Sad state of Native Instruments

[DCrown]

The real sad thing is that NI offers Arturia plugins for sale, it's a kind of symbol of being a slave to one's failure, of having troughed.
From a pretty innovative dev to just a re-seller

[Lind0n]

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.

I see you deftly avoided mentioning HISE, which does have the power to out gun Kontakt - and then some. Clearly (if you have used it) its NOT an end user tool - its a developers tool - so maybe it shouldnt be included in the list anyway.

However the "less so everyday" still stands - sure none of the listed products have the adoption of Kontakt - but they are delivering end-user products that once would have existed only on Kontakt, and now dont. I'm a developer who's entire catalogue is going to HISE, I'm also a gun-for-hire and the ONLY work I've gotten this last two years has been to either build a product in HISE instead of Kontakt - or to port an existing product from Kontakt. I even built myself a set of scripts to export Kontakt groups into HISE...it was happening so frequently. So sure its a slow process, but it is happening.

[Mystic]

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.

I see you deftly avoided mentioning HISE, which does have the power to out gun Kontakt - and then some. Clearly (if you have used it) its NOT an end user tool - its a developers tool - so maybe it shouldnt be included in the list anyway.

However the "less so everyday" still stands - sure none of the listed products have the adoption of Kontakt - but they are delivering end-user products that once would have existed only on Kontakt, and now dont. I'm a developer who's entire catalogue is going to HISE, I'm also a gun-for-hire and the ONLY work I've gotten this last two years has been to either build a product in HISE instead of Kontakt - or to port an existing product from Kontakt. I even built myself a set of scripts to export Kontakt groups into HISE...it was happening so frequently. So sure its a slow process, but it is happening.

mholloway is correct though. I'm in the middle of several large projects now for media and while I do use some things like Play or SINE, the majority of my template is Kontakt. Likewise, the majority of products coming out these days are still using Kontakt because that is where the majority of the market is; not because I believe any of these companies like using it. The biggest issue is a lot of companies don't have the money to put into development of their own plugin based sample libraries and many of them end up coming out pretty janky. I also tend to forget about libraries more often in the sea of plugins that I have if they aren't using something like Kontakt. I don't believe I have many plugins at all that are built on the HISE architecture.

I do hope for a change in the future because Kontakt has really been lagging in worthwhile development but until something comes along that can uncrown the king, I don't see it becoming a reality. Sure, you may have a ton of work coming in using it, but how many of those products you're working on hit a high level of popularity and sales? That's not a knock on your work at all, I'm very familiar with your products, but marketing is half the game and a lot of the companies that market HISE based plugins are not exactly anywhere near the overall quality of the top dogs in terms of sample quality.

[zvenx]

I just got another email from NI a few minutes ago.
Like many of their recent emails it is about articles aimed at beginners. (Like how to write a bassline was one of the topics).

Financially NI will be just fine, they just changed who their target market is and for us older heads it is disappointing, but maybe from a financially point of view for them it makes sense.
rsp

[machinesworking]

People have been claiming Kontakt will be unseated for 20 years now.
Like I mentioned already IMO this latest run of NI being in decline is due to the trifecta of improvements they're currently working through, VST3 and Apple Silicon support, then the need to update their GUIs for high resolution screens. These are affecting a larger audience than just the usual Mac early adopter crowd who get stung by NI's entirely predictable slow adoption of tech improvement. The Reaktor crew talking in public forums about the difficulties in porting it to Apple Silicon and I'm guessing straitening out code for GUI improvements in the future being the only thing coming soon isn't any sign they've abandoned working on it, it's a strategy to ensure that new features don't introduce new bugs when they're also adopting the software for newer tech etc.

Comparing NI to Arturia is just, weird. NI almost intentionally do not do much straight analog modeling, Arturia have nothing like Reaktor, Traktor, Kontakt etc. Arturia's controller keyboard support is in the form of Analog Lab, which does not host third party VSTs.

[machinesworking]

I just got another email from NI a few minutes ago.
Like many of their recent emails it is about articles aimed at beginners. (Like how to write a bassline was one of the topics).

Financially NI will be just fine, they just changed who their target market is and for us older heads it is disappointing, but maybe from a financially point of view for them it makes sense.
rsp

Don't see it, I've been a customer since 2003 or so, they've always targeted young people. I can't ever remember a single time seeing a jazz head talk about NI product, but plenty of DJ's. Just like Ableton they've always targeted bedroom producers over studios etc. Not saying they don't have brands or product that do but just like analog emulation, pianos and playable sample libraries of "real" instruments are overshadowed by the sheer amount of digital synthesis ROMpler products they make.

It's also weird to me to be defending NI, I like their products, their been counters IMO have consistently gotten in the way of their development pace by demanding more "product" like Straylight and all the other Kontakt libraries with a shell they sell these days. They've always fallen behind the rest of the industry on adopting their products to new tech, and I've been righteously angry about it before, but it's nothing new.

[CrystalWizard]

machinesworking: Don't see it, I've been a customer since 2003 or so, they've always targeted young people.

