Frequently asked questions

Payment

The most convenient is a credit card. Our transaction provider accepts VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and JCB. Moreover, payments via PayPal or Giropay, as well as prepayments via wire transfer or check are possible. You will find all the available options on the first transaction page. Click there on [i] for further details.

The payments can be done in 15 different currencies. However, if you prefer to pay in US Dollars, British Pounds or any currency other than Euro, please consider that various exchange fees will be applied. For currencies other than USD or GBP, for example, the charge applied by ShareIt/MyCommerce can be as much as 9 %. The charges for USD or GBP may still be 3 %. Due to the above fees, and to fluctuations of the currency exchange rates, the prices in USD and GBP indicated on our transaction pages will not reflect the current price in Euro, and will be usually higher.




Therefore we recommend paying in Euro, if possible. In this case Share-it/MyCommerce will charge you exactly the price indicated in EUR. Any additional charges will depend solely on your bank or credit card provider. Credit card providers, for example, typically charge from 1% to 2% only. Consult your bank or credit card provider for your rate. The fee will be in any case much less than 9 % - most likely below 2 %.

One of the main advantages of the download sales is the immediate delivery of the product at any time of the day or night. So, once the payment is accepted, it is a matter of minutes till you get the e-mails. Even better: the download links and the License number(s) are also shown in your browser right after the transaction, so there is even no need to wait.
In very rare cases the payment might be subject to some further routine checks, required for example by your own credit card provider. This may lead to a delay of several hours.

Please note that the total price is the sum of several items which you probably do not need or have to pay:

    

  • VAT. Please note that the initial price displayed on the order page may include the VAT. Whether you finally have to pay the VAT or not, depends on the country of your residence. Corporate European customers may apply their VAT-ID. The final price to be payed will be displayed on the payment page, before you click on "Buy now" button. Please note that more and more countries and states require the VAT payment. For more information please contact ShareIt/MyCommerce, the transaction provider (see our Contact page for details), or your local fiscal authority.
    • 

  • Extended Download. This option is a service of our transaction provider (your download links will remain valid 2 years). You may remove this option by clicking on the bin.

To display the actual price (after changes), click on “Update” button or simply continue the payment procedure.

Yes. The purchaser may choose under more that 20 languages. Some languages are accessible directly from our BUY page. The others can be chosen in the right upper corner of the first transaction page at ShareIt/MyCommerce.
ShareIt (former name) and MyCommerce are the names of our shop and transaction provider, selling our products and managing various payment systems. It is based in Cologne, Germany, and belongs to Digital River – a worldwide acting company with its headquarter in Minneapolis, USA.

Product purchase

We sell our products per download only. Please enter the product BUY page, read the information and follow the appropriate buy links to MyCommerce, our online shop provider. For further information see below.

We do not offer physical (boxed) products. However, you can easily order the download product together with a physical CD/DVD, activating “Backup Media”, an option on the transaction page (which is the service of our shop provider). Plain, unmarked CD(s) or DVD(s) will be created and mailed in a simple paper envelope within 2 days. The postal delivery may take up to 25 days, depending on the country. The cost of this option (12,5 EUR) does include the postage. Please refer to the detailed information provided on the the ShareIt/MyCommerce pages in 21 languages.

For our earlier products (Brass) we provide professionally designed Inlay Card(s) and DVD-label(s) as pdf/jpg, downloadable from our website. The Inlay Card is designed for the standard DVD box. Please refer to the respective "download" sections of the product on our website to download the required files.

There are no local dealers selling our instruments. They can only be purchased via direct download from our website with the exception of Japan and China. In the latter case the sales are for the Chinese internal market only. Purchasers outside China are not accepted, and the products cannot be resold to any other country except China.
Buying from any other sources is illegal.

After completing the online transaction (see below), you will receive (usually within a few minutes) an email containing all necessary links to our product(s): PC and Mac content files, installation guides etc., as well as to the Kontakt Player software. Following these links you can download the files (usually as ZIP archives). Furthermore, your Serial (License) Number (one per product) will be included in the email as well. This is your personal key for the proper product activation. All the above links and keys will be also displayed in your browser right after the transaction/payment. It´s essential that you type your e-mail address without errors; misspelled addresses will not work!




