Sad state of Native Instruments

[zerocrossing]

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?

Definitely not me. It’s got to be somewhere north of 30, and 5 hardware versions.

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.

I wonder how hard the current economic conditions are hitting developers. There are some things they call “recession proof.” For instance, games actually seem to do better than most during bad times, as people are looking for distraction and to fill up free time.

How long until we get chat gpt for music?

It’s already here. I listed to an episode of On The Media yesterday and they played some soundtrack type thing that was generated using AI. The entire episode was about AI. I’m not sure if its true, but someone I know posted a letter where a client was firing an illustrator after openly admitting that “due to budget cuts” the rest of the project would be handled with AI. It wasn’t stated, but inferred that they trained the AI to work in the style of the person getting fired. I’ve had similar things happen to me, but replace AI with cheap overseas labor. Once an employer fired me because he said he hated everything I did (weeks had gone by with positive feedback) and then stupidly hadn’t done screen shots of the files I was showing him. (I always used Flash so it couldn’t be easily swiped off my site) A few hours after firing me, they emailed to ask where the images were that they were refusing to pay for. I did confirm with an employee of that company who I was friends with that he found out that the plan was to have an intern take my comps and turn them into websites.

I think we’re heading into a very weird time. Definitely a scary time for artists who earn a living doing art. I’m not sure how it’s going to shake out. I can say that one time my employer tried to use cheap S. Korean illustrators for background images, I spent as much time fixing what they sent (which wasn’t great) as I would have had I just done the images myself. I’m doing less visual art and more sound and music, and I know that some AI could probably do some of what I’m doing, but there are technical aspects of it that I don’t think could be done correctly. This sets up some odd situation where I might be relegated to crappy production work while computers get to do the fun stuff. It’s not going to just be artists, either. I’m sure someone is working on AI that can manage teams. What happens to an economy when nearly every job can be done more cheaply by AI? You can’t sling soft serve at your local Dairy Queen when no one in the town can afford a Blizzard® because the only jobs available are fast food service jobs.

Will be go back to subsistence farming? Serfs to lords like Elon Musk? I thought about Diamond Age, but even the Viccies who designed nanotech would be replaced by AI in our current trajectory. What happens to humans when all meaningful work, and most menial work, can be done by technology? Can a successful government come up with some sort of UBI scheme and use the fruits of AI to pay people for social good deeds and TicTok videos? There’s no doubt in my mind that capitalism will die, and it might be very soon.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[niterateaudio]

I just recently started using Massive X again after not paying attention to it for some years. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it is and how much work NI put into updating it.

[PieBerger]

I just recently started using Massive X again after not paying attention to it for some years. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it is and how much work NI put into updating it.

It's a great synth, all it really needs is the ability to respect sub-folders in the browser for user/third-party presets.

[exmatproton]

When I started making music, Native Instruments was at the forefront of making innovative music software. In the past few years, it has become clear that is no longer the case. They sold out to some big business, fired a huge number of people, and stopped doing what once made them so great.

Massive X release was delayed, the released product was still unfinished, updates have been slow and unimpressive.

Guitar Rig 6 was released with the promise of incredible ICM components that would be released frequently based on people’s wishes. It’s been years and apart from the three they launched with they’ve released zero, latest news was there aren’t plans for any.

Komplete 14 was released with pretty much no new NI software, they just added a new browser to Kontakt and bundled a mishmash of third party products. They keep promoting synths by U-he and Arturia instead of making their own.

Absynth was killed off.

Super 8, a Reaktor based synth, was turned into a VST with no new features. They are now discontinuing the VST version and going back to Reaktor only, so all that did was make things convoluted for people who used the VST.

Reaktor, a dev said on the forum that NI “is not in a position to invest major resources in this product, which has not been news for some time.” Blocks started out strong, but NI stopped making them and so did the community after the messy front panel patching update making old blocks incompatible, and Reaktor in general being convoluted.

Now they just release sample packs as new products, and take painfully long to update their remaining products to current spec standards. I hope they can bounce back from this but am not holding my breath.

Feel free to add to my rant, disagree or just mourn NI’s demise.

yep. +1, sad but true

[niterateaudio]

Reaktor, a dev said on the forum that NI “is not in a position to invest major resources in this product, which has not been news for some time.” Blocks started out strong, but NI stopped making them and so did the community after the messy front panel patching update making old blocks incompatible, and Reaktor in general being convoluted.

