frequently asked questions
If you are getting the error message “No Library Found” in Kontakt when trying to add a new library, it’s because the product you have purchased isn’t a “Player” library (see question below “What’s the difference between Kontakt and Kontakt Player?”)
You will therefore need to load the files manually into Kontakt to load them. This can be done via the ‘Files’ browser, top left hand side of Kontakt, or by simply dragging the instrument files over the Kontakt window to load them.
Yes.... we know, it’s a bit confusing!!
Kontakt Player is a FREE version of the Kontakt sample playback engine available to download HERE. It works with libraries that the developer has paid a license fee for. Essentially, the developer buys you this playback engine.
The Kontakt Player gives you access to all the sounds and all the editable parameters on the front panel only. Also, unlike non-Player libraries, these libraries will also have a banner that appears on the Kontakt Libraries pane.
If you want to go deeper into editing you’ll need a full version. As you will already own the free Kontakt player and have bought one of our ‘player’ libraries you will be eligible for a discount upgrade to Kontakt via the NI website. See HERE for more details.
Currently, these are our ‘Player’ Products;
- Albion ONE,
- Albion II Loegria,
- Albion III Iceni
- Albion IV Uist
- Albion V Tundra
- Spitfire Chamber Strings
- Spitfire Symphonic Brass
- Spitfire Symphonic Strings
- Spitfire Symphonic Strings Evolutions
- Masse
- Hans Zimmer Percussion
- Hans Zimmer Percussion Professional
- HZ02
- Ólafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions
- Orchestral Swarm
- London Contemporary Orchestra Strings
- Alternative Solo Strings
- Hans Zimmer Piano
- North 7 Vintage Keys
- The Grange
- Spitfire Percussion
- eDNA Earth
- Fanshawe Earth Encounters
If the library you want to use is NOT a ‘Player’ library then you need to buy the full retail version of Kontakt.
Then you can also load ‘non-Player’ libraries like our Spitfire LABS, Harp, Piano, Harpsichord, Solo Strings etc. Please note that non-Player library instruments will not appear on the Kontakt libraries pane and so can’t be added as a library as Player libraries need to be. Instead, these libraries will simply need to be loaded via the Kontakt files browser or alternatively you can add the library as a favourite to the Kontakt Quick Load window.
With the continuous improvements to the Spitfire Audio App, we have incorporated the ability to reset your own downloads, be it the entire library or the most recent update!
This can easily be done with the App. To reset both your entire library download or the latest update;
Open up the App and log in with your account email and password.
- Click on the library you wish to re-download
- Click on the cog in the bottom right hand corner and choose “reset”
- This will reset your whole download/your latest update
You can repeat this process for any of the libraries you own.
Note that there is a limit to how many times you can reset your downloads in a certain time frame. If you do exceed your reset limit please get in touch.
If you do not see the option to reset your download in the Spitfire Audio App, we would advise to download the latest version of the Spitfire Audio App from HERE.
Customers may find that they have some difficulties in the downloading process.
If you find that you are having some trouble, please check the list below for possible causes.
- The formatting of your drive, if it is FAT32 this will cause errors, because there is a maximum file size with this format of 4GB and our download files will exceed this limit. To solve this problem, reformat your drive to a more modern format, or use a different drive. We recommend NTFS on PC and Mac OS Extended (journaled) on Mac.
- Free space on your hard drive, please allow at least double the space for the respective library. This is because your library is downloaded compressed, then uncompressed into a separate location, then the original is deleted. So briefly during install, there are two copies of the library on disk. To solve this problem use a drive with more space (the size you’ll need during install is listed on the website page of the product you bought).
Other issues;
- Library Manager freezes in the “Extracting” stage for hours. This is because our libraries are often very large files, and this is the stage where the compressed files are extracted and placed in their final locations on the hard drive. There could be hundreds of GB of content to unpack, so it really can take hours. If you’re unsure whether it has crashed or is simply extracting files, visit the installation folder you chose when you started the install. If everything is working normally you’ll see various files appearing in the folder (or one of its subfolders).
- If you see a “Download interrupted” message may be caused by a change in IP, usually the case with people using a VPN, or people who for some reason started a download in one country and tried to resume it in another. in this case, please submit a support ticket and we can unblock you.
- If your download gets stuck and is continually cycling and not resuming, please get in touch with us, giving us as much detail as possible about your set up. It would be helpful if you can tell us: Your operating system, where you are downloading from (your country, and also whether you’re at home or work), your ISP, and whether there are any proxy servers or firewalls between your computer and the internet.
We have no direct influence on your actual download speeds, our libraries are hosted on Amazon S3 servers which are normally very quick but it may well be that at certain times of the day when traffic is particularly busy, your ISP may throttle your connection speeds.
