Sad state of Native Instruments

[Echoes in the Attic]

NI is pretty much Kontakt and Maschine for me now. The rest could disappear. I still think the Maschine hard/software combo is the best thing out there for rhythm. And Kontakt is just where all my sampled instruments are. I will update every few Kompletes maybe, once it is just a stupidly good deal at 50% off for a couple updates worth of new content.

I think NI as a business will carry on, but I agree it's dead as an innovative company. They peaked at Kore, and were downhill since. I just hope Kontakt carries on, since too many great libraries are built on that platform.

[pierb]

Kontakt is still widely used, (third party) Kontakt libraries are still THE main source for film and tv music.

That's true but less so every day.

Many companies have moved to their own player (OT, Spitfire, Soundpaint, etc) and today there are lots of alternatives like Falcon, HISE, Decent Sampler, SFZ, TAL Sampler, etc.

Personally a couple of years ago I simply stopped investing in Kontakt orchestral libraries. Most NI products are just unusable in a 4K monitor as the GUI cannot be scaled (let alone hiDPI). With the exception of the browser, the Kontakt 7 GUI is the same low DPI bitmap-based crap we've seen for a decade now.

Guitar Rig 6 Pro has a better GUI but it's going to take many years until NI moves all their products to this new framework. Although at this glacial dev speed who knows when or if that's going happen.

[noiseboyuk]

At the risk of being flayed alive, I like some of the NI stuff in the past 3-5 years. Their best stuff is the Kontakt cinematic stuff in the bigger collections - the light series, mysteria etc. The world series libraries are great. Pianos like Noire. Guitar Rig 6 is terrific. This is all good stuff sonically and the programming is really good.

But… that’s kinda it. Massive X was a massive bust for me. Battery 5 with a pattern engine should have been released 6 years ago. All their drum libraries should be rationalised into a dedicated proper plugin, not hosted in Kontakt. Most of the orchestral stuff is hopeless. Komplete Kontrol still has basic functionality missing that should have been fixed in 1.0.1. The entire Play series is meh.

But those other products show that there are still good people working there. Just not on stuff that many people want here.

[mholloway]

Kontakt is still widely used, (third party) Kontakt libraries are still THE main source for film and tv music.

That's true but less so every day.

Many companies have moved to their own player (OT, Spitfire, Soundpaint, etc) and today there are lots of alternatives like Falcon, HISE, Decent Sampler, SFZ, TAL Sampler, etc.

You're heavily exaggerating the 'less so every day' idea here, is my sense. None of the products you mention are anywhere close to as widely adopted as Kontakt is, nor do any of them offer anything even remotely close to competitive in the third-party multi-sampled instruments / libraries. TAL sampler taking over for Kontakt in the Film and TV industry? Please, give me a break, why would you even include that in the list, it's a retro-style boutique sampler meant for 80s/90s sounds. Falcon is the only thing powerful enough to pull it off, and it hardly has the third-party support of Kontakt (not even close). The industry is deeply, deeply rooted in third party Kontakt libraries. If that's 'less so every day' it's by tiny, tiny increments and heading, well, nowhere really. SFX? TAL? Decent? get real. None of these are positioned to overtake Kontakt, not in a million years, and you know it.

[jamcat]

Modelling isn't always necessary and offers few advantages. It tends to work best on solo melodic instruments, but even then I've not been swayed by strings much.

So we're a very long way from samples being replaced. I can't think of a single orchestral ensemble that works well as modelled.

Results when working with physically modeled instruments are going to depend 100% on your understanding of the real instrument and how to properly play it. If you approach a physically modeled instrument with a sampled instrument mentality, you are going to get bad results. And just like like any true artistic medium, the art is only as good as the artist.



Playing a violin is nothing like playing a piano. One a violin, there is a direct connection between the performer and the sound. A violinist literally draws the sound with their bow. And when working with a physically modeled instrument such as SWAM Violin, you have to approach it the same way. And technique is everything. But you can create a musical performance that is simply impossible with samples.

It's not impossible to create a realistic performance with samples, but it is impossible to create your performance with samples. Working with samples is like creating a ransom note with letters cut out of magazines.

But working with a good physically modeled instrument is like painting music with a brush.





I'm not at that level yet, but I'm getting closer. It takes a lot of time, which is the only drawback. But so does trying to pull the right combination of sampled notes out of a hat.

You can create a very realistic orchestral ensemble by creating the individual performance of each player. You need something like Vienna MIR Pro or Virtual Sound Stage 2 (which I use) to place the players on a stage.

This is a long video on doing just that using SWAM v2 and VSS2:



And a short piece (just music) from the same guy:



And if creating an ensemble that way is too much work and too time consuming, you can do it in real-time with Divisimate instead.

Watch!

[noiseboyuk]

Jamcat - those solo strings sound great to be fair. Ensembles less so. Divisimate is a step in the right direction, but still incredibly convoluted. Most composers stick to samples for ensembles.

[noiseboyuk]

Kontakt is still widely used, (third party) Kontakt libraries are still THE main source for film and tv music.

