Good Bye Reaktor, good bye NI synths

[machinesworking]

I can imagine that it's a bit of an art. But, in some software, most basic principles are neglected.

Even in bigger software. Like Android 12.

Back to the Apple comparison. The main design guy there Johnny Ives, designed pretty much everything since the original jelly candy iMacs, quit and now just consults. This has resulted in the M1 Max and Pro 16" Macbooks being slightly thicker than the i9 2019 Macbook Pros, and I couldn't be happier about that! No doubt the original iPhones were a great design but when the antenna is sacrificed to aesthetic, it's a shit show.

There's a trade off, some of it's just personal taste. but sometimes it's down to bad design, plug ins with huge blank spaces in them, or not enough room, tiny switches or faders, that's bigger to me than flat VS skeuomorphic.

[Sinisterbr]

Well, I like the simplicity of Studio One's GUI (although it certainly can be improved).

(And really dislike Reaper's interface)

[chk071]

Well, I like the simplicity of Studio One's GUI (although it certainly can be improved).

Me too. It's not perfect, and, I somewhat grew used to it. But, it's fine for most tasks.

What I absolutely detest are busy GUI's which turn me off when just looking at them. Or, when the GUI looks like Windows 98 (Reaper). Complex software should be made as easy as possible for the user, and, that starts with the GUI.

I think Replika is a great example for good GUI design. It's clear, it's simple, it even looks good. That Ableton reverb is... well... pretty busy, the controls are close to each other, there's a lot of text, and the graphics are very simple. Could be better. You know.

[Dencheg]

Yamaha CS-80 was released in 1977, not quite in the right time-frame, even for a joke.

That synth
Is a huge synth
It's bigger than a regular synth
In your "big synth" sign, it's a regular synth
But this one's huge, so it's fine

Even for a joke!

[bmanic]

Back to the Apple comparison. The main design guy there Johnny Ives, designed pretty much everything since the original jelly candy iMacs, quit and now just consults. This has resulted in the M1 Max and Pro 16" Macbooks being slightly thicker than the i9 2019 Macbook Pros, and I couldn't be happier about that! No doubt the original iPhones were a great design but when the antenna is sacrificed to aesthetic, it's a shit show.

There's a trade off, some of it's just personal taste. but sometimes it's down to bad design, plug ins with huge blank spaces in them, or not enough room, tiny switches or faders, that's bigger to me than flat VS skeuomorphic.

100% agree!

It's awesome that the actual hardware engineers now get a bigger say at Apple. This was a HUGE improvement in my opinion and one of THE reasons I partially switched to Mac (still Windows at the studio).

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Back to the Apple comparison. The main design guy there Johnny Ives, designed pretty much everything since the original jelly candy iMacs, quit and now just consults. This has resulted in the M1 Max and Pro 16" Macbooks being slightly thicker than the i9 2019 Macbook Pros, and I couldn't be happier about that! No doubt the original iPhones were a great design but when the antenna is sacrificed to aesthetic, it's a shit show.

There's a trade off, some of it's just personal taste. but sometimes it's down to bad design, plug ins with huge blank spaces in them, or not enough room, tiny switches or faders, that's bigger to me than flat VS skeuomorphic.

100% agree!

It's awesome that the actual hardware engineers now get a bigger say at Apple. This was a HUGE improvement in my opinion and one of THE reasons I partially switched to Mac (still Windows at the studio).

Agree. I was 100% Windows my entire life (ok, we had an old Apple II as the very first computer in our home in the early 80's - but since then, all Windows). Love my iPad, came back to an iPhone after years on Android, but was still a Windows PC guy. The new MBP's completely changed that. The M1 processor is fantastic and the hardware matches up to it (displays, ports, magsafe, love it all). Apple really stepped up bigtime. I was sitting in my living room writing a song last night on my coffee table with Netflix on pause and not even the slightest worry about CPU performance. No fan noise to speak of either. The thing is blisteringly fast. I'm sure my AMD 3950X desktop probably tops it in overall multicore performance, but the 2021 MBP is a laptop that competes with desktops. If it were my only computer, I would be just fine making music with it.

[BBFG#]

https://youtu.be/VsfDngFIe_8

[grrrz]

I use NI products for their sounds. If selling videos or printouts of plugin and daw screens made good money, there would be different choices to consider.
Ableton usually drawing the short straw in a beauty contest.

a lot of ableton stock plugin are totally underrated because they don't have a shiny interface. Their whole collab collection with AAS is pretty good (analog; electric, corpus; collision...); new reverb and echo are very much usable. At one point I ditched pretty much every plugin to only use ableton stock plugins (mostly analog for synths) and you can make a lot with those.
They have also great sampled instruments in their packs (in the last release the ones made with spitfire are great), and the sampled rhodes is also really good IMO.