We would advise you to leave your download running overnight as speeds should ramp up at less busy times. Our Library Manager downloader aims to use as much of the available bandwidth as possible to give you the quickest possible speeds, and may take several minutes to reach its peak.
If you are performing an international transaction (we’re in the UK), you may experience failed payments.
It’s worth trying again straight away. It’s possible that we or our card payments processor had a temporary problem that will have gone away a minute later. If the problem persists, however, the best thing to do before contacting us is to check with your bank that they are not blocking the transaction. Many US banks in particular block their customers from making overseas web transactions by default. They will usually remove this restriction if you ask them.
For Visa and MasterCard transactions we also use 3D Secure to enhance the security of your payments. That part of the checkout is hosted by your own bank’s servers, so it’s possible that If your bank hasn’t correctly implemented this (or their systems are temporarily offline), you may see a blank page at the final stage of the checkout. Again, your bank can advise on the best course of action.
I’ve Lost My Serial Number For Product Activation
Emails get misplaced and you might find that you are out of luck when you need to find a past serial number.
The best place to find all of your serial numbers would be to log into your Spitfire account and visit THIS PAGE.
If you find that the serial number you are looking for is not there, please contact us with all of the relevant information.
Can I Install On More Than One Computer?
With our products you have two licenses. This means that you are allowed to download and install on two computers you own, say your main rig and your mobile rig.
The best way to get your library on both of your machines is to copy it from one to another via an external HDD. It saves you from having to redownload the whole library again!
Can I Try Before I Buy?
No - it is not currently possible to demo our products.
If you go to our YOUTUBE CHANNEL you’ll see many many walkthroughs containing detailed info about all our products -- you can hear them being played in real time with no smoke and mirrors!
My Libraries Are Not Showing Up In My Library Manager
A handful of customers may find that when they log into their Library Manager, some of their previous purchased products do not show up in the ‘Installed’ section or in the ‘Download Ready’ section either.
It may be that you have purchased these under another email address. Checking other possible email addresses for your previous purchases may help to find these missing products.
If this is not the case, and these missing products were purchased a few years ago, please create a support ticket telling us your account email address, and any serial numbers you may have to go with these missing products. Our support team can also merge one or more accounts together if you’d like to consolidate all your purchases in one place.
The more information, the quicker we can get you back up and running!
How Do I Update My Products?
The main premise of downloading our products is that our library manager downloads into the folder you choose, so it is always good to choose the folder above where you want the download to go.
The best file path for our products is something very simple, a long file path will cause errors as there is a character limit on how far the library manager to read.
We advise a file path of something along the lines of:
Samples Drive > Spitfire Audio - always point the downloader to the folder ‘Spitfire Audio’ (or the folder above) for all downloads and updates.
When it comes to downloading / updating - if you have a folder called ‘Spitfire Audio’ always point the library manager to the folder Spitfire Audio - never go into this folder and choose the actual library in question.
‘Samples Missing’ Error Messages
In some cases, samples files may get lost when transferring libraries from one place to another, or if an update has gone wrong. You may also get this error in some cases if you installed your library on a drive with just under the minimum necessary amount of space to install the library (remembering that you need DOUBLE the size of the final library to install successfully - see above).
If this happens, the best way forward is to re-download the library in question. It will ensure you will get all of the content you are missing.
For more information on how to re-download a product, please see the question above.
I’ve Lost My Instrument Files.
In some cases, instrument files may get lost when transferring libraries from one place to another, or if an update has gone wrong.
If this happens, the best way forward is to re-download the library in question. It will ensure you will get all of the content you are missing.
For more information on how to re-download a product, please go HERE.
Can I Download On A PC, Then Transfer To A Mac Or Vice Versa?
All of our Kontakt libraries are compatible on both PC and Mac computers.
You can download our Kontakt libraries on either PC or Mac and they will work if you need to transfer them across to the other operating system.
We advise to do this via copying which every library you want to move across to an external HDD, and then copying it to your other machine.
Non-Kontakt libraries (like Phobos) need to be installed on the machine on which they are to be used.
How Do I Download Products On Mac OSX 10.6.8?
Our Library Manager only supports Mac OSX 10.10 and upwards.
If you do not have a system with 10.10 upwards installed, or do not wish to update your system there is a way of creating an external boot drive that will work with our Library Manager app.
For more information please HERE.
Alternatively, you can download Kontakt libraries to any other Mac or PC that is compatible with the Library Manager and then simply copy everything over to your own machine. We suggest doing this via an External Hard drive.
Non Player Instrument Opening In ‘Demo’ Mode
If you are seeing the ‘demo’ button and your patches are timing out, it means you are trying to run a non-player library in the Kontakt Player software.
You need to upgrade your Player to the full version of Kontakt.
We try very hard to ensure at all stages of our website that everyone understands which libraries need full Kontakt and which need the Player only.