That's true but less so every day.

Many companies have moved to their own player (OT, Spitfire, Soundpaint, etc) and today there are lots of alternatives like Falcon, HISE, Decent Sampler, SFZ, TAL Sampler, etc.

You're heavily exaggerating the 'less so every day' idea here, is my sense. None of the products you mention are anywhere close to as widely adopted as Kontakt is, nor do any of them offer anything even remotely close to competitive in the third-party multi-sampled instruments / libraries.

IMO you’re missing the point. None of these players will ever be a rival to Kontakt in a 1:1 sense, but combined they’re taking a major chunk out of a core market for Kontakt.

Most of the major players in orchestral libraries now have their own proprietary players. 20 years ago none did, and when Gigastudio folded it was 100% Kontakt for a while. First East West, then VSL and now many more. Add in Falcon and Engine, and there’s a bit more gone. VIR Harmonic impressed me recently when they ported their Bohemian series from UVI to Gorilla Engine which is very slick indeed.

[digitalboytn]

For me, NIs biggest selling point is NKS mapped synths and sample libraries that I can browse, tweak and jam with on Maschine or KK keyboards without touching my mouse or looking at the computer screen. For hands-on jamming and recording ideas, I find that standardized approach much more inspiring and streamlined than fiddling around with file explorers and drop down menus in my DAW. I don't see any serious competition for NI in that field (except MPC in the beat box area, suggestions are welcome if I'm missing anything!).

So I don't see myself abandoning the ecosystem anytime soon.

You may not want to abandon it,but the choice is not really up to you...

Many peeps were very satisfied with NI's previous wunderkind ecosystem called Kore,but the company decided it was too hard to maintain,so they stopped any further development and shafted the user base...

So there are some underlying reasons why I have never embraced the NKS system...

NI still make some great products,but there was a lot of trust lost in the Kore debacle....

So I don't want to be kompletely dependant on NI and their Korporate Kontrol ever again...

They can stick it where the sun don't shine

[digitalboytn]

At the risk of being flayed alive, I like some of the NI stuff in the past 3-5 years.

All their drum libraries should be rationalised into a dedicated proper plugin, not hosted in Kontakt.

But those other products show that there are still good people working there. Just not on stuff that many people want here.

They would have been better off to have those drum libraries hosted in Battery....

Battery is a great product and it's based on the Kontakt engin,but it offers so much dedicated control for drums and percussion...

Trying to get those NI drums to sound anyway close to decent in Kontakt is impossible

[noiseboyuk]

They would have been better off to have those drum libraries hosted in Battery....

Battery is a great product and it's based on the Kontakt engin,but it offers so much dedicated control for drums and percussion...

Trying to get those NI drums to sound anyway close to decent in Kontakt is impossible

Actually I don’t think Battery would help much, it’s not set up for multi-mic work. I think they need to code something bespoke like SD3 or BFD. Won’t happen, which is why NI have lost that particular market too. Their libraries are light years behind the competition.

[dune_rave]

Its cool that the battery installer is not one installer, but separated into 2 executable: battery and factory library. So i can install only factory library and some ni expansion banks, then build a map in Atlas, and use the drums in Atlas.
I should do the same with Kontakt... Does someone know a plugin, that opens and plays kontakt libraries?

[susquash]

The playbox is a good addition for sketching ideas. I only wish they would make the midi export also contain all the automated settings going on within the application. It only leaves you with a set of chords but none of the odd parameter movements that created the original idea. I suppose I could sample my own sounds and import them into the app to make it work.

[DCrown]

I think Native Instruments and Plugin Alliance, too, will be history in about 5 years. Most competitors simply are superior.

[xbow]

You may not want to abandon it,but the choice is not really up to you...

Many peeps were very satisfied with NI's previous wunderkind ecosystem called Kore,but the company decided it was too hard to maintain,so they stopped any further development and shafted the user base...

It may not be up to me, but that scenario is unlikely with KK and Maschine because it's a healthy ecosystem and their main source of income (no, I don't know their business numbers, but it is pretty self-evident if you look at their strategy).

NI is not failing just because some of their product lines are failing.

It is very expensive to maintain a spread out product range and diverse code base with lots of accumulated technical debt. So it is healthy for NI to cut down on these costs for products that no longer work in the market (Reaktor) and consolidate their resources where it matters economically: Platforms that drive content sales.

Producing content for an existing platform is easy and cheap in comparison because it's very standardized. NI probably can set a fixed budget for the development of each new library and a good estimate of how much it will earn them.

Thus, I am not so worried about Kontakt, KK and Maschine. But sadly it also means that many of their products (FM8, Battery, Massive, Reaktor Monark and Prism ...) are not relevant to them in terms of pushing the boundaries of synthesis, but just in terms of filler items in a large software bundle and content platform (Maschine expansions include presets for Monark, Massive, Prism).

But I can live with that. In a weird way, this may be just what I need, because I want to invest less time in chasing the bleeding edge and more time in making actual music with what I have (which is already too much).

[xbow]

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