@SP. thanks for responding and for the tip about the screenshot thing! I couldn't find that for whatever reason earlier lol. In screenshot 56 you can see how I have all the Kontakt outputs linked to the 10 different DAW tracks. The stereo track for output 7+8 is shown as an example. All the rest of them are done likewise for the numbers they should be. You can also see that the audio is playing for everything in Kontakt but only the kick drum on 1+2 is actually coming through to the DAW track. And the drum bus.

Then in screenshot 57, you can see the master output that I have set to "st.1 [2 channels, routed 1|2]". This is kinda where I think the issue might be from my hours of tinkering with settings and such, but it's what all the other tutorials for the other DAWs said to do. So I'm not really sure...

Then lastly in screenshot 58 you can how I added the stereo tracks in Kontakt. But those aren't the issue as far as I can tell since they all work exclusively within Kontakt showing the correct audio levels when the midi is playing.

Anyway, I hope this sheds some clarity on the matter. Just let me know if you need any more info. And thank you for your input, I really appreciate it!

Jacob

@Jacob-Isaac Maybe you simply selected the incorrect inputs on the tracks except for kick drum inputs.

This is how I did it and it works fine.

I put Kontakt on track 1. It had one st1 output, I added st2, st3 and st4. Then I selected st1 as the output for the kick drum, st2 for snare, st3 for toms and st4 for cymbals. As you can see on the screenshot st1 is on channels 1|2. But st2, st3 and st4 are on the channels 11-16. The channels 3-10 were already occupied by the available AUX busses.

Next, I made sure, the tracks had the correct input (1|2 and 11|12 - 15|16):

For example, channels 11|12 are on position 6 from the input list, channels 13|14 are on position 7 and so on. The names that are visible in the list seem to be wrong and not relevant.

It works fine with that setup. Kick routes to track 2, snare to track 3, toms to track 4 and cymbals to track 5.

Awesome, that's super encouraging to see that someone else has the same stuff as me and that it actually works haha. I'm seeing a few big differences in how yours looks compared to mine so I'm definitely doing something wrong lol. I should hopefully have a good chunk of time sometime in the next few days to try it out. I'll keep ya posted! And thank you again!!!

@SP. Hey again, so I tried making mine look exactly like yours and I still couldn't get it to work, unfortunately. I also upgraded to Kontakt 7, which didn't seem to help any either. I'm beginning to wonder if it's a Kontakt issue cause on the screenshots you shared, the outputs you were using all had unique names while the rest were all labelled "unassigned". Whereas with mine they all say "Kontakt (1+2), Kontakt (3+4), etc...) even with the unassigned ones. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Seeing it work on yours is super cool and I feel like there's just one button or something somewhere that I'm just not clicking haha.

Side note, I emailed the guys at GGD the same day I started this thread, and aside from the initial reply asking for more detailed info I haven't got a response yet.

Thanks again!

@Jacob-Isaac On your screenshot your track is set to MIDI Record and the selected MIDI input is the from the audio interface. I don't see that you selected the Kontakt Outputs as audio inputs of your track.

Regarding unassigned outputs, how are your Kontakt Outputs configured? I only configured a handful of them.

@SP. Ok, so I changed them all to audio record and selected the Kontakt output so it matches the 6th screenshot you sent. I must've forgotten to do that when making the new session to try again. Now all 10 tracks are selected to their corresponding Kontakt outputs like the track "St. 3, (5+6)" in the below example screenshot:

Then in this one, you can see how all of the 10 tracks are routed in the VSTi tab:

Then about your second question, here are some screenshots showing how I have routed the drums in Kontakt. I just used the snazzy ten-track multi-out feature that is built-in. I did try manually selecting them all instead of using the built-in preset, but it didn't seem to make a difference:

And then lastly, here is a short video that shows everything all together playing with only the audio from the kick drum which is routed through the first stereo pair:

Thank you for your time!

Wait, here's the video lol. It didn't want to upload before.

@SP. So I downloaded the trail of Music Studio X8... and it works! Got it working in about one minute 😅. So I guess it must've just been a bug or limitation like you said. Unfortunate, but at least it's not that much to upgrade when you have a previous version. Thank you so much for all your help! I would've been too stubborn with it to think of just trying a newer version lol. Much appreciated!

@Jacob-Isaac Yeah, I tried it with my version of Music Studio 2021 and encountered the same problem as you, but it worked fine in X8. The new version has a lot of bug fixes and better VST3 integration.