Ableton Forum

Apparently the NI Komplete Kontrol A series keyboards does not and will not support Live 9.7, only 10.05 and above.

Is NI shooting them selves in the foot by snubbing a large market or am I the last fool on the planet that doesn’t need or want to upgrade?

I just want to know if I am alone.

I doubt you're alone, but I'm not surprised that NI doesn't want to support earlier versions of software that isn't up to date.

Tarekith I understand why you feel that way. I believe manufacturers have conditioned us consumers to accept strategic obsolescence. I have a whole closet full of gear that is “No Longer Supported”.

But as consumers we have to ask “how long will this brand new, latest, greatest wiz bang have-to-have whatever be supported by the venders. What happens when Ableton releases Live 11 two or three years from now and NI says ‘NO MAS’ on A61 support? Are we supposed to toss all the A’s in the closet next to the Kore and the Rig Kontrol and buy another brand new, latest, greatest?

I don’t expect Ableton to spend any more money on Live 9 but if I were in the business of building midi controllers like NI, I would seek the largest market possible by ensuring backward compatibility. And we are only talking about transport controls, how hard can that be?

Of course if no one but me and four or five other people still use Live 9 then it is a moot point.

OK, I am through venting. Thank you Tarekith for opening that door.

Administer wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:50 pm

Apparently the NI Komplete Kontrol A series keyboards does not and will not support Live 9.7, only 10.05 and above.

Is NI shooting them selves in the foot by snubbing a large market or am I the last fool on the planet that doesn’t need or want to upgrade?

I just want to know if I am alone.

I use live 9.7 and i'm so glad I never invested in Komplete Kontrol A series keyboard, was very close, although I do own Komplete ultimate 11 (lately I honestly only use about 3 or 4 or their plug-ins) I am surprised that they will no longer support live 9 for the the Kontrol series

Administer wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 06, 2019 3:05 am

Tarekith I understand why you feel that way. I believe manufacturers have conditioned us consumers to accept strategic obsolescence. I have a whole closet full of gear that is “No Longer Supported”.

But as consumers we have to ask “how long will this brand new, latest, greatest wiz bang have-to-have whatever be supported by the venders. What happens when Ableton releases Live 11 two or three years from now and NI says ‘NO MAS’ on A61 support? Are we supposed to toss all the A’s in the closet next to the Kore and the Rig Kontrol and buy another brand new, latest, greatest?

I don’t expect Ableton to spend any more money on Live 9 but if I were in the business of building midi controllers like NI, I would seek the largest market possible by ensuring backward compatibility. And we are only talking about transport controls, how hard can that be?

Of course if no one but me and four or five other people still use Live 9 then it is a moot point.

OK, I am through venting. Thank you Tarekith for opening that door.

I think the thing is how much resources should NI invest into Ableton 9?

If they stuck with v9, would it work with v10? Or would they need a v9 version and a v10 version. It gets more complicated when you add other DAWS that NI would want to support as well.

I would think for older controllers maybe keep legacy DAW support if it is fairly simple to do. But for new controllers, I can kind of see why they wouldn't want to put too much time into a legacy DAW (unless there are more v9 than v10 users but I would doubt it more than a year after being released as you also probably got a good chunk of v8 users as well.)

I've had NI support refuse to talk to me unless I bought an upgrade for $79...if they won't support their own products I'm not surprised they don't support Live 9.

the thing with Native Instruments is that their hardware and software breeds like rabbits, and it's just too much work for them to support it all. i have mostly steered clear of their stuff for this reason.

I didn’t want to slip into Native Instruments bashing, that’s too easy. (Too late! I already slipped into NI bashing.)

But there is nothing wrong with Live 9.7. It is a stable, mature bit of software and it is already paid for. It does every thing I need plus lots I haven’t learned how to do yet.

If Live 9.7 still has a large enough user base then maybe we should start our own club and not let the Live 10 users join us. Live 8 users would be welcome though.

We are all Live users........ being it Lite, Standard or Suite in 7, 8, 9 or 10......

There is nothing wrong in using Live 9.7 but also nothing wrong in using 10.6 or is it?

I have been a happy user of live 9 - made the switch from Cubase to Live in version 9.5 with buying the Push 2.

Now I use Live 10 Suite. Let's be friendly and helpfull to each other........

Miyaru I was speaking tongue-in-cheek about a hypothetical gathering of users who would share scripts and admire each other’s steadfastness. I am sorry but you would not be allowed in.

The A series and M series use a slightly different method of talking to Live for auto-track navigation and smart integration than the S series so users can load the Komplete Kontrol vst directly onto a track now since many complained (for whatever reason) that using an instrument rack was too hard/cumbersome or whatever the reason.

I believe Ableton actually accomodated this by building in integration features into Live to make this possible which I assume ment modifying code in live itself.

As with most companies, they focus their efforts for this on the latest software releases not previous ones so if you want an A series / M series you need L10, otherwise the S series MK1/2 both work on L9.

This is why Live is one of the most supported DAWs when it comes to hardware, because that is one of the focuses of this company, they actually specifically accommodate 3rd parties, not try and block them out and make you use Push.

There are always reasons these things happen, not always sinister.

Jestermgee that is exactly what confuses me. The API to control 9.7 already exists: my Push does it, my APC40 does it, my BeatStep does it, heck, even my Maschine Micro does it if I use the script provided by NI. So we are not talking about reinventing the wheel.

The A series keyboards use the same transport control buttons that everyone else uses(MMC?). Track navigation? Undo? How hard could that be? The code has already been written. Someone at NI just has to sit down and put it into a script for backward compatibility.

Is there a large enough Live 9 user base to justify the expense for NI? They would certainly sell a few more keyboards.

I think FishMonkey nailed it with his comments. NI has way too many irons in the fire to get any one thing right so they sell a bunch of half finished/ half supported products. The original specifications for A series showed support for Live 9. They have since backpedaled.

A Live 9 script for A series will probably be written and sold by a third party like nativeKONTROL. I hope.