I made this thread beacause I wanted to get your opinions on what directions certain products are going with Native Instruments. I guess Traktor is the money maker and that's own it's own:
Maschine-Maybe turns into a DAW in the future or NI team up with another company to do it?
Absynth 5- Not Sure
FM 8-Not Sure
Massive-Not sure
Kontakt- Will continue to be developed
Guitar Rig- Maybe they drop guitar from it and just call it "The Rig". It will be used just as an effects rack maybe?
Battery 3- The battery 3 library will get put in Kontakt 6 or the maschine library.

The focus I'm guessing in the future will be around Maschine, Kontakt 5, Guitar Rig, and Reaktor. I think NI is trying to consolidate their products. Maybe FM 8, Absynth, and Massive sounds get put into Reaktor. BTW, do you guys think those synths are getting too old? I'm ready for new synths from them. I'm just thinking out loud.

Every NI Synth from K7 on is fully x64 compatible so even if they discontinue a product down the line it will still work. K7 covers just about every sonic base imaginable.

Sounds old? Only you can judge what sounds and synthesis you're after and whether the synths in question can provide it. Before you start looking for synths you should have a certain sound(s) in mind.

MHO:
Kontakt, Traktor, the synths, etc. - all on solid ground, but it will be interesting to say how things morph/consolidate.

I worry about Reaktor, which though klunky (I'm not a fan of the way sample maps and snapshots are tied to the ensemble), still has awesome potential. The core stuff sounds great and Razor proved it's a capable platform for a modern synth with a great UI (the Reaktor global UI not withstanding). But it's been sooooo long since an update, and the user-community may be waning a bit. I hope NI stays committed, releases and update, and we see a resurgence of development.

JoeCat I would not worry to much about Reaktor, if anything will stick around and be improved it would be that. It is now NI main synth development environment, and they put a great deal of effort into it. Massive is more likely to get the boot. Also remember Scanner just came out.
Sometimes there is no update because they see the product as stable, and they are working on meaningful enhancements which can take awhile.

I hope they push Reaktor tbh, and make it a something a lot more accessible in terms of the learning curve needed to program ensembles in it.

There are tutorials, etc, but i'd love to see a dedicated site to it where everything you want to know is available.

As for the rest, I hope nothing gets axed and they just continue to add to the collection.

This is true - there've been a few major efforts along with Razor - Skanner, Prism., etc. I think Massive will be around a while though - it's especially relevant to a particular genre



The docs are very detailed, but yeah, it would be great if the user-community site was updated so it wasn't so much a library and forum but something a little more interactive.

Reaktor is also underrated as a learning environment - even if you're interested in coding a plug from scratch, it's a great way to see how things fit together, etc. I've yet to put my first ensemble together but hopefully before the end of the year.

Focus on maschine, it sure doesn't look like it at the moment.

NI have neglected maschine for months now and fnaly today we get an announcement that appart from offline time stretch (great)
They have not added any of the essential missing features to the upcoming 1.8

No midi import..ugh

No multi core support

No multi timbral plugin support.

No midi groove templates

No RX2 batch import or RX2 preview

In fact it makes me sad to say that Native Instruments are possibly the slowest developer out there.

I never thought I would be posting this, big NI fan but maschine and general software development from NI is painfully slow.

Plenty of sound packs though.

Topaz- I read your complaint on the Maschine forum. Sounds like your mad because you didn't get what you wanted. Saving samples and timestretching were highly requested. Regardless, NI deliver quality stuff. I might not agree with everything they do, but this is a business. Why not just sell your maschine, and move on. Development is slow because their working on things. I hope they don't do on the record or free updates anymore. NI users are so ungrateful on that forum.

Funny you say this. I thought exactly the same. The development of Maschine has definitely slowed down. Me too was happy to see an update - but apart from time stretch, it felt kind of meh.

I wonder why. The step to hosting VST plugins came quite quick - and I cannot imagine how such a trivial matter as timestretch could have taken so long to add.

/C

Don't get too excited, it's offline time stretch, no excuse for that as maschine uses software they already have all the beat machine time stretch algos in Kontakt.

All the things I mentioned have been major requests by long term maschine users, it's got 0 to do with what I want.

Hey, it seems that there were some serious behind-the-scenes work at NI. I don't remember that many news from them lately.

Yeah - I also get that impression. That NI is putting up ads about them hiring new people is a bit surprising. Either the company is going extraordinary well or lots of people have quit.

/C

Wait I missed that. They did't put the same time stretching in Maschine as from Kontakt. That sucks IMO.... I like Kontakts timestretching personally. Oh well....

No, it's offline stretch, like sound forge was in 1990