How old is Reaktor 6 and how many other similar software products have since then entered to occupy the same market space since 2015? I can count at least 5 direct competitors off the top of my heard. I don't blame NI for focusing where there are more paying customers -- which are EDM and hip-hop beat makers. How large do you think the modular software synth experimenter is to that market?

[Cyforce]

It`s also understandable, why Reaktor won`t see big feature upgrades on the horizon - even with other modular platforms (VCV etc) this is still a niche. The bigger part of the users mostly preferred tools/instruments with very few controls for fast "daily production" workflow - also a reason why Arcade is so popular. The guys who love to dive into a synth or under the hod like in Reaktor etc - are not the majority of the customers.

I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Reaktor is many things at once: a playground for builders, a platform for user friendly (more or less) instruments, and a Blocks fueled modular system. You don’t need to be a builder to have fun with Form or Super 8, or to patch up a few LFOs in a Rack. Reaktor, while still mostly excellent as far as I’m concerned, seems to be failing at all of these jobs. At least that seems to be the predominant narrative right now, and has been for years. I guess it’s not that easy to shake something like that off, not without significant updates and improvements.

Absolutely agree, Reaktor is great for creative building, sound experiments and more - but the majority of users mostly tend to prefer "simple"-usage. Even on modern normal VST synths (slightly more complex) like Pigments, be many times overwhelmed just by the modulations.

Something like Reaktor definitively deserves its spaces, and hopefully stays alive for a long time. Just the Reaktor community library is a pure treasure for innovative sound design approaches. It`s maybe not a mainstream tool, but a creative one driven by a lot of passion by its community - just because of that, NI should not "barry" it like Absynth.

[Fannon]

How long until we get chat gpt for music?

It’s already here. I listed to an episode of On The Media yesterday and they played some soundtrack type thing that was generated using AI. The entire episode was about AI. I’m not sure if its true, but someone I know posted a letter where a client was firing an illustrator after openly admitting that “due to budget cuts” the rest of the project would be handled with AI. It wasn’t stated, but inferred that they trained the AI to work in the style of the person getting fired. I’ve had similar things happen to me, but replace AI with cheap overseas labor. Once an employer fired me because he said he hated everything I did (weeks had gone by with positive feedback) and then stupidly hadn’t done screen shots of the files I was showing him. (I always used Flash so it couldn’t be easily swiped off my site) A few hours after firing me, they emailed to ask where the images were that they were refusing to pay for. I did confirm with an employee of that company who I was friends with that he found out that the plan was to have an intern take my comps and turn them into websites.

I think we’re heading into a very weird time. Definitely a scary time for artists who earn a living doing art. I’m not sure how it’s going to shake out. I can say that one time my employer tried to use cheap S. Korean illustrators for background images, I spent as much time fixing what they sent (which wasn’t great) as I would have had I just done the images myself. I’m doing less visual art and more sound and music, and I know that some AI could probably do some of what I’m doing, but there are technical aspects of it that I don’t think could be done correctly. This sets up some odd situation where I might be relegated to crappy production work while computers get to do the fun stuff. It’s not going to just be artists, either. I’m sure someone is working on AI that can manage teams. What happens to an economy when nearly every job can be done more cheaply by AI? You can’t sling soft serve at your local Dairy Queen when no one in the town can afford a Blizzard® because the only jobs available are fast food service jobs.

Will be go back to subsistence farming? Serfs to lords like Elon Musk? I thought about Diamond Age, but even the Viccies who designed nanotech would be replaced by AI in our current trajectory. What happens to humans when all meaningful work, and most menial work, can be done by technology? Can a successful government come up with some sort of UBI scheme and use the fruits of AI to pay people for social good deeds and TicTok videos? There’s no doubt in my mind that capitalism will die, and it might be very soon.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

That's definitely an interesting topic, would deserve it's own thread! I find it very interesting to read your take on it!

I'm not as pessimistic about the future, though: We've had at least similar situations in the past, e.g. when the photo camera was invented the painters working on realism style got displaced quite heavily. But as a reaction, artists soon came up with modern art, impressionism, expressionism, etc. When recorded music came up, I'm also pretty sure that many thought that that would put many musicians out of business is.