The online transaction is perfectly safe. Should you, for any reasons, be unable to download the files, you would get your money back. This, however, never happened so far - see below.

ShareIt/MyCommerce - our shop and transaction provider - runs many servers all over the world, so the links are always working. Should you or your internet provider have temporary problems -> see below.

The links you can view after the transaction, and receive via e-mail, are valid for 1 month. During this period the download can be carried out several times if necessary.




If you prefer, you can select and purchase the Extended Download option, a service of our shop provider; the links will remain valid for 2 years.

No, by clicking on the product link on our BUY page you will simply (and safely) enter the transaction page. The ultimate purchase is clearly announced and cannot be completed before entering all the necessary data and accepting the Terms and Conditions.

Yes. After ordering a product and completing the payment (see above) the purchaser receives an e-mail containing the download links, sent by our transaction provider ShareIt/MyCommerce. It´s entirely up to you when and where you download the instrument(s) – it can be done later (within 1 month) from any other computer.

However, please do not forget to copy the content of the received e-mails and keep them in a safe place, since they contain also the license numbers, absolutely necessary for the product activation.

Our instruments are designed and programmed on an existing, advanced platform, licensed by Native Instruments, a company based in Berlin. Kontakt – either in the full version or as the free, read-only Kontakt Player downloadable with our products – is the host for our software and acts as a stand-alone application, or as a plug-in in all possible standards. For that reason Native Instruments provides also the copy protection technology, registration data base for our customers, and the second level technical support for the Kontakt Player software.
Our prices are calculated at the lowest limit. They are equal for everybody – we do not have any special prices for certain user groups.

There is no trial or demo version. This is due to several technical reasons, including copy protection mechanisms.

However, we did our best to show the instruments in a lot of demonstrations - many of them done by the customers shortly after buying the instrument(s) (see our demo page and the forum). Moreover, we show the instruments also under extreme "pure" conditions: solo, often with no reverb, and without influencing the sound by any means. The downloadable example MIDI files (see the Download page) shows in every detail how some of the demo tracks are programmed. This transparent approach proved to be perfectly suitable, providing more than sufficient information for potential buyers.

The way our instruments are bundled or left as a single instrument has two reasons:
- "historical"; i.e. when they have been developed and added to our program, and
- technical; the encoding, done by Native Instruments, and licensing of the copy protection and the Player software dictate the bundling.

This means: we cannot group or separate the instruments as we like; any extra bundle would lead to higher licenses, thus to a higher retail price.

After entering a wrong or misspelled email address the system will be unable to send you the purchased content or to communicate with you. This, however, does not represent a real problem. Please contact ShareIt / My Commerce and ask them to correct the email address.

Technical aspects

If you did not backup your data, or the backup is no longer available or does not work, send us an e-mail providing the serial number(s) of the lost instrument(s). We will create new, personal product links for you. Please note that this service requires additional work and server space, so it can be only offered for some, albeit small, fee. To avoid the charge, we strongly recommend to immediately backup the downloaded files - for example on a CD/DVD or another drive.
After registering (authorizing) the product, your license key (serial number) is managed by Native Instruments in their data base. You can view it either via the Native Access (their installation utility) or via your personal account at Native Instruments site. For more details see “I lost my serial number!” in the section 2 “If you already purchased or installed an instrument”.
Native Access (former “Service Center”) is a utility which the Kontakt installer installs on your system. It remarkably facilitates the management of the authorizations, downloads and updates of all Kontakt-, Kontakt-based, and other Native Instruments applications.

Kontakt is a player software necessary to make our instruments work. There are two versions available:

    

  • Free Kontakt Player version. It´s added to all our products, so no additional software is needed;
    • 

  • Kontakt – the full version. If you own the right version already, you do not need to download the free player.



There is no difference between both versions as far as the functionality of our instruments is concerned.

If you are using our free Kontakt Player, you can easily upgrade to the full Kontakt version – see Native Instrument site for details.

