Frequently Asked Questions
Purchase & Delivery
We accept payment via all major credit & debit cards, PayPal, Bancontact, SOFORT, iDeal, Giropay, and Multibanco. Your payment information is securely processed with maximum encryption, and we never store any of your payment data!
Yes we do! We offer a 25% educational discount on all products for any qualifying student, teacher, or academic institution. Check out our Educational Program page for more info.
Yes!
We do not collect any sales tax in any territory at this time.
Yes, all of our instruments are provided as digital downloads! They are downloaded via an app called Pulse Downloader (or just Pulse for short). Pulse is used by many music software developers; with a Pulse account, all your purchases from multiple developers are stored in the cloud. This allows you to access your purchases from any computer without logging into our site (or any other developer website.) It's fast, easy, and works on both Mac and PC!
At this time, we do not offer this option.
Head to our User Account area - it's all there! Upon completing an order, we create an account for you based on your email address. You can set a password using the Reset Password feature. If you don't see your purchases, or if you've made purchases from multiple accounts, simply email us and we'll get everything merged.
No problem. Just log in to our User Account area to view all your previous licenses. If you haven't already registered them in the Pulse Downloader app, you'll want to register your Product Codes there. Then, you can simply open the Pulse app from any computer to re-download your purchases.
Due to the digital nature of our products, we unfortunately cannot offer refunds once you've downloaded a library. This is a policy common to most all sample library developers. If you have purchased a product in error and have not yet downloaded it, please contact us and we can take care of it. And as always, if you have any questions about the compatibility, features, capabilities, or limitations of any specific library, please don't hesitate to ask us before you order!
Installation
1. Install the Pulse Downloader application if you don't already have it. Pulse is a cross-platform desktop app that lets you download and install your libraries with blazing speed!
2. Once Pulse is installed, open it and enter your Product Code. Follow the instructions to download and install the library.
3. No further registration or activation is needed. Load up one of the instrument NKIs in Kontakt via the Files browser, or by dragging and dropping from your OS.
1. Install the Pulse Downloader application if you don't already have it. Pulse is a cross-platform desktop app that lets you download and install your libraries with blazing speed!
2. Once Pulse is installed, open it and enter your Product Code. Follow the instructions to download and install the library.
3. In Native Access, use the same Product Code to register the library with Native Instruments.
4. You should now see the library in your Kontakt libraries tab.
Are you sure this is a Kontakt Player compatible library? Non-Kontakt Player libraries do not need a serial number. Please check the product page for more details.
Otherwise... Whoops! Send us an email and we'll issue you a serial number. Sorry about that.
Some of our products come bundled with WAV, REX, or MIDI loops. The manual for each product should explain further, but generally speaking, these files can simply be dragged into your DAW (i.e. Logic, Digital Performer, FL Studio, Cubase, etc). This can often be done from within the DAW itself, through a Browser or Media Bay window. It can typically also be done by dragging the file from Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac) on to a DAW track.
This means you need to update your version of Kontakt. You can do this in the Service Center application.
This error means you did not add the library to Kontakt and activate it. Please check the answer above: "How do I install and activate a Kontakt Player library?"
This could mean one of two things. One possibility is that you're using Kontakt Player with a library that requires the full version of Kontakt; this requirement would be clear on each product page. In this case, you need to get the full version of Kontakt to use the instrument. The other possibility is that you added a library to the Libraries tab, but didn't activate it in Native Access.
First - Is this a Kontakt Player library? Make sure to check the product page first, not all of our products are Kontakt Player compatible, and therefore cannot be added using Add Library.
Otherwise, if you get this error, make sure you're selecting the folder that contains subfolders like "Instruments" and "Samples". NOT a higher-level folder! If it still doesn't work, it's possible your download was corrupted - try re-downloading the files.
For more info, please see Native Instruments' guide on how to add libraries to Kontakt.
Unless the product is listed as Kontakt Player compatible, the product is not activated in Native Access. Simply load the instrument NKI files from Kontakt's browser by drag-and-dropping or double-clicking. You can also add the files to Kontakt's Quickload or Database.
For more information on managing non-Kontakt Player libraries, please check out our Workflow Guide Part 1.
All files on our servers have been verified to be 100% correct and complete. If there are missing samples, there are only two possibilities:
1. An error occurred during extraction of the files. Make sure you are using either WinRAR (PC) or Keka (Mac) for extraction, and that you are only extracting Part1 for each library.
2. Your downloads did not complete fully. Verify the size of your downloaded RAR files with the listed size of the files on the download page. If the sizes do not match, download the incomplete files again. In general for any multi-part product, ALL parts except the final part should be the exact same size.
Our latest releases require the latest version of Kontakt to work; if, once you have downloaded and installed your instrument according to the installation instructions, you open an older version than we list in the "Requirements" section on the instrument's product page and look for your instrument in the library tab, that instrument will simply not appear.
