I too am still challenged with K5 and thanks, Bob... After I get off my total high writing music with the new Ample Sound guitars, I'll give proper K5 routing setups a try again... my templates still don't work right but having way too much fun to even go there for a few days!

Great discussion on Kontakt and lots of tips.  Thanks Bob, and all.
 
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Kontakt 5 is absolutely an amazing piece of software, and is my go-to synth sound source.
 
Even with the current struggles to be able to properly deal with more than 5-6 loaded instruments in a given instance of it, working with Kontakt in Sonar is ridiculously easy, and incredibly well-suited for the kind of music I like to create.
 
Kontakt and Sonar track/project templates are a beautiful marriage.  Folks are always amazed at how quickly I can get a new project loaded up and playing top-notch synth sounds.
 
I am SOOOO looking forward to being able to load up 15-16 instruments into a single instance of K5, and be able to route audio tracks properly.
 
Bob Bone

WOW, I just listened to a YouTube clip from the Gibson flavor of Ample Sound Guitar.  Fabulous.
 
Bob Bone
 

Robert E Bone. You da man! I was going nuts trying to figure this out. Thanks man! Couldn't rename the various Kontakt 5 instances in the vst menu but the middle one is 16 so good enough for me. Cheers

To rename the Kontakt 5 dll's:
 

• Fire up the Cakewalk Plug-In Manager, under Utilities.
• In the Cakewalk Plug-In Manager, go to Plug-In Category VST Instruments (VSTi), and find the Kontakt entries, which will be listed in the list to the right, in the Registered Plug-Ins.
• Start with the first one you see listed, and click on it's name once, to highlight it in the list.  We need to see which of the dll's this one is, so we know what to rename it to.

 
Please note that there are 2 ways to do the following.  I will first go through the longer way, since that will also work for other plugins.  Then I will cover the shorter way, which works because of how the Kontalt dll's are named.
 
Longer Way:

• Now that the first Kontakt Dll is highlighted, a button becomes enabled in the section down below the list of registered plug-ins.  The button is labelled Plug-In Properties, and is the middle button in the VST Configuration section.  Click on the Plug-In Properties button - which will then open a dialog box with that dll's various properties.  
• Once the properties dialog box opens up, click on the button called Details, which will open up another dialog box with some additional details about this particular dll.  It is in this detail that you can see the number of outputs associated with this particular dll.  Make note of the number of outputs listed in this detail, and click OK, to close the Details dialog and bring you back to the Plug-In Properties dialog box.
• You see a text box with the name of the dll placed in there for you.  This text box is one of the places you can type in a new name for this particular dll.  I named my 3 Kontakt dll's: Kontakt 5 - 08 Outputs, Kontakt 5 - 16 Outputs, and Kontakt 5 - 64 Outputs.  Type in whatever you would like and click OK, for the one you are looking at.  Repeat for the other 2.

Shorter Way:
 

• Now that the first Kontakt Dll is highlighted, Sonar will pull in the file name for that dll, and due to the way Native Instruments chose to name their 3 dll files, it is easy to see which one is which.  The 3 names NI uses for the 3 Kontakt dll's are: Kontakt 5 8out.dll, Kontakt 5 16out.dll, and Kontakt 5.dll (this last one has 64 outputs, it is just not named as such)  So, make note of the file name for the one you have highlighted here, and then simply double-click on the one you have highlighted in the Registered Plug-In list.  This opens up a dialog box called Set Plug-In Friendly Name, and you can change the name here to be Kontakt 5 - 08 Outputs, or whichever one it is, then click OK and repeat all of this for the other 2 Kontakt dll's, and you are done.

I hope the above helps you to be able to rename these.
 
Please review the above and give it a shot, then post back with the results and any additional questions you may have.
 
Thanks, 
 
Bob Bone
 

Has anyone else noticed this behavior: When I have a project that contains a Kontakt (I mostly use the 8-out instance) instrument rack loaded already, and I use Sonar to "create a track template" from an existing, even un-associated MIDI or Audio track, -after I name the track template and click save, there will be a small pause and I see briefly a GUI window that looks like a Kontakt preferences panel (small mostly chalky gray interface), just before everything returns to "normal" (and the save is completed) -?  Again, this only happens for me when Kontakt is loaded, as otherwise this operation just saves quickly and with no other GUI splash.  -Jn-

If such a windows does pop up during creation of a track template, either I am just not paying any attention or it comes and goes so fast on my system that I never actually see it.
 
Do you have any way of recording the screen - maybe with your cell phone?  That way you could crop and zoom and freeze the playback to try to figure out what is on that pop up.
 
Just a thought.
 
Bob Bone
 

Hi Bob...had a go at doing this and everything is playing okay...however, that's the problem, if I select say the piano, and play on my midi-keyboard, all the other instruments are playing. So for the first midi track, as an input, I selected midi channel 1 on my Roland Pro 1 channel - named A-Pro 1 and that works okay, but when I try to do that for the next one - organ - nothing registers. The keyboard is transmitting but the input from it is not happening in Sonar. Everything else is set up to your specs. What am I doing incorrectly?
 
Thanks

Oh, it would appear that the midi on each Kontact instrument has to be set for the appropriate midi channel...so for 5 - bass - the midi is 5. So that all seems to work now. I am noticing however, that if I play say the bass on the keys, the Piano channel seems to be active. This is occurring for each instrument track I select and there seems to be a small amount of piano sound accompanying it.