters only show if there is a loop imposed on the sample. Also, a Kontakt
sample can have up to 8 loop points, but this eature is rarely used, so only the rst loop is
shown.
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Kontakt Assistant™ Bulk Editor
Bulk Editor
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Kontakt Assistant™Bulk Editor
Bank/Multi Editor
The Bank/Multi Builder is a dialog where you can collect Kontakt Instruments and form a
Kontakt Bank or a Multi.
Banks and Multi’s are two different
concepts in Kontakt. Bank’s are
like a single Instrument assigned
to a single MIDI channel that is a
placeholder for 64 MIDI program
changes. Multi’s are the entire
“memory” of a Kontakt rack.
But, for our purposes, the Bank/
Multi Builder does the same thing
- collects Instruments and forms a
Bank (.nkb) or a Multi (.nkm) le
out of them.
Launch the Bank/Multi Builder from the Tools menu, or open an existing one by right clicking
on a Bank/Multi entry on the Blue List on a Main Screen.
To start building a Bank/Multi, drag any Instrument entry from a Main Screen into the Bank
Builder list. You can edit the Bank/Program Number. You will notice that the Compile button will
light up as soon as you’ve made a change to the list or if there are no entries in the list.
Once you are nished, click the Compile button. Kontakt Assistant™ will ask you where you
want to put the new Bank/Multi File; select that and your Bank/Multi will be created and written
to disk, and add to the database attached to the Main Screen.
After compilation is completed, the Compile button will disable until you’ve made another
change.
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