my newbie shame- I can't get Reaper to "find" Kontakt

I'm BRAND new to Reaper, after reading rave reviews online. I downloaded it today to my iMac, and went about trying to get Kontakt Player 4 onto a track. I did the "insert virtual instrument on a new track", and up came a list with everything on my computer (including stuff I didn't even know was there!)- but no Kontakt. I downloaded the Reaper user guide, went to the midi section- I didn't find any clues as to why Kontakt was hiding. (Kontakt IS on the system drive, not on an external drive that's not plugged in! :)) This is definitely user error- I'm sure of this- and I have no doubt that my shame will be trippled when the (certainly easy) solution is revealed. Despite doing a lot of recording on pro tools, I'm completely new to the world of "virtual instruments", and have only run those in Garageband. So if someone can point me in the right direction, that would make life a little easier. Thanks so much, Jeff

And you'll find the place to set that path to Kontakt in the Reaper menus as: Options

Kontakt Player is fine here (v3.5, on PC). I've often seen it recommended that you should start Kontakt in standalone mode after you install it, configure it and try out a few sounds. After that, close it and load it as a VSTi. perhaps running it standalone sorts out some Registry entries (or the equivalent on a Mac)?

I really appreciate the information, DarkStar. I think I might have found the reason I can't get Reaper to find Kontakt on my Mac: long story short: 64-bit Reaper on Mac doesn't have the "bridging" technology that is on the Windows 64-bit version, allowing the Windows version to run 32 bit programs. Not at the moment, at least. There's very little doubt in my mind that almost all of my problems in digital audio are "user related" :) However- in this rare instance- it might not be! :)

Isn't there a 64-bit version of Kontakt Player 4 for the Mac?

apparently not, DarkStar :) I just checked out the NI user group, and Kontakt 4 in STANDALONE is 64 bit, but otherwise is 32 (like au in logic). A moderator posted that there WILL be a true 64-bit version in the future, but the date is unknown.