Make sure that you are running the latest version of Kontakt (Player or full version, depending on what the requirements are on the product page), and you should be able to find your instrument!
System Requirements
Possibly - it depends on the library in question. If a library is Kontakt Player compatible, we will explicitly say so on the product page. Otherwise, we will explicitly say that the FULL version of Kontakt is required, and you CANNOT use Kontakt Player. Please read the product requirements carefully for any instrument you're interested in!
Unless otherwise noted, our catalog of instruments was developed exclusively for Kontakt. Kontakt offers the best combination of stability, efficiency, and features necessary to create inspiring and powerful libraries.
That being said, some of our libraries - like Juggernaut - do come with WAV samples which can be used in a variety of other sampling tools. We also have a Reason ReFill bundle of instruments designed for Propellerhead Reason.
It depends on the instrument. We've written tech requirements for very product on each product page. Some libraries take only a few hundred megabytes of space while others take more than 20 gigabytes. Generally speaking, we do recommend you have the minimum specs necessary for Kontakt itself: 4GB of RAM and a 2011 processor or better.
Shreddage Rock & Metal Instruments
We record all of our Shreddage guitar and bass instruments clean (direct-in / DI). You can use the built-in snapshots for our Shreddage 3 instruments to instantly set various amp and cab tones without using any external plugins! Click the "Console" tab to view all the possible FX. You can of course use your own plugins in your DAW as well.
There are plenty of resources available for Shreddage users! A great place to start is the official Impact Soundworks support forum on KVR Audio. We have stickied some useful tutorial information there, and there are various threads you can easily search through to find more information.
Each guitar also has a tips section in the product manual. Be sure to read that, as well as watch any tutorial videos on the product page.
We recommend using our built-in double, triple, and quad-tracking right on the "MAIN" page of all Shreddage 3. Just enable the number of guitars you want, and you're good to go! However, if you want to use multiple tracks with separate outputs, then you'll need to use the following method.
1. Add multiple instances of the guitar in Kontakt. For example, if you want to use double-tracking, add two instances.
2. Make sure all guitars are on the same MIDI channel, receiving the exact same MIDI Data.
3. Set a different multi-track guitar for each instance (for example, the first instance should only have guitar 1 selected, the second should only have guitar 2 selected) 4. Set each guitar to a different Kontakt output, which you can then mix and apply FX to in your host/DAW.
5. If you are quad-tracking, ensure that guitars 1 and 2 have "Anti-Repetition" turned OFF.
If you hear a "phasing" effect this may simply be natural phase cancellation occurring when two recordings of similar pitch are played together. You can mitigate this by panning the signals hard LEFT and RIGHT in your host mixer, then using a different amp/FX chain on each.
License Agreement
Because of the digital nature of our instruments, we generally do not allow license transfers: we have no way of verifying that the software has been deleted by the seller after the transfer. However, we do make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us for more information.
Yes! You can use our instruments on as many computers as you'd like, but only if YOU are the one using the instruments on those computers. For example, if you have a home PC and an office PC where you are the only user, you could install our instruments on both machines. However, if you have a studio machine shared by multiple people, multiple licenses must be obtained.
Please contact us for more information about multi-user licenses.
Yes, but only as part of custom contract or in-house work. For example, if you are hired to create sound effects for a video game, or you work as an in-house sound designer, you can use our libraries as part of your sound design work. However, you cannot upload sounds to stock SFX libraries or marketplaces like Audiojungle or Audiosparx.
Yes, this is fine. The only exception here is that if you sell your library music on a marketplace, and you offer the music in stems, no stem can consist of isolated sounds from our libraries. They must be in the context of other instruments.
Business Matters
We have a number of authorized distributors: Time & Space, Best Service, Crypton Future Media, Sonicwire, Nucleus Soundlab, Propellerhead.se, Guitar Center, Musicians Friend, Adorama, Pluginfox, Loot Audio, Sounds.com, BlueTech Audio, Fundamental AV, Sweet Spot Music Mark, RecordingSoftware.com, Okoboji Music Store, Guildwater Gear.
If you see our products being sold on eBay or by ANY other merchant, they are not legitimate and likely selling pirated copies. Do not purchase from them and instead, please contact us to report it. Thank you!
Yes, we can create custom / bespoke sample libraries for your studio or production. Send us an email and we can discuss your project in more depth.
Maybe! Please contact us and submit your credentials (portfolio, resume, previous beta testing experience). Please note that we get a lot of applications and it may be awhile before you hear from us.
It's possible. We've worked with many talented musicians and sound designers to create our instruments. However, ideas are easy to come by - execution is where the challenge lies. We prefer to work with musicians and sound designers who can record and create sounds to execute their idea, with our guidance and partnership. Please contact us to start a dialogue.