Native Instruments Layoffs?

[pdxindy]

Some prefer to complain.

Every criticsm holds an opportunity to better your product.

But of course, you need the volition to listen instead of dismissing every argument with a fallacy.

Well, there's criticism and criticism.

I can understand that people feel disappointed. I bought the upgrade mainly for MX. It doesn't even fire up anymore after a bad update and is now 'sitting in the basement'. Necessary updates have also been very slow. So, yeah, disappointement is understandable.

Betrayal is really overstating it of course.

Yeah... Betrayal is personalizing what is a consumer choice.

I do feel disappointed. It is not NI's fault that I was hasty to upgrade and didn't test the demo enough... so it is my fault for leaping before looking and I am disappointed with the result. I didn't expect NI to release something so inkomplete.

[recursive one]

MX wasn't well received and people don't seem to consider that such sound and all the awesome features MX has got, including some very innovative ones, can excuse its numerous but minor flaws, I think it's even somehow sad. This actually makes me worry about the MX fate, especially in view of the recent news, looks like it's a prime candidate for being discontiuned in favour of Machine expansions, 8-knob romplers and such.

I don't consider its flaws minor... no midi learn is not minor. A barely functional browser that offers no organizational possibilities whatsoever is not minor. Having to click on 18 different tabs to determine all the possible targets for a macro is not minor. And while it might not matter to some others, that MX is incapable of using expression pedal or breath controller or respond to PolyAT (Original Massive does) those are not minor to me.

It is not possible for me to assign a knob on my midi controller to filter cutoff
It is not possible to duplicate an Osc I like in one preset to another as there are no parameter values or copy paste options.

The workflow is so clumsy... no mousewheel support, no arrow key support, so many tiny little menus and tabs.

I agree it is a top synth in terms of sound quality... but it is a bottom synth in terms of everything else.

Yes... I don't even notice some of things you mentioned and I can live with some others. But I do understand your critique is vaild, we all have differents ways of programming and playing synths anyway.

But I'm afraid we are going to see only cosmetic improvements in foreseeable future. We'll be lucky if they implement that LFO phase control, not to say about osc panning.

So I'm prepared to feel deeply, hardheatedly and inexcusably betrayed and disrespected

[Stefken]

Some prefer to complain.

Every criticsm holds an opportunity to better your product.

But of course, you need the volition to listen instead of dismissing every argument with a fallacy.

Well, there's criticism and criticism.

I can understand that people feel disappointed. I bought the upgrade mainly for MX. It doesn't even fire up anymore after a bad update and is now 'sitting in the basement'. Necessary updates have also been very slow. So, yeah, disappointement is understandable.

Betrayal is really overstating it of course.

It is not NI's fault that I was hasty to upgrade ... I didn't expect NI to release something so inkomplete.

Well, let's not forget that MX was released JUST before the end of the upgrade sale (on the 27th of the month). I upgraded before it was released. It was a calculated risk. It got some nice FX, some sounds, and TRK-01 which I still have to explore and actually consider an underrated product.
It's a shame that it didn't get more attention as I think it surely deserves it.

MX on the other hand is as you say: good sound but a disappointement on so many other fronts.
With the unstability at NI, I fear we might never see a product worthy of a Massive successor.
Management may already have dismissed it as a lost cause as I think they will be slimming down to their succesfull products like e.g. Kontakt.

[vurt]

this is layoffs.
can we stay on topic please
for the sake of the mods sanity if nothing else.

[Forgotten]

It’s probably not worthwhile focusing on any particular NI product at this point, as I’m sure they have plenty of work to do before they can focus on user feedback of any kind.

[pdxindy]

MX wasn't well received and people don't seem to consider that such sound and all the awesome features MX has got, including some very innovative ones, can excuse its numerous but minor flaws, I think it's even somehow sad. This actually makes me worry about the MX fate, especially in view of the recent news, looks like it's a prime candidate for being discontiuned in favour of Machine expansions, 8-knob romplers and such.

I don't consider its flaws minor... no midi learn is not minor. A barely functional browser that offers no organizational possibilities whatsoever is not minor. Having to click on 18 different tabs to determine all the possible targets for a macro is not minor. And while it might not matter to some others, that MX is incapable of using expression pedal or breath controller or respond to PolyAT (Original Massive does) those are not minor to me.

It is not possible for me to assign a knob on my midi controller to filter cutoff
It is not possible to duplicate an Osc I like in one preset to another as there are no parameter values or copy paste options.

The workflow is so clumsy... no mousewheel support, no arrow key support, so many tiny little menus and tabs.

I agree it is a top synth in terms of sound quality... but it is a bottom synth in terms of everything else.

Yes... I don't even notice some of things you mentioned and I can live with some others. But I do understand your critique is vaild, we all have differents ways of programming and playing synths anyway.

