WIP: Native Instruments Kontrol MK3 DAW Integration

[spacepluk]

I'm still wrapping my head around Remote but getting there...

Excuse the atrocious video quality

[jam-s]

Nice, I'm glad that you've got quite a few things going already. I'll still have to see how well the S88-MK2 fares with Reason and possibly optimise its integration as well.

[spacepluk]

Yeah! I think I have everything working now. I'm just polishing a couple of things and I'll release it with some instructions.

I think it should also work with the mk2 but I don't have one to test anymore.

[spacepluk]

I just realized I can't edit the first post... but here goes the first version anyway.

How to use it

There are two separate codecs. You have to add both of them manually and select the DAW device for both. You'll get a warning telling you that they are using the same device... but it's ok! The script is designed to be used like this and I haven't found a way to remove the warning.

settings.png (574.3 KiB) Viewed 3038 times

IMPORTANT: To be able to control the mixer you have to lock the mixer device to the Master Section:

master-section.png (188.51 KiB) Viewed 3038 times

After doing that everything should work pretty much like in the other DAWs that have official DAW integration. With some small differences that are specific to the way Reason works:

- The directional encoder changes between the sequencer TRACKS
- The keyboard's mixer view shows MIXER CHANNELS not TRACKS
- If the current TRACK name matches the MIXER CHANNEL name it will be highlighted in the keyboard's mixer view.

Reason Codecs - NI Kontrol S-Series MK3.zip

(44.84 KiB) Downloaded 112 times

And I think that's all. Hit me up if you have any questions!
PS: I'm waiting for NI to add the midi templates so I can add mappings for all the devices.

[Fusion]

Has anyone tried this with the mk2? Really want to try the mk2 to replace my nektar p4

[Ryan]

Thank you for doing this I’m surprised NI hasn’t done this yet. The MK3 is supposed to be a smart keyboard especially for the price I would expect it to be fully integrated with all DAW’s. I started using Reason about 20 years ago. Stopped producing for years and just got back into it. Bought the Kontrol S Series MK3 and Reason 13 and found out there’s no integration so thank you again for this. NI just released midi templates. Any progress so far with controlling instruments, effects and players?

[spacepluk]

I'm glad it helped!

Regarding progress on controlling devices, etc... I took a look at the new MIDI templates and even though they are a lot better than mk2's I was disappointed that you still can't modify the templates via MIDI to set parameter names and stuff like you can do in other controllers. So after thinking about it I just sold the keyboard, hehe.

It shouldn't be too hard to hack the scripts to add support for that but I think it will be very limited so I just moved on

Well, actually there's a hack that could be alright to use. And it's adding an extra mode to the mixer page like Jürgen Moßgraber does with his fantastic Bitwig remote scripts... But I thought about it and I'm not interested in implementing that for free hahaha!

[Mantry]

Has anyone tried this with the mk2? Really want to try the mk2 to replace my nektar p4

Yes it does!