Young? Sure, i guess. Is there some kind of correlation there? I've seen a huge change in NI since i bought Reaktor in 2002. They went from being very innovative to fairly run of the mill. From releasing brand new synthesizers to now selling sample set after sample set.

i posted here years ago that NI was lost to the bean counters. The bs with Kore and the "update" from Battery 3 to 4 were the first signs for me.

aMUSEd: Besides all this just shows the limitations of this stupid profit driven system and in particular the disease of venture capitalism with its rapacious focus on the short term and parasitic approach to markets.

yes, quite true, quite sad, and not likely to change soon enough for me to see it.

[osiris]

I remember way back in 2009 or so I had a conversation with someone high up at NI and I asked if it were possible to make Reaktor like Synthedit, where you could program a synth or effect and save it as a VST, This would be great for up & coming developers. I was told there was a slim to no market for that & they didn't want to dilute the Reaktor brand. I told him they could do like Apple and sell approved stuff on their site, everybody wins.

[machinesworking]

machinesworking: Don't see it, I've been a customer since 2003 or so, they've always targeted young people.

Young? Sure, i guess. Is there some kind of correlation there? I've seen a huge change in NI since i bought Reaktor in 2002. They went from being very innovative to fairly run of the mill. From releasing brand new synthesizers to now selling sample set after sample set.

i posted here years ago that NI was lost to the bean counters. The bs with Kore and the "update" from Battery 3 to 4 were the first signs for me.

Well you might have forgotten the fiasco that was Komplete Care, and because Windows didn't change for a solid decade or more, NI's glacial reactions to things like new chips, 64 bit architecture, and their absolute p*g f*ck that was Reaktor on Mac didn't affect you. [You have to have been on Windows to have boughten Reaktor in 02, it was a total mess on Mac OS until a later version of 4]

The best example of their bean counters just killing them was the PPC to Intel switch. [also previous to the abandonment of Kore] Apple flat out warned every developer to switch to Xcode from Codewarrior years ago, they never did and took at least a solid year longer than other developers of their size all the while trying to tell customers how "blindsided" they were.
As a Mac user and long time customer who loves some of their products, I'm acutely aware that they have always had a been counter problem from day one.

This is all why I'm laughingly defending NI by pointing out that their ability to adopt to new architecture has always sucked. This is nothing new and they aren't going anywhere. They're almost done with the VST3 and Apple Silicon transition, and when Komplete 15 comes out a year or two from now there will be a huge thread with people glowing about the new GUI's (people will be ticked off it's rolled into an upgrade though), and whatever AI crap they're working on.

[glokraw]

Speaking about 'young' people, it may become more and more difficult over time to get them to pay any money to hear music, pay the free time and personal cost expense of learning to play instruments, and as they listen to more and more agenda driven AI/autotune compositions, real music will become ever more foreign to their ears, and the bottom will fall out of what's left of the creative music industry as a whole.

If NI and competitors have smart bean counters, they'll be weighing whatever eventualities are on the horizon, and try to be ready for the ones with most potential for actually occurring. Venture capital is risky in uncharted waters.

Whatever change is coming to Kontakt, will be slow, needing to be compatible with the vast library collection. Maybe a whole new NI sampler product will be cheaper to add, while keeping the old one at least 'tolerable', and make more people happy in the end?

[Neon Breath]

Classic rest on its laurels case, nothing special there. Seen that thousand times in all sorts of business.

[zerocrossing]

Classic rest on its laurels case, nothing special there. Seen that thousand times in all sorts of business.

I don’t think it’s as much that as it is, “hey, look at all these kids buying extension packs because they can’t be bothered to learn how to program synths! Let’s pivot our business model to target them, because there will always be a supply of people who aren’t willing to make their own sounds.”

[zerocrossing]

Recently I dusted off Absynth after years of ignoring it. It’s got too many issues to be used as an everyday instrument for me, but it really has some features that I don’t think I’ve seen in anything else. Especially good for sound effects, which is what I need at the moment. I can’t help but think that with a little bit of love, an Absynth 6 could be top of the food chain. It’s a crime that the company that once sent me a tee shirt with the motto “The Future Of Sound” has let it die. At least give it back to Brian.

[digitalboytn]

It’s a crime that the company that once sent me a tee shirt with the motto “The Future Of Sound” has let it die. At least give it back to Brian.

You would have to check with Brian and see that the T Shirt is the right size for him....

Then give it back to Brian

[musicdoc]

glokraw hits the nail on the head. 20 years ago the vst software space was exploding as many people like me were getting into this virtual instrument thing and there was not that many good choices in the way of vst's. Now, most of us buy out of want not need. Who here doesn't have like 20 software analog style synths that the average consumer would think sound mostly the same? And the younger generation is hooked on social media, games, screens and doesn't have much time to practice music. Plus there is a whole lot more competition out their for anything vst related, plus you have a not so great economy and people just not having as much money.

So it's all kind of a perfect storm. And software companies need to cut costs, run increasing sales, and sell to a dumbed down audience that is used to having everything come easy.

How long until we get chat gpt for music?