Thing is, it's really hard to see the future on this. I just know that once one niche disappears from us humans, we can become very creative in finding something new and redefining what we think of art and music. We may not see and know what this will be with the displacement through AI.

Although I'm aware that AI has a new character as displacement. Even if we come up with something new, how long will it take until AI can replicate it as well? For sure, we need to rethink our values and our society big time in the next 10-20 years.

[martinjuenke]

Absolutely agree, Reaktor is great for creative building, sound experiments and more

Right, but a lot of sound experimenters have drifted towards modular hardware and software (NI blocks are obviously no longer developed, therefore their competitors take the market share). Imo the glory days of Reaktor are over.

[ozinga]

Arturia should come out with a sampler that will attract 3rd party developers. It feels like they are the only ones that could do it properly.

[Biome_Digital]

Arturia should come out with a sampler that will attract 3rd party developers. It feels like they are the only ones that could do it properly.

That's actually a good idea!

[Dirtgrain]

Arturia should come out with a sampler that will attract 3rd party developers. It feels like they are the only ones that could do it properly.

It is a struggle to go against something so established as the norm. Steinberg has tried to get more content, it seems, where we see libraries with both Kontakt and Halion versions--but it does not seem to be catching on. Soundpaint is an alternative, and there was talk of having third-party libraries, but I'm not aware of any at this point.

An issue is the demand more than one sampler format puts on developers, some of whom are small, employee-wise. If there were five or so samplers, akin to Kontakt, open to third-party libraries, would smaller companies adapt a library to all five? Is that plausible (not sure)? Then again, I'd love to see one that just uses WAV files instead of that BS proprietary Kontakt format (UVI ain't any better).

[ozinga]

Arturia should come out with a sampler that will attract 3rd party developers. It feels like they are the only ones that could do it properly.

It is a struggle to go against something so established as the norm. Steinberg has tried to get more content, it seems, where we see libraries with both Kontakt and Halion versions--but it does not seem to be catching on. Soundpaint is an alternative, and there was talk of having third-party libraries, but I'm not aware of any at this point.

An issue is the demand more than one sampler format puts on developers, some of whom are small, employee-wise. If there were five or so samplers, akin to Kontakt, open to third-party libraries, would smaller companies adapt a library to all five? Is that plausible (not sure)? Then again, I'd love to see one that just uses WAV files instead of that BS proprietary Kontakt format (UVI ain't any better).

I agree, all true, but somehow I feel like Arturia would come up with something that is attractive, simple to use yet deep and would have a chance to succeed. Since they are extremely popular right now, that would help too.
IMHO despite being great instruments, both Halion and Falcon feels and looks over complicated.

[machinesworking]

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.”

IMO this is an overrated concept, that companies do not market to people wanting to develop sounds from scratch is obvious, the market for preset libraries and sample packs has always been massive. I still have the library from Kompact, NI's Rompler from the early 2000's, there's a huge market for workstation synths that people rarely if ever tweak sounds on, since the 90's in hardware form even.

Again it's more a case that NI are caught with their pants down having to clean house on 15+ year old GUI code that isn't even the same issue across their line up, to introduce three separate technological improvements that people are wanting and demanding in VST3, Apple Silicon, and resizable or at least decent sized GUI's. They always do this, they're always last in line to clean house on old code, it's nothing new. The only thing new is two out of three are cross platform issues, that make it even more complex for them to solve and affects a wider audience. Their stagnation has IMO blatantly obvious roots in their been counters always prioritizing new Rompler style content over house cleaning old code.

IMHO despite being great instruments, both Halion and Falcon feels and looks over complicated.

That's the issue though, anything complex is complicated. You're not going to replace Kontakt with a less complex sampler, that's not why it's the most popular sampler for third party developers to code for. I don't think Arturia are the ones to do it, my take is UVI or Steinberg would have to truly reach out to sample library developers to damage Kontakt at all. I don't see it going away, when a sample library company gets large enough though they tend to want to develop their own system, that's what you saw over ten years ago with East West and what you're currently seeing probably happening with Spitfire.

[psycho45039]

Also VSL went there own way. The Kontakt factory library had VSL samples included in it at one point in time.

[mi-os]

Arturia should come out with a sampler that will attract 3rd party developers. It feels like they are the only ones that could do it properly.

Another proprietary sampler/player? No thanks!

How about an opensource solution? To me the only real way forward. I don't want to invest in more of the same only to see it abandoned one day too.