NI have announced they will no longer activate discontinued products

[darsho]

What do the HS Samples even have to do with Native Instruments. Basically nothing. It's just wav samples with a .nki upfront.
NI neither sells the HS samples nor is it an official Kontakt Library.

[EvilDragon]

Nothing, of course.

Do be aware that the newer HS products do use Kontakt's lossless audio format (NCW), but you can easily convert this back to WAV or AIFF.

[Jace-BeOS]

Nothing really replaces Reaktor.

Fully agreed. I don’t know why you were downvoted for that statement.

[Jace-BeOS]

Nothing really replaces Reaktor.

Disagree. Depends of course how deep you go.
I mainly use just Reaktor blocks and in general Reaktor workflow is a pain.
NI stuff is just carrying too much old code.

I go this deep:

Massive collection of ensembles that I love and numerous projects rely on.

It’s a PITA workflow, yes, but it’s an irreplaceable tool for me. I don’t build my own ensembles, but it’s an entire platform to me.

[Jace-BeOS]

I might be special in the sense that I've been constantly burned, but this is my experience-

Wow, awfully similar to mine. I also have a Machine I, Kore Kontrol (/w interface) and Rig Kontrol II - all rendered electro trash for OSX users long before they were getting anywhere close to what was promised. And especially in the case of Kore Kontrol, I simply don't believe them. They could've done firmware updates so it'd be compatible with Komplete Kontrol or something. Well, unless firmware updates weren't possible - in which case it would've been a huge flop to start with already. Which it obviously was. Similar for Machine. I mean, that thing is fully functional - but all you can get from it these days is to use it as a plain MIDI controller.
Completely inacceptable.

Yeah, same here... won’t buy NI hardware ever again.

[Jace-BeOS]

I might be special in the sense that I've been constantly burned, but this is my experience-

Wow, awfully similar to mine. I also have a Machine I, Kore Kontrol (/w interface) and Rig Kontrol II - all rendered electro trash for OSX users long before they were getting anywhere close to what was promised. And especially in the case of Kore Kontrol, I simply don't believe them. They could've done firmware updates so it'd be compatible with Komplete Kontrol or something. Well, unless firmware updates weren't possible - in which case it would've been a huge flop to start with already. Which it obviously was. Similar for Machine. I mean, that thing is fully functional - but all you can get from it these days is to use it as a plain MIDI controller.
Completely inacceptable.

Yep lesson learned, don't buy hardware from them, and don't expect anything to last more than 5 years on your OS. I can hardly blame Apple for this because NI don't support audio cards with the Kore 1 or Rig Kontrol chips in it on either platform, the dropping of MIDI functionality in Control Center is just plain lazy on their part.
Kontakt is indispensable at this point, most of my orchestra libraries are Kontakt based. but it's weird to have a company with so much potential make you feel so often like you're just a number to them, a source of income and that's it.
Most other people in this industry are pretty dedicated to the idea of music first, then profit, so they support older soft and hardware, not NI. M-Audio, Behringer and NI all make some good stuff, but I don't love their business practices or trust them, at all.

In general I'm over buying software driven MIDI products, if a controller can't work on its own without a computer to generate basic MIDI CC's etc. then I'm not going to buy it. It's burned me a few times in the past.

Yeah, I’m done buying hardware that requires a computer in order to function. However, I’ve seen plenty of other companies utterly trash products and customers like this. I’ve lived the 2D graphics (die Adobe, die) and 3D modeling & rendering hobby... utterly miserable experience from so many companies.

[EvilDragon]

Meanwhile Kore 2 still works great under Windows, including hardware. Apparently even the software works under Catalina, but driver for Kore 2 might be 32-bit so that ain't happening, but could've worked fine before Catalina.

[machinesworking]

Meanwhile Kore 2 still works great under Windows, including hardware. Apparently even the software works under Catalina, but driver for Kore 2 might be 32-bit so that ain't happening, but could've worked fine before Catalina.

As a MIDI controller, you're subject to the fact that you need a software driver, (Controller Editor) one that hasn't had an update in ten years, that every version of Controller Editor attempts to overwrite unless you rename it etc. Fun fact, every new version of Maschine you instal in Native Access overwrites older versions of Controller Editor with the latest greatest. I don't even know whey NI bother to have Controller Editor in Native Access when they do this??

I'm sorry, ED it's really just a matter of luck more than anything else that Kore 2 is working on your system without issues. It's a host for VSTs, which every new iteration of has the possibility of having issues with Kore, and there's no solution for issues with Kore since it's end of the road software. I gave up on it after software updates to various VSTs rendered it unstable.

[EvilDragon]

Yes what you say about Controller Editor is entirely true. Thankfully a simple rename of the .exe and it's all good and enables you to have both the latest version and the one that still works with Kore 2. That's enough IMHO.

Also I'm not the only one Kore 2 still works for, not in the least. Luck has nothing to do with it, but continued backwards compatibility of Windows does. Didn't yet find a VST2 that doesn't work with it, and I have like 400-something plugins. That's not to say that some aren't working with it, but what I have, everything works.

[machinesworking]

Yes what you say about Controller Editor is entirely true. Thankfully a simple rename of the .exe and it's all good and enables you to have both the latest version and the one that still works with Kore 2. That's enough IMHO.

It's incredibly stupid that NI even have Controller Editor as a possible update path in Native Access when if you have any software that would use the editor it automatically updates. That you can circumvent it is cool, that you have to find out the hard way that it's necessary to circumvent it is ridiculous.

Also I'm not the only one Kore 2 still works for, not in the least. Luck has nothing to do with it, but continued backwards compatibility of Windows does. Didn't yet find a VST2 that doesn't work with it, and I have like 400-something plugins. That's not to say that some aren't working with it, but what I have, everything works.

Luck has everything to do with it. Kore is a ten plus year old piece of software with no updates. Every new version of a VST can cause issues with Kore. I gave up on it after about a year and half when it started hanging on VST scans. This has little to do with the backwards compatibility of Windows and much to do with the possible conflicts that newer VST versions can cause with Kore.

[EvilDragon]

I do full VST scans without any hangs. I know a bunch of people who still have no issues with it. I guess it really depends if you might have a particular gremlin plugin that it trips over or not...

But anyways!

[Jace-BeOS]

lol
another one tricked to think they are your friend, not a business.

A good business treats customers as friends. There is no contradiction...

Very few good businesses out there, then...

[highkoo]

This is actually really sad the more I think about it...
Less dollars are going to flow into NI now, and thats the last thing they need.

And sadder with the point about Reaktor.
Good point, Reaktor is very special, and has a lot of valuable baggage, a lot of which is free.
But, the further point about it is even sadders, as evidenced by some posts- NI wants to dumb down Reaktor too.

[EvilDragon]

Reaktor is not getting dumbed down. If you're implying Blocks here, they're just another avenue of exploring what Reaktor can do, not THE only way.

[WasteLand]

This is actually really sad the more I think about it...

And sadder with the point about Reaktor.
Good point, Reaktor is very special, and has a lot of valuable baggage, a lot of which is free.
But, the further point about it is even sadders, as evidenced by some posts- NI wants to dumb down Reaktor too.

there was a big bug fix release for reaktor. and it still a beast. the possibilties.. and yes i have the commercial blocks.. and many instruments from the library. reaktor is still great.

about the other products, FM8 i use a lot, perfect FM (or better PM) synth. for sounddesign, a dream (in combination with 2 bidirectional controllers, i can use it as hardware...). absynth was always a synth that didn't get to me, now i use it, it is beatiful, and strong.

it seems that are difference how people react to the NI synths, and the effects, that i really like...