Kontakt Crashes Pro Tools

[jackwenstrup]

I recently bought Kontakt and was trying out all the VSTs they have built in. Everything loads up and works fine except for two of them: Kontakt 7 & Retro Machines MK2. Whenever I try to open either of these, Pro Tools immediately crashes. It doesn't even look like it tries to run them at all, it just instantly crashes. I've tried opening both of these VSTs outside of Pro Tools, and they open up just fine, so it seems like it is a Pro Tools specific issue. I think that these VSTs have quite large libraries, so I could understand if Pro Tools took a while to open them or something like that, but I've just never experience an immediate crash like when I open up either of these.

If it helps here are the versions i'm running:

Laptop: 2020 M1 Macbook Pro running Monterey

Pro Tools: 2020.9.1

[JFreak]

Hi, welcome to the community.

Compatibility info here.

[jackwenstrup]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Hi, welcome to the community.

Compatibility info here.

I don't think it's a compatibility issue because the Kontakt player and all the other instruments load up just fine. It's only with the two mentioned instruments.

[RobertDorn]

Pro tools doesn’t use VST’s, the plugin format loads AAX plugins. However Kontakt7 loads VST3 within the plugin even if it’s loaded as AAX within PT

Your pro tools version itself is already unsupported on your macOS. Check with NI for the supported PT versions of Kontakt7. Also, Kontakt7 is a Kontakt host, so I don’t entirely get Kontak7 not loading in Kontakt

[massivekerry]

Originally Posted by jackwenstrup

I recently bought Kontakt and was trying out all the VSTs they have built in. Everything loads up and works fine except for two of them: Kontakt 7 & Retro Machines MK2. Whenever I try to open either of these, Pro Tools immediately crashes. It doesn't even look like it tries to run them at all, it just instantly crashes. I've tried opening both of these VSTs outside of Pro Tools, and they open up just fine, so it seems like it is a Pro Tools specific issue. I think that these VSTs have quite large libraries, so I could understand if Pro Tools took a while to open them or something like that, but I've just never experience an immediate crash like when I open up either of these.

If it helps here are the versions i'm running:

Laptop: 2020 M1 Macbook Pro running Monterey

Pro Tools: 2020.9.1

Hi. I assume you're asking the same thing at the NI user community, because I see a similarly-worded query there with today's date. You'll likely get more useful info there. Particularly check this article and this one

I use Kontakt 7 regularly (M1 Mac Studio, Ventura 13.6, PTU 2023.12) and I just checked the Retro Machines Mk2 nki (instrument) in Kontakt 7, and it seems to work without issue. I do recall that Retro Machines Mk2 was a bit late coming to Apple Silicon compatibility, but I think it's been current for awhile. OS 12 (Monterey) is supposedly supported by Kontakt according to NI, but there were some recent (7.x) builds of Kontakt that were not very stable in general. Do you have the latest version (7.7.3) installed?

Have you tried putting the AAX plugin in the trash and re-installing from Native Access? Running the standalone versions won't help clarify anything, as those are their own separate builds of the software. Kontakt 7 does have a more involved startup process which you can read about starting with this post.

Also, it's previously been the advice to not launch standalone versions of NI products while Pro Tools is running, and especially not when an active session contains that NI plugin. When I get a new Kontakt library/Instrument, I often use the Batch Re-Save function to rebuild that instrument's database, but I do it in standalone Kontakt, with no other audio software (DAW really, but maybe stuff like Audio Hijack, as well) running. I did get burned once while trying to do it in an instance of Kontakt in Pro Tools, and once in standalone when I had a PT session (with Kontakt instruments) loaded. Both were fixed by doing the Batch Re-save in standalone Kontakt, without a DAW running.

Lastly, I hate to go here again, but since this is a Pro Tools forum... VST is a plugin format, and it is not one that you can use in Pro Tools (except in a wrapper, like Blue Cat Audio's Patchwork). Pro Tools uses the proprietary AAX plugin format. "Virtual Instrument" or "VI" are suitable terms to describe Kontakt. Also, Kontakt is usually a host itself, and Retro Machines Mk2 is an instrument that runs IN Kontakt (or Maschine, I've heard). Are you trying to load Retro Machines mk2 in Kontakt, or through some other method (it's never shown up as a standalone plugin for me)?

[jackwenstrup]

I didn't even realize that my version of PT wasn't supported. I updated PT and everything is working fine. Thanks!