But I'm afraid we are going to see only cosmetic improvements in foreseeable future. We'll be lucky if they implement that LFO phase control, not to say about osc panning.

So I'm prepared to feel deeply, hardheatedly and inexcusably betrayed and disrespected

I look forward to your posts based on those feelings...

If I didn't have lots of great sounding plugins (and hardware) I would make do with MX as is. But I do, so I can afford to be picky

Looking forward to MX2

[vurt]

It’s probably not worthwhile focusing on any particular NI product at this point, as I’m sure they have plenty of work to do before they can focus on user feedback of any kind.

they've only laid off 30 or so engineers.
not like they've lost every code monkey.
that could just be older product peeps?

[Stefken]

this is layoffs.
can we stay on topic please
for the sake of the mods sanity if nothing else.

I'm sorry but this IS on topic.
I'm discussing products and their future considering the lay-offs.

[pixel85]

You can kiss good-bye all your hopes for a new Absynth version.

Or at the very least the wait will be a protracted one.

Wasn't Absynth acquired by NI from another dev who stopped working on it ages ago?
If I remember correctly death of Absynth was confirmed.

But even then Absynth, FM8, Massive, GuitarRig, Kontakt, Reaktor - all of them are based on 'old code' and it was mentioned here that some updates like scalable GUI is beyond the scope now - it was because if they really want to rebuild company architecture (or restructure or whatever) then most likely the ghost of old code will haunt all this software for veeeeeery long time and I wouldn't expect that they will prioritize development of eg. Absynth or FM8.

[pixel85]

It’s probably not worthwhile focusing on any particular NI product at this point, as I’m sure they have plenty of work to do before they can focus on user feedback of any kind.

they've only laid off 30 or so engineers.
not like they've lost every code monkey.
that could just be older product peeps?

You mean they removed old corpses of Absynth and GR developers?

[vurt]

It’s probably not worthwhile focusing on any particular NI product at this point, as I’m sure they have plenty of work to do before they can focus on user feedback of any kind.

they've only laid off 30 or so engineers.
not like they've lost every code monkey.
that could just be older product peeps?

You mean they removed old corpses of Absynth and GR developers?

keeps the corpses, you dont have to pay zombies.

[Stefken]

You can kiss good-bye all your hopes for a new Absynth version.

Or at the very least the wait will be a protracted one.

Wasn't Absynth acquired by NI from another dev who stopped working on it ages ago?
If I remember correctly death of Absynth was confirmed.

Yes

But even then Absynth, FM8, Massive, GuitarRig, Kontakt, Reaktor - all of them are based on 'old code' and it was mentioned here that some updates like scalable GUI is beyond the scope now - it was because if they really want to rebuild company architecture (or restructure or whatever) then most likely the ghost of old code will haunt all this software for veeeeeery long time and I wouldn't expect that they will prioritize development of eg. Absynth or FM8.

That is a pickle but I think that it finally caught up on them.
A user should not care about the technical aspects and from his point of view the UI's didn't get updated for a long time (no matter for what reasons) while other companies do provide all this. Patience runs out...

[vurt]

You can kiss good-bye all your hopes for a new Absynth version.

Or at the very least the wait will be a protracted one.

Wasn't Absynth acquired by NI from another dev who stopped working on it ages ago?
If I remember correctly death of Absynth was confirmed.

Yes

But even then Absynth, FM8, Massive, GuitarRig, Kontakt, Reaktor - all of them are based on 'old code' and it was mentioned here that some updates like scalable GUI is beyond the scope now - it was because if they really want to rebuild company architecture (or restructure or whatever) then most likely the ghost of old code will haunt all this software for veeeeeery long time and I wouldn't expect that they will prioritize development of eg. Absynth or FM8.

That is a pickle but I think that it finally caught up on them.
A user should not care about the technical aspects and from his point of view the UI's didn't get updated for a long time (no matter for what reasons) while other companies do provide all this. Patience runs out...

no, i think you and any user should care about what they care about.
not saying you, but my issue was with those telling others what it is they should care about.
that's where it all goes wrong.

[Forgotten]

It’s probably not worthwhile focusing on any particular NI product at this point, as I’m sure they have plenty of work to do before they can focus on user feedback of any kind.

they've only laid off 30 or so engineers.
not like they've lost every code monkey.
that could just be older product peeps?

I don’t mean a halt to development, I meant they probably don’t have the resources to start addressing anything outside of their core development tasks right now.

[vurt]

It’s probably not worthwhile focusing on any particular NI product at this point, as I’m sure they have plenty of work to do before they can focus on user feedback of any kind.

they've only laid off 30 or so engineers.
not like they've lost every code monkey.
that could just be older product peeps?

I don’t mean a halt to development, I meant they probably don’t have the resources to start addressing anything outside of their core development tasks right now.

ah! gotcha!