It depends on the release date of the instruments. Newer instruments may need more recent versions of Kontakt to run. Earlier versions will work with the most recent Kontakt versions anyway. Please refer to the User Manual or Installation Guide of the instrument(s) for more details.
Yes. According to the license agreement you are allowed to install the software on two systems, if both belong to the same user.
Moving to another computer is generally possible - provided that it belongs to the same user and uses exactly the same Native Instruments Native Access account. For further details please refer to the question "Can I move the software to a new computer", in Part 2 of "If you already purchased or installed an instrument", under "Administration, downloads, installation".

The files have approximately the following sizes (both PC and Mac; all the files are ZIP archives):



    

  • The Trumpet: 280 MB
    • 

  • French Horn & Tuba: 280 MB
    • 

  • The Trombone: 720 MB
  • Solo and Ensemble Strings: 5,1 GB
  • Samplemodeling Brass: 1.3 GB

Unlike conventional sample libraries which needs gigabytes of pre-recorded samples with fixed articulations, our instruments need much less space on the disk, since it is our technology which makes the samples "alive" and creates various articulations.

The instrument size on the disc, after installation (without the Kontakt software) will be approximately the same size as the downloaded product files indicated above.

Offline activation is no longer supported by Native Instruments. You need at least a temporary Internet connection for the activation procedure. Once the authorization/activation process is completed, you do not need to remain online. For further details please contact Native Instruments support.
The operating system on which our Kontakt-based instruments are running is entirely dictated by the Kontakt/Kontakt Player version. To find out whether it is compatible with your Windows or Mac OS version, please refer to the Kontakt documentation. Which is the right Kontakt version for our instruments can be found in the User Manual or Installation Guide.
Wind and breath controllers are very suitable for our software. To optimize the results, we added the Wind and Breath Controller Mode. Our customers confirm very good responsiveness and very intuitive control of the instruments. Which wind controller is the best is the matter of personal preferences. Mostly used are the WX-series of Yamaha and AKAI's EWI.

Administration, downloads, installations

Updates or Upgrades are announced on our News page or in our Newsletter. You will find there also the explanation how to get them.

We strongly recommend to backup the downloaded content anyway, and keep it in a safe place - exactly as if it were a “boxed” product. Should, for some reasons, your files get lost, please check the following:

  • if you purchased the product not longer than 1 month ago, you can still use your download links you received right after the purchase; multiple downloads are possible;
    • 

  • if you purchased the option “Extended Download”, the links are valid even 2 years.

If the above does not apply to you, please contact us via the contact page.

The Serial Number (or “license key”) is your unique, personal key activating the downloaded instruments. Fortunately, you cannot “lose” it - it is stored safely on Native Instruments server, in your personal account. Open Native Access, click on “Installed products”, then on the product name (e.g. “Solo & Ensemble Strings”). This will open a window with further information – among others the serial number. In case you have no access to Native Access (system crash etc.), all the serial numbers, and all necessary individual information to your products can be found on your personal account at Native Instruments.

Yes. There is no difference if you copy the library content from the zip file you have just purchased, or the library content from your “old” computer. Just follow these steps:

  • make sure that you have the right Kontakt version (and Native Access) installed on your new computer. You can download the free Kontakt Player version from the Native Instruments site (see Installation Guide for details);
  • locate the library folder(s) on your “old” computer (for example: “The Trumpet 3”, or “Solo & Ensemble Strings”). To easily locate the right folder, open your Kontakt software, find the library in the Kontakt browser and click on the small triangle icon near “Instruments”. This will open a menu. Click on “Open containing folder”. This way you will see exactly where your library is located.
  • apply further installation steps as described in the Installation Guide (as if it were a new instrument)

This (extremely rare) case may happen if your internet provider or your email client rejects the e-mail as spam. Please contact ShareIt/MyCommerce and report the problem, using the contact options below:

  • Customer Service USA (Language: English)
    
Email: support@us.shareit.com
    
Phone: +1 952 646-5747 (for calls from outside the U.S.) or +1 800 903-4152 (for calls within the U.S.)
    
