KVR Audio

LoveEnigma18 · Post by **LoveEnigma18** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:17 am

You feel this way probably because market is overly saturated these days and NI has a lot more competitors than they had 10 years ago.

It is a lot harder to come up with new products these days and innovating just for the sake of it isn't going to help. New and fancy technologies like MPE, MIDI 2.0, etc. will keep coming but they are not required for making music. Most people can do without it, like they have all these years.

IMO, NI products are still one of the best out there.

The only things I am looking for from NI are:
- resizable GUIs for all plugins; many have it, looks like work is in progress for others
- VST3; not as important for me, work is in progress and it has to happen eventually
- new plugins: Battery 5 and Absynth 6 (brand new GUI mainly)
- Plugins like Monark, Form, Kontour, etc. outside of Reaktor, like they did with Super 8

mholloway · Post by **mholloway** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:23 am

LoveEnigma18 wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:17 am You feel this way probably because market is overly saturated these days and NI has a lot more competitors than they had 10 years ago.

This. I mean, you are spot on here.

LoveEnigma18 wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:17 am It is a lot harder to come up with new products these days and innovating just for the sake of it isn't going to help.

And this, too. It's not clear what the whiners in here actually want from NI. They seem to just feel it's really important to throw shade at the company for...existing?

Maschine... Kontakt... Reaktor... Those three products alone are still widely used and have each changed the face of the entire industry. Kontakt is the absolute standard for multi-sampled instrument libraries and nothing else can even touch it.

Reaktor has lots of competition that it didn't used to have. That doesn't mean it suddenly sucks, it just means it's no longer the only 'giant modular environment' on the block anymore.

felis · Post by **felis** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:25 am

I've had Reaktor since it started as Generator, and I still can't get it to do what I want.
They expect you to re-invent the wheel.
I've asked at the NI forums, and others haven't been able to do it either.
I don't have a programming background, and only worked at it sporadically, but I've given up on it.
I don't feel real bad about it though, because I've run across several other synths that work for me, and that I'm satisfied with.
I do feel like I wasted a lot of time with it that could have been better used elsewhere.

I have Komplete and use and like some of it - Massive X, Battery, Guitar Rig, Absynth, FM8 and their fx.
So it's not like I've given up on them, or don't like their stuff.
More just like Reaktor has always been more of a negative than a positive for me.
Still hard to believe that they haven't got all their stuff as VST3 either.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:34 am

MitchK1989 wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 1:38 amPersonally I find Arturia and NI both guilty of the "look a this huge bundle" sales pitch followed by the "please don't ask how many of these plugins are actually capable of resizable GUIs for 4k monitors, run natively on your m1 macbook, and which ones support modern tuning standards and MPE controllers"

Which translates to "I expect developers to fix all the stupid decisions I make", which hardly seems either fair nor reasonable to me, because none of those things actually make the instrument work or sound better, they are just administrative/IT type issues that every user can easily avoid if they use their f**king brain.

mholloway wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:43 amWhat other, supposedly superior product can replace Kontakt -- and don't just name some other Sampler product, because to actually replace Kontakt adequately, it must have the same range of third party library support.

HALion would come close, I think. But even the OP acknowledges that he'll keep using Kontakt and Battery, so the rest of it makes no sense. Certainly the thought that any modular can replace Reaktor is just plain stupid.

LoveEnigma18 wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:17 amIt is a lot harder to come up with new products these days and innovating just for the sake of it isn't going to help.

Abso-fuckin'-lutely. TRK-01 is the perfect example - a truly innovative experiment that seems to have failed to make any impact in the marketplace at all. The free TRK-o1 Bass is one of my most used instruments, yet nobody else seems to use it at all, presumably because it doesn't have 57 envelopes, 231 LFOs and 119 on-board effects.

New and fancy technologies like MPE, MIDI 2.0, etc. will keep coming but they are not required for making music. Most people can do without it, like they have all these years.

And the other aspect of this is that you really only need one MPE capable synth because 90% of the parts you write just won't need it. MPE is all about real time performance, everything it does can be done with automation, without MPE, even if it means multiple instances of a plugin.

elxsound · Post by **elxsound** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:52 am

Is there any chance that NI did a Disney move (with the Solo failure), where after seeing all the negative feedback on Massive X decided to rethink new versions of FM8 and Absynth?

They are an odd company right now especially after their partnership with Izotope.

