History
Kontakt is a sampler long in progress. Due to Native Instruments tenacity and innovation, it has outlasted all other competing sampler platforms to be the dominant one in the industry, with no platform even close to outdoing it's power yet simplicity.

Alesis has a long innovative history of music instrument manufacture, starting with the MIDIverb digital reverb, the 16-bit HR-16 drum machine, and who can fo

Synthesis and File Structure
Kontakt uses a flexible mopdulator routing system, whcih means you can add envelopes and LFO's and effects to any area at will. A sample reference is called a Zone, and one or more Zones are gruuped up in Groups, which contains the realtime aprameters (envelopes, LFO's, filters, effects). Groups also hold the "Rules" which are keyswitches, controller switching, round-robin allocation, and more.

The instrument file format is called .nki. AN .nki holds one Instrument. It can also optionally contain the samples the .nki refers to; this is called a "monolith" file. The two other relevant formats are .nkb (the Bank format, which allows multiple instruments to be assign MIDI channels and program changes) and .nkm (Multis, contains mutliple .nki's and .nkb's). .nkg are files that contain Group information for the .nki's, but can't be loaded individually.

Translating Into Kontakt Format

Kontakt is (basically) an Instrument format, so typically an .nki file is created for every Instrument you send in. Kontakt's .nkm format is a Bank format, so Bank formats can convert into .nkm files (Write To Bank Files in Preferences) for a like format.

Normally, WAVE or AIFF files are created for the samples. If the incoming format uses WAVE or AIFF files, these are by default used instead of making new files, but you can specifiy that new files be created as well.

Monolith files can be created as well (Write To Monolith in Preferences), but they have the disadvantage of not being able to share their samples with other .nki files, so this is not a common option.

You can choose which Kontakt version that will be generated with the new .nki files. Typically this should be your running version of Kontakt, although it doesn't hurt to specify a slightly lower version. After Kontakt 2, there were not huge incorporations into the format.

Kontakt 4.2 note: NI changed the file format to Kontakt in this version, and we currently do not have access to some of the parameters; specifically modulators, filters, and effects. So if you choose to convert into 4.2 format, it will NOT include these missing items. We strongly recommend converting into Kontakt 4.1 format; Kontakt 4.2 support inclusion is just for completeness and for future use (when we do have access to these parameters).

Translating Out of Kontakt Format

Since Kontakt is one of the most powerful formats out there, converting it into other formats can result in certain items not converting. However, the more basic the Kontakt file is, the easier all the parameters will come across.

Kontakt can use various Rules to turn on and off samples to be played; these are KeySwithces, Controller-Switching, and Round-Robin functionality. When converting into a format that doesn't suppor this, multiple Instruments will be created; one for each Rule Area.

Kontakt usually uses WAV or AIFF files for their samples; sometimes it uses samples within their own file (Monolith files). Translator supports converted both of these approaches. If the destination format uses WAVE or AIFF for their samples, normally no new samples are created.

Some Kontakt files CANNOT be converted; specifically these are files that use .nks or .nkx files for their samples. These are commonly called Kontakt Player files and come from developers who have encrypted the Samples and Instruments for copy-protection reasons.

Scripts: Some of the more powerful Kontakt instruments use Scripting to add functionality. Due to their customization and textual-properties, Scripts are not converted.

Kontakt 4.2 note: NI changed the file format to Kontakt in this version, and we currently do not have access to some of the parameters; specifically modulators, filters, and effects. Converting a Kontakt 4.2 format file will NOT include these items.