Essentially our Player libraries don’t need the full Kontakt because we have paid the license fee on our customers’ behalf -- this is more financially viable on our higher priced libraries.
If you have any of our Player libraries you can qualify for a discount on the full version of Kontakt see HERE for more information.
How To Batch Resave A Library
There are two main reasons to batch resave:
Firstly it greatly speeds up the loading of patches once you have batch resaved them.
Secondly, it can help you find missing samples and relink them to the patches so that you don’t need to search every time you load a patch.
Bear in mind that it can sometimes take a few attempts to batch resave, and if Kontakt crashes the first time you try, you could go into the instruments folder and batch resave a bit at a time -- go by sub folders for example, just to lessen the load on Kontakt.
See our tutorial video HERE.
I Have Found A Bug
In some cases we can’t squash them all and bugs shamefully make their way through.
If you think you have found a bug, please contact us with all the relevant information;
- A description of the bug you have found
- A screencast (video) of the bug happening, or an audio example
- The exact patch name (or patches) in question and also the library
Giving us as much detail as possible will help us get to the bottom of the issue.
What Is The NCW Compressed Format?
This is Native Instrument’s new lossless compressed sample format – we have managed to reduce the sample data pool by around 55% and this also shows a benefit in streaming for you, along with reduced hard disk space required.
How does your cross grade pricing work?
Some of our libraries which share content with earlier products, or are a “reborn” version of an older library that we’ve now taken off sale allow customers of the older library to have discounts on the new one. There are rather too many permutations to put in this answer, but the libraries which have have some kind of cross grade scheme are:
- Albion ONE (for customers of the original Albion, now known as Albion LEGACY)
- Sacconi Quartet (for customers of the original Sacconi Volumes 1 and 2)
- Spitfire Chamber Strings (for owners of any of the BML “Sable” Chamber Strings range)
- Spitfire Symphonic Strings (for owners of any of the BML “Mural” Symphonic Strings range)
- Spitfire Symphonic Brass (for owners of any of the BML Brass libraries)
- Spitfire Symphony Orchestra (for owners of Symphonic Strings, Symphonic Brass or Symphonic Woodwinds)
- Ricotti Mallets (for owners of the original Ricotti Marimba, Glock or Crotales libraries)
- Hans Zimmer Percussion (for owners of HZ01 or HZ03)
- Alternative Solo Strings (for owners of Artisan Cello or Artisan Violin)
If you fall into any of those categories, please add the library you want into your cart, and once you’re logged in, the cart will automatically deduct the correct percentage according to what you already own.
What is your refunds / returns policy?
If you have NOT completed the download / installation process or we have not shipped your hard drive, then we CAN refund / return your product, please contact support with your account email address and order number so we can handle this quickly.
If you HAVE completed the installation process or we have shipped your hard drive (even if you’ve not yet registered your serial number), please see our EULA in regards to why we do not accept refunds and returns.
Can I have a student discount?
Yes! Full details are available HERE.
I’m a teacher / professor / lecturer. Can I have a discount?
Yes again! We extend our educational discount scheme to students AND teachers. Full details HERE.
I want to buy a collection, but I already own one or more of the products in it
Our cart will intelligently deduct the proportional cost of any products you already own from the total price when you get to the checkout.
For all EU countries apart from the UK, please click the ‘Checkout’ button to take you to your payment breakdown. Here you will see an area that outlines the VAT added to the order, and a link above the final total (illustrated below) which says ‘Got an EU VAT Number?’ - click this link to enter your VAT Number.
UK VAT registered customers will need to complete their order including VAT and then recover the VAT from HMRC in the usual way.
I’ve forgotten my password
If you have forgotten your password, please see this link, and click ‘Forgotten Password’.
If at some point in the past you asked us to merge two or more accounts but have since forgotten, you MAY find that the forgotten password isn’t working for the email address you asked us to merge FROM. In this case, please contact support with your name, and any email addresses you think we might know about, and we’ll work out what has happened.
We run all our orders through a fraud checking process. The automatic fraud check takes 20 minutes (but can take up to an hour during a very busy period, eg. Black Friday), but if your order gets caught at this stage, we run a manual order check, and this can delay the processing of your order for up to 24 hours (though this would be a rare and exceptional case).
You should however receive an order confirmation email IMMEDIATELY upon placing your order. This confirms that your order has successfully been logged in our system and that your payment was successfully taken. Please check your junk folders before contacting our support. The message will come from do_not_reply@spitfireaudio.com if you’d like to add us to your whitelist.
VEP - Controls / GUI Has Disappeared!
You need to ‘connect’ the instance of VEP to your sequencer, and send it some MIDI - then the controls will reappear.
Unless the instance of VEP is ‘booted up’ by actually connecting it, Kontakt will not complete the setup of the instrument which includes drawing the GUI.