Fax: +1 952 646-4552
  • Customer Service Europe and other countries
    
(Languages: German/English/French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese)
    
Email: support-eng@shareit.com (replace "eng" by "ger" for German, "fre" for French, "spa" for Spanish, "ita" for Italian and "por" for Portuguese)
    
Phone: +49 221 31088-20
    
Fax: +49 221 31088-29
The proper invoice is always attached as a pdf file to the email containing the download links. This email is sent after verification of your payment (usually within a few minutes). For more details - see above ("After purchase, I did not get any e-mails from ShareIt / MyCommerce")

Download after purchase

If a link seems to be not working, it is most likely truncated. Some e-mail applications split longer links into 2 lines. The result: only the first line remains highlighted (blue) as a link. If you click on it, this (truncated) link will of course not work. The remedy: please identify the link in its whole length (it should end with ".ZIP" or ".RAR", most likely in the next line), copy it (its full length!) and paste into your Browser. Press "Enter". Done!

General

Our instruments are based on the Kontakt / Kontakt Player software. Native Instruments is its developer and the licensor. Their customer support takes care of all technical questions related to the installation, authorization/registration, functionality within various hosts/sequencers, MIDI control and all the other Kontakt-related issues.

If you wish to contact Native Instruments support by phone, here you will find the phone numbers.

Each ordered CD/DVD will be manufactured individually and mailed (in an ordinary paper envelope) to any place in the world. Although usually it will reach the recipient in about one week, in some countries it may take even up to 20 workdays.

We are not allowed to send you any newsletters if you did not explicitly agree to receive them.

If you did not receive any, it means that you did not accept the newsletter option while purchasing the instrument. Even so - if you wish to receive them in the future, please let us know.

Our Forum can be read by any visitor. Posting in the Forum, however, is reserved to our customers. If you are a customer, enter the Forum page and click on Register (which actually means “I wish to apply for registration”). After that, you will receive an e-mail, asking for details. You need to reply to this e-mail, providing the required information. Shortly thereafter your account will be activated, and a confirmation message will be sent to you.

Software functionality

As explained in the documentation, and on our web page, the dynamics of our instruments are controlled by so-called Continuous Controllers (CC) which are, according to the MIDI standard, either CC11 (Expression), or CC2 (Expression on Wind- or Breath-Controller), or CC7 (Volume). Use of an expression CC is absolutely essential to play our instruments. For that reason the instrument displays an error message reminding the user that he has not yet connected a CC11 source. Trying to play without expression control is like trying to play a real wind instrument without blowing into it, or not bowing a string instrument, or driving a car without the gas pedal.




Simply stated, it will not work!




As soon as you send CC11 (or 2, if set as BC/Wind Controller mode) to the instrument, the message will disappear and the instrument will be ready to play. Though not recommended, any other CC can be mapped to expression using the remapping menu.

The recommended buffer size is 256 or 512 samples. Due to particular buffer handling in the Kontakt software, buffer size larger than 512 may lead to unwanted side effects.
See “Buffer Size” above. Some hosts (like Logic) may use different buffer size settings for real time playing and bouncing/mixing/freezing. Make sure that the buffer size is set to 256 or 512 samples also for mixing/bouncing if you experience problems described above.
Our instrument engine allows more than one instrument to be loaded in a single Kontakt instance. However, this is not recommended for two reasons: the instruments may interfere with each other what may lead to strange distortions of the sound; moreover, using separate Kontakt instances leads to a better system performance (more instruments can be played).

The structure and the location of the library files must not be changed, otherwise the samples, mutes, reverb-IRs or other content cannot be loaded, and the instrument won´t work.




If you moved the library to another location, use the Native Access utility to define the new library path.

Please note that our software has been carefully developed and tested in many many different environments. After all, it´s successfully working on thousands of systems. If it does not properly work on yours, please make sure that you:

thoroughly read the Documentation
followed the installation instructions exactly as described in the Documentation
did not make any changes in the file structure of the software (like, for example, moving some files to another drive).
provided the essential MIDI CCs as explained in the Manual.

If you experience any Kontakt-related problems (including software activation issues), please contact the Native Instruments technical support, providing the problem description and details about your system.

If you wish to contact their support by phone, the phone numbers can be found here.

Should your question be very detailed and specific, related to our technology and our unique features, we will willingly help as well. Please contact us using the Contact Page.

×
technology products company news faq contact forum