I'm glad that Ableton sounds good, keeps the competition on their toes!
If Ableton are happy to provide underrated content, they might benefit from an upgrade in the beancounter department. There's a reason why U-he haven't switched to providing plain and uninspiring interfaces, Assuming competitive quality of the sounds and underlying code, I'll opt for a tool with the most useful and attractive interface,
over a competitor with an equally useful, but drab interface. In some ways, our software
selection is like our home town. We love it, or tolerate it, until it's obviously time to move on. And people on the move respond well to real estate 'curb appeal'.

Are there shiny gui's out there? Most of them seem the opposite, with dull tiny text,
backgrounds with poor contrast and pointless fake shadows, or poorly rendered 3d. I really like the Replika gui, easy to read, uncluttered, and the gradient serves to establish visual contrast for readability.

An Ableton product in comparison seems invented by the color-blind guy
in the office behind the server room. I do hope their color schemes are at least skinABLE
Cheers


Replika gui.png


Able Hybrid Reverb.png

well ableton stock plug-ins are fully integrated into the software;so you don't have to open a separate window to tweak them; some of them sound good; and most importantly they will not eat up your RAM or CPU just to display an animation of a tape spinning (and generally speaking they will be on the lighter side CPU wise). For some of the newer stuff they also added a little expand button that displays more informations (noticably EQ and wavetable)
I'm using arturia stuff right now and some plug-ins take ages just to display the GUI; and they're eating up RAM while doing it; to the point that I will just add the parameters I use to the automation list; tweak them from live and never open the plug in window again.
The live interface comes with different skins; I find it overall quite elegant; you can also scale it if it's too little or too big for your taste.

[bluesawsq]

2) Have a friend of yours edit a factory Battery 4 kit.. then save it and then send you the song. Open it up and you'll find a nice empty battery kit with all the samples missing even when all content is FACTORY.

To be fair other software is also this dumb. I love Live, but it loses samples and audio all the time,most DAWs do unless you import all audio etc. and oddly enough the best piece of software for finding lost samples is Kontakt. Kontakt can search in a half dozen ways for missing files, including using the OS search engine, which works fantastically on OSX with Spotlight anyway. So yeah NI literally have the blue print for solid searching of lost files in their own catalog!

^^^this is the kind of thing NI IMO should be roasted for, not some new feature that everyone thinks they need, but just smooth UX across the line. < doesn't generate new revenue though.

Indeed. I just don't get it why a piece of software even needs to start a manual search for samples when they are part of the factory content. The software should know and have the relative path to the sample right there saved with the preset. Shouldn't matter if a client or colleague has the factory library installed on a different hard drive. The relative path will still most likely be exactly the same (in the root directory of whatever instrument is in question).

I can understand it when software looses the samples or audio when the paths completely change or you use your own custom samples. But what I was talking about above was factory content! It's absolutely absurd that they can't get this done correctly.

The Native Instruments Sound License Agreement is very strict.
Factory libraries in Kontakt and Battery, as well as other NI sound libraries, are basically licensed only for personal use. Distributing or sharing any part of those libraries is strictly prohibited.
You are not allowed to edit the factory library content and then share it, not even by sharing sample references without the actual samples. Sample maps and references are parts of soundsets and users are not allowed to share any parts of soundsets.

This is a big difference compared to many other synths or romplers where sharing or selling new custom presets based on factory library samples is allowed or even encouraged.

That is my current understanding of the NI Sound License Agreement. I'll be happy to be proven wrong. I have tried to get a definitive answer from NI support and legal department, but it has been difficult to get a comprehensive answer about what is allowed and what is not.

[glokraw]

The Native Instruments Sound License Agreement is very strict.

Fine by me. To the degree that protecting their work keeps the doors open,
I'm all for it. If some fool resamples Una Corda and Noire, twiddles some settings,
then puts their own sticker on a 'for sale' ebay listing, it deserves jail time.

Plenty of free and useful sample content at Pianobook, for those short on cash.
Far more than just pianos

[bmanic]

2) Have a friend of yours edit a factory Battery 4 kit.. then save it and then send you the song. Open it up and you'll find a nice empty battery kit with all the samples missing even when all content is FACTORY.

To be fair other software is also this dumb. I love Live, but it loses samples and audio all the time,most DAWs do unless you import all audio etc. and oddly enough the best piece of software for finding lost samples is Kontakt. Kontakt can search in a half dozen ways for missing files, including using the OS search engine, which works fantastically on OSX with Spotlight anyway. So yeah NI literally have the blue print for solid searching of lost files in their own catalog!

^^^this is the kind of thing NI IMO should be roasted for, not some new feature that everyone thinks they need, but just smooth UX across the line. < doesn't generate new revenue though.

Indeed. I just don't get it why a piece of software even needs to start a manual search for samples when they are part of the factory content. The software should know and have the relative path to the sample right there saved with the preset. Shouldn't matter if a client or colleague has the factory library installed on a different hard drive. The relative path will still most likely be exactly the same (in the root directory of whatever instrument is in question).