Synthack · Post by **Synthack** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 5:10 am

.........

t3toooo · Post by **t3toooo** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 5:37 am

Na, only thing NI doesn't make good is presets. I switched back to Guitar Rig 5 after years. Can't wait for Guitar Rig 6 to become VST3.

LeVzi · Post by **LeVzi** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 6:48 am

Am I the only one who likes and uses the effects like Raum, Phasis, Replika XT and Supercharger XT ?

They are awesome and get more use than the NI synths.

CapnLockheed · Post by **CapnLockheed** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 7:12 am

Sigh.......NI has gone the way of many devs. It seems that they are more interested in catering to kiddie "producers" that "create on their iPhones. Whatever. Kontakt, Reaktor, P53, FM8 and some fx are all I need from them. They are dead to me now. Just like a band that blows off the fans that put them on the map in the first place.

DrFolder · Post by **DrFolder** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 7:21 am

I sadly started transitioning away from Reaktor. It is the last NI product that I use and I look for alternatives now just so I'm not reliant on it. I stopped using my favourite synth Absynth a few years ago as it hadn't been updated for years. I have Maschine mk3 gathering dust in by wardrobe and I haven't installed Ni Komplete (Just Reaktor). I also stopped using Izotope a few years ago because the creative synths I used stopped being updated a long time ago. After 20 years I have mostly said goodbye to NI (Never thought I would say it).

Dombaeb · Post by **Dombaeb** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 7:47 am

I would be happy if NI will solve problems with Reaktor usability, but actually, their synths are damn good and work fine. I have to say that among all of my softsynths Reaktor ones like Razor and Form stand head and shoulders above when I want a strong, powerful, interesting sound that I won't have to improve with additional mixing tricks. They are clunky in some ways but in the end, they are not difficult to handle. Of course, it's a pity that they do not update Absynth and FM8, but what has been done is done at the highest level in terms of sound. Anyway, I think Komplete is the last music soft bundle I would sell until I see that they switched to sound packs completely. There is hope.

GaryG · Post by **GaryG** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 8:03 am

I'm not anti-NI by any means, love a lot of their effects, synths still sound fine... for me it's their ecosystem. Example, someone just mentioned Replika is now GUI resizable, I fired up Native Access to check for updates and was told most of my plugs needed repairing, was confronted with this:

Screenshot 2021-12-13 075845.png

The plugs are working fine so not really a problem, just messy and a distraction.

LeVzi · Post by **LeVzi** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 8:08 am

GaryG wrote: Mon Dec 13, 2021 8:03 am I'm not anti-NI by any means, love a lot of their effects, synths still sound fine... for me it's their ecosystem. Example, someone just mentioned Replika is now GUI resizable, I fired up Native Access to check for updates and was told most of my plugs needed repairing, was confronted with this:

Screenshot 2021-12-13 075845.png

The plugs are working fine so not really a problem, just messy and a distraction.

I get that every time I open Native Access. Repairing doesn't fix it, just keeps coming back.

I told NI about it weeks ago and nothing has changed. They are migrating all the plugins to VST3 and haven't turned off the 32bit plugin search in NA.

As far as updates go, I'd like to see FM8 get a new GUI that's resizeble. Similar structure but bigger and clearer.

flori89 · Post by **flori89** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 8:17 am

Personally I think espcially NIs effects are really good. But a lot of their stuff seems to be stuck in the past, and not the recent past at that. Seems that I'm certainly not the only one who feels like that.

As for Kontakt: It's actually not that good, if you are really honest with yourself. The only thing that is good about Kontakt is the massive amount of libraries that are availabe for it. Don't confuse the content with the actual software. On a pure software pov it's as outdated as most of NIs stuff and far from being without competition.

imrae · Post by **imrae** » Mon Dec 13, 2021 8:37 am

Re: Kontakt, the slicing and timestretching seem pretty decent to me. The scripting capabilities are what make it a good platform for professional libraries - how many other options have comparable scripting power?

Back to Reaktor: if you’re comparing it to software modulars I think you’re missing a lot. Reaktor lets you write custom DSP with a custom UI without leaving the DAW and with much easier troubleshooting/iteration than writing code. There is still very little competition there; Max4Live seems the biggest development in this area? (But exclusive to the premium edition of one DAW...)

Good Bye Reaktor, good bye NI synths