NI Battery 4.2 update is out!

[EvilDragon]

the fixes they need to do to get M1, VST3 and resizable GUI's will not be done with the future in mind

This is not at all true. Newer plugins use Qt and are scalable. Qt is a well-established framework that is being constantly updated.

You bring up a lot of good points in the rest of this long post you just did and I agree with most of them, though.

[EvilDragon]

NI has farmed out a lot of work over the years and it seems like instead of saying, "we're going to use one framework for everything, and when we farm out DSP, we're going to take that code and work with whomever to bring that into our unified framework" (like Arturia), they took more of a Wild West approach.

Not quite. NI does have their own set of libraries and frameworks, and any 3rd party DSP (i.e. Softube) is just statically linked and ingested into NI's set of tools. The main problem is that "s", plural. There's like three different UI toolkits at NI, oldest of them stemming from

http://www.d-lusion.com/ProductsMJStudio.html

this company NI bought in what, 1999. And that MJ Studio became Traktor DJ, later Traktor.

Before this it was the REAL Wild West, each product had its own UI handling (separately coded for PC and Mac), it was really really bad So D-Lusion brought what became NGL, first UI toolkit that was from thereon used universally across everything. It's still in use in Kontakt and Reaktor today (unfortunately).

It is quite ironic that Traktor is up to date UI-wise (it's using Qt and is heavily optimized at that, too), yet the UI toolkit that stemmed from it is being used by NI's most known products.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Thanks for the insight ED. I pick on NI a little bit simply because I fear they may be headed down the sub-only road someday (I think we can all see it as within the realm of possibility in the next 5 years), but I really do want them to be successful in the short-term and I'm ultimately rooting for them. I've got a lot of NI products, and it's certainly in my own interests to see them updated and modernized. I just hope they go about it the right way and can dig themselves out of the hole they ended up in, creating a more agile future.

[machinesworking]

the fixes they need to do to get M1, VST3 and resizable GUI's will not be done with the future in mind

This is not at all true. Newer plugins use Qt and are scalable. Qt is a well-established framework that is being constantly updated.

You bring up a lot of good points in the rest of this long post you just did and I agree with most of them, though.

In context you can see that it's a prediction. As an end user all I can do is go off what NI have done in the past. I do care about it and them though, or I wouldn't be paying attention and commenting on it.

It's just frustrating because I feel like they don't care to change the pattern. Unlike others here I don't want their good coders to go to U-he etc. I want them to successfully fight to establish a healthy codebase that can be updated in a timely fashion when Apple throws them a curve ball or tech changes in general, but I do think there's a problem with larger companies like NI and this sort of thing, because pressure from marketing for new product is going to prevent maintenance of code, which is already any developers least favorite thing to do in the first place.

So hopefully you're right, and the newer plug ins are all adoptable, but then the question becomes why the hell aren't they already adopted and upgraded to VST3, M1 and scalable GUI's? It's just mind boggling to me. PSP are currently slowly rolling out M1 and VST3 compatibility, and that honestly keeps me feeling good about the company, though to be fair I'm not seeing any GUI improvement there.... Rolling out multiple new products with no end in sight where all three tech areas where they're behind are addressed, even on a individual level is a strange move to me.

[EvilDragon]

In case you didn't notice NI updated several more plugins to VST3, Rosetta and added scalability to Replika and Replika XT, just recently. Work on all those topics is underway, it just has to be chunked.

Scalable GUIs for stuff like Absynth, FM8, Massive, Kontakt and Reaktor is a tremendously complicated topic buried under a mountain of tech debt (because of that 20+ years old homebrew UI toolkit). But again, it's not like NI is not aware of this and that things aren't being done about it. It's just a metric shitton of work.

And of course, there has to be some financial feasibility to update those old things. For Kontakt and Reaktor the proposition is much clearer than for the rest. Which sadly probably means at some point Absynth/FM8/Massive might be discontinued - just a hunch, don't take it as official info. Actually Massive is tied into Maschine (due to Expansions) so maybe it's safe, but for how long is anyone's guess.

[machinesworking]

In case you didn't notice NI updated several more plugins to VST3, Rosetta and added scalability to Replika and Replika XT, just recently. Work on all those topics is underway, it just has to be chunked.

Scalable GUIs for stuff like Absynth, FM8, Massive, Kontakt and Reaktor is a tremendously complicated topic buried under a mountain of tech debt (because of that 20+ years old homebrew UI toolkit). But again, it's not like NI is not aware of this and that things aren't being done about it. It's just a metric shitton of work.

And of course, there has to be some financial feasibility to update those old things. For Kontakt and Reaktor the proposition is much clearer than for the rest. Which sadly probably means at some point Absynth/FM8/Massive might be discontinued - just a hunch, don't take it as official info. Actually Massive is tied into Komplete Start so maybe it's safe, but for how long is anyone's guess.

I would say that's a rational guess, including that Massive might stumble along. I'm glad we have Brian working on Plasmonic, but I do wish he'd stuck at NI, released Absynth 6 with all sorts of improvements etc. FM8 was always a solid DX7+ emulation, but now that there's a half dozen DX7 clones it's mostly replaceable. Nothing quite like Absynth though.

[EvilDragon]

Yeah I'm pretty sad about Absynth. All it needs is a better GUI and some better filters and that's it. It is extremely unique.

[danbroad]

Thanks for the kind insights, ED.

My main worry is that delay makes them seem… underprepared/underesourced. Which for any company [or its clients] rocks confidence. I appreciate there’s a huge amount of work, but if ever there was a ‘throw every available resource we have at it’ task on the company risk register, surely this would be it.

So while I’m sure NI will get there with K6 nd R6 [especially Kontakt given the huge reach of the platform to linked content developers] it makes this proud company appear…hmmm… less of a sure thing I guess.. especially as we are >12 months in. Hoping that the updates appear soon.

[dune_rave]

i still have the box for absynth3 - bought at the 10th anniversary promotion (or 15th...?)

[Rickskii]

Anybody having trouble getting native access to run on M1 Mac. I have used before but now just "waiting to connect....."

Thanks Rick.

[AnX]

It is extremely unique.

It's either unique, or it isn't, there is no "extremely"

[vurt]

It is extremely unique.

It's either unique, or it isn't, there is no "extremely"

are there degrees of pedantry?

[bmanic]

Did they fix the bug where Battery 4 refuses to find the correct location for factory content when a friend of mine sends a modified Battery 4 kit? He has his factory sample set installed in a different directory than me which causes battery to not load the samples.. even though every single sample is a factory kit sample. This is highly frustrating for anybody trying to collaborate on a project.

[noiseboyuk]

are there degrees of pedantry?

Yes - capital A please at the start of your sentence.

[vurt]

are there degrees of pedantry?

Yes - capital A please at the start of your sentence.

how insensitive
i lost my capitals in the alphabet wars.