I can understand it when software looses the samples or audio when the paths completely change or you use your own custom samples. But what I was talking about above was factory content! It's absolutely absurd that they can't get this done correctly.

The Native Instruments Sound License Agreement is very strict.
Factory libraries in Kontakt and Battery, as well as other NI sound libraries, are basically licensed only for personal use. Distributing or sharing any part of those libraries is strictly prohibited.
You are not allowed to edit the factory library content and then share it, not even by sharing sample references without the actual samples. Sample maps and references are parts of soundsets and users are not allowed to share any parts of soundsets.

This is a big difference compared to many other synths or romplers where sharing or selling new custom presets based on factory library samples is allowed or even encouraged.

That is my current understanding of the NI Sound License Agreement. I'll be happy to be proven wrong. I have tried to get a definitive answer from NI support and legal department, but it has been difficult to get a comprehensive answer about what is allowed and what is not.

Dude.. you are COMPLETELY missing my point. I don't talk about editing the actual samples, just the basic preset of the synthesizer or drum machine in question, using the factory sample.

How can this be so hard to understand? If you have factory sample content and you use that as a base for your own PRESET within Form, Scanner XT etc.. you should be able to then send that PRESET to a friend/colleague (remember, a preset does NOT contain the sample data!!!) and load up perfectly fine there.



If I edit a Battery 4 kit, changing the battery 4 internal parameters like envelopes, FX etc I should be able to send that PRESET to a friend and it should load up instantly and perfectly because the sample data is factory. This is NOT the case right now. NI software is just too stupid to load it correctly.

[Tj Shredder]

I share an MPE mod to a Micro Prism preset in the Reaktor library. No problem with that. Of course if you don’t have a Micro Prism license it would only work with demo restrictions…

[vertibration]

DSP in Massive X is pretty nasty, I give credit where credit is due

Nasty sounding? Strange because to my ears it sounds like pretty high quality dsp.

Bruh.......LMAO. Im from NY, Nasty means good

[bluesawsq]

If some fool resamples Una Corda and Noire, twiddles some settings,
then puts their own sticker on a 'for sale' ebay listing, it deserves jail time.

Of course that is not allowed. There is nothing surprising or strict about prohibiting that.
However, what I consider strict is that Sound License Agreement does not allow sharing of 'Patch Only' presets that only reference encrypted factory library samples.

Dude.. you are COMPLETELY missing my point. I don't talk about editing the actual samples, just the basic preset of the synthesizer or drum machine in question, using the factory sample.

How can this be so hard to understand? If you have factory sample content and you use that as a base for your own PRESET within Form, Scanner XT etc.. you should be able to then send that PRESET to a friend/colleague (remember, a preset does NOT contain the sample data!!!) and load up perfectly fine there.

Your point, that Battery should be better at finding factory samples automatically on different machines, is valid. Just trying to bring another viewpoint to the discussion. Maybe NI is not so much interested in improving sharing of factory library samples (references, not the actual sample data) because they don't consider it as a valid/allowed workflow.
The Sound License Agreement seems to be really stricter than expected.
I have specifically asked from NI support and legal department about sharing Kontakt presets that are based on factory library samples and saved as 'Patch Only' presets. Those presets don't contain any sample data, they contain only references to the encrypted sample files. Because of the encryption in factory library, other users could use those presets only if they have also bought Kontakt. But still, according to NI legal department, sharing those 'Patch Only' presets is not allowed.

AFAIK, snapshots are the only allowed way to share Kontakt sounds that are based on factory library or other NI libraries. Please correct me if you have a different definitive aswer from NI.

If I edit a Battery 4 kit, changing the battery 4 internal parameters like envelopes, FX etc I should be able to send that PRESET to a friend and it should load up instantly and perfectly because the sample data is factory. This is NOT the case right now. NI software is just too stupid to load it correctly.

I have not asked from NI support or legal about sharing of Battery presets. The NI Sound License Agreement seems to be generic covering all NI products. And Battery 4 is just a different GUI on top of Kontakt engine. So, I'm assuming similar restrictions about sharing 'Patch Only' presets apply also to Battery. Again, I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

It would be nice if Native Instruments would just give comprehensive explanation of the licensing terms.

[glokraw]

If company B creates a product that relies on the work performed by company A,
then company A decides whether or not to require compensation for their work.

In this case, there are myriad alternatives to what company A offers, so haggling
is not very profitable, whether in court, or in forums. I think NI have been generous over their many years, enabling countless musicians to experiment with and learn about
virtual instruments and effects, and how integrate them with modern hardware.

It's hard being the same company for twenty odd years, with employees and technology
and the marketplace constantly changing. Especially the most recent twenty years!
Credit to the survivors.
Cheers