Sad state of Native Instruments

[machinesworking]

PSP and u-he aren't deleting products from their catalogs, shrinking development teams and budgets, scaling back roadmaps and project scopes, or selling their assets to venture capitalists, either.

Don’t get me wrong I love U-He but when was Zebra 3 coming out again?
Same with PSP, N2O has been next to useless forever now. New products have come out from both. We as end users tend to judge big companies as if you can just throw a dozen people to work on the same piece of software but from what I understand that doesn’t work. Larger companies with more products like NI have the same amount of people working on a single product.

Larger companies incur more technical debt, and the older they are the deeper that can be. I don’t think that’s a controversial statement, Bitwig has sandboxing because it’s a new kid on the block etc.

[machinesworking]

...
NI are near done with their VST3 and Apple Silicon ports. Audio Ease, VSL, Sononym, AudioFinder etc. haven't even started from the looks of it. PSP and U-He are at the same level, a little over halfway yet we don't see threads on their stagnation. PSP are actually way behind NI in terms of porting.

Not a very good comparison, NI has way more resources than U-he and PSP.

Although Absynth is a huge loss, it's been almost a decade since NI abandoned Kore. Same with the hardware. I'm not saying they're beyond trashing a bit here for their scorched earth policies, but they at least have slowed down a bit.

huh?

I answered the resources argument above. More resources literally translates into more products from NI, not more developers working on the same product.

I don't think I need to explain the other statement. NI in the past deprecated a ton of things, but it's been a long time between Kore and Absynth. Literally over a decade. I'm not happy about it, but it's unrealistic to say they discontinue things all the time lately, which is the way it's being framed in this thread.

[DJ Warmonger]

Well, they seem to be shipping mostly hip-hop expansions and trivial sampled instruments lately, as they're cheap and easy to create, and to market. At the same time it's difficult to come up with yet another cutting-edge synth and convince a large number of people that they need this new one in particular.

It's a business, you know, it's all about cost vs gain.

And no, I don't like this either.

[noiseboyuk]

Well, they seem to be shipping mostly hip-hop expansions and trivial sampled instruments lately, as they're cheap and easy to create, and to market. At the same time it's difficult to come up with yet another cutting-edge synth and convince a large number of people that they need this new one in particular.

An uncomfortable truth - there are so many synths now, after the underwhelming Massive X they may have called time on it as a bottomless pit in an extremely over-saturated market.

As compared to IK who have pretty much everything acoustic covered to some degree in their SampleTank range, NI's Komplete is more piecemeal. It's also usually done better. So there is some logic in them adding new libraries to fill other niches.

Yesterday they released Valves, which doesn't really fit the description of either hip-hop or trivial sampled instruments.



Sounds pretty good. An ensemble of 5 brass instruments with true legato and a lot of clever programming, and at 89 euros it's a fair price. This is a typical NI release these days, it performs a specific function very well. It's just that for many people here they don't want or need that specific function.

[wvshpr]

[martinjuenke]

Yesterday they released Valves, which doesn't really fit the description of either hip-hop or trivial sampled instruments.

That's made by e-instruments, NI just distributes it.

Who cares?
If yes, why?

[noiseboyuk]

Who cares?

Exactly. Pretty sure almost all their releases are productions with other developers these days.

[Dencheg]

As much as I detest seeing "why do you dislike u-he or Chery Audio" (Oh my goodness, I don't, what's wrong with the authors),
I want to joing this topic.
Unfortunatelly, "biznes" trumped the innovation in case of NI (I believe, biznes and innovation should be in balanse, like anabolism and catabolism).

1) NI forgot that they became THE MAN cause they made Massive.
They should have paid much more attention to make Massive X as useable as the original, not making it "crippled" (if you will) to tie it to Maschine.
I hope they will be back on track, cause it's Massive X what I'm waiting from them.

Browser with proper folders, tagging and search, MIDI for macros, mousewheel support, init button, navigating presets with a single click. Some of those are simple, some are very complicated but should be done.
Instead of discouraging 3rd party designers by updating browser for proprietary packs, but not for 3rd/user preset management.
Aiyn Zahev keeps making great presets for Diva, and only made one pack for MX.

2) They shouldn't forget Reaktor too.

Apparently, these tools (Massive X and Reaktor) require some cognitive power from the users, and for some reason bizness thinks that loosing this requirement will bring more moneys. That's sad.

Heed my word

[Biome_Digital]

Browser with proper folders, tagging and search, MIDI for macros, mousewheel support, init patch, navigating presets with a single click. Some of those are simple, some are very complicated but should be done.
Instead of discouraging 3rd party designers by updating browser for proprietary packs, but not for 3rd/user preset management.
Aiyn Zahev keeps making great presets for Diva, and only made one pack for MX.

Interesting, I also only made one pack for Massive X and have been holding out for the features you mention. To tell the truth, I am fed up with waiting.

[mi-os]

where is the incentive for anybody to develop an opensource solution?

Maybe ask the Hise dev?

I'm not really involved in opensource software, but it seems possible for opensource developers to later offer paid premium services for business users.

But it's probably mostly based on enthusiasm and the will to have a free decentralized solution available. Also independence of c/r copy protection servers which are always at risk to go down and never come back.

[gentleclockdivider]

Who cares?

Exactly. Pretty sure almost all their releases are productions with other developers these days.

Same goes for other big developers ,using licensed tech in one form or the other ..
Motu used UVI for ages , arturia uses pianotech modelling , a verry popular wavetable synth is cobled together with 3d party dsp tech etc..

[gentleclockdivider]

1) NI forgot that they became THE MAN cause they made Massive.

WHat makes you think that ?
N.I. was the man right from the start with the release of generator( pre reaktor ).

[GHOST19]

This is a hilarious thread. NI are still the absolute top dogs in the virtual instrument game and Komplete is by far the best deal around.

They have a few issues but nothing worth this circlejerk.

[gentleclockdivider]

This is a hilarious thread. NI are still the absolute top dogs in the virtual instrument game and Komplete is by far the best deal around.

They have a few issues but nothing worth this circlejerk.

I would't say that either .
Their offerings of NON sample based instruments (even though sounding great ) is pretty meager .
You've got a couple of reaktor based synths and then fm8 and massive+ massive X , not exactly a huge number .

[pdxindy]

NI are still the absolute top dogs in the virtual instrument game and Komplete is by far the best deal around.

You could claim that NI is the top dog as far as Kontakt and sample based instruments. Certainly not for synthesis. Serum is more popular at this point than any synth by NI. And NI's trend is not overall positive. Massive X is missing many standard features that were in original Massive such as a functional browser, midi learn and parameter automation. Massive supported PolyAT and MX doesn't even though it was released at a time when there are plenty of PolyAT controllers available and more coming. Massive had MSEG's and MX doesn't. NI is way behind the curve at this point.

Meanwhile, lots of other synths are adding new stuff like MPE, MTS-EPS support and CLAP.

And Komplete is not the best deal if you have an Apple Silicon Mac, or a high resolution monitor, or an MPE controller or are into microtuning.