NI Reaktor, I forgot how awesome it is

[_leras]

This thread was started by someone on Apple Silicon happy that Reaktor is native. The truth of the matter is NI are flatly as guilty of their deprecated products not working on Mac as Apple is, that's how it goes when you deprecate a product.

Not sure this is entirely fair. Reaktor itself was engineered to be backwards compatible. You can run old ensembles in Reaktor 6.

Windows goes to great lengths to ensure it is backwards compatible and can run old software.

Apple.... Not so much. In many instances old software simply doesn't run on newer Apple hardware, whether for music or graphic design.

[osiris]

Planned obsolescence. So you'll have to keep giving them money. A friend gave me her old iPad to read books and I she'd wiped it but I couldn't even download the Kindle app because it was a new version and sorry there's no oldr version to download. $300 paperweight.

[machinesworking]

This thread was started by someone on Apple Silicon happy that Reaktor is native. The truth of the matter is NI are flatly as guilty of their deprecated products not working on Mac as Apple is, that's how it goes when you deprecate a product.

Not sure this is entirely fair. Reaktor itself was engineered to be backwards compatible. You can run old ensembles in Reaktor 6.

Windows goes to great lengths to ensure it is backwards compatible and can run old software.

Apple.... Not so much. In many instances old software simply doesn't run on newer Apple hardware, whether for music or graphic design.

Fair? How about simply wanting to talk about Reaktor and having every single thread here about cross platform software end up being another frankly idiotic debate about mac vs pc?

Reaktor 6 is not engineered to be backwards compatible in terms of your DAW, otherwise it would automatically replace Reaktor 5 instances and it does not, what you can do is save the patch in 5 somewhere on your computer the load 6 into the VST slot 5 was in, then load the patch from 5 for that song. for a second it looked like NI were changing that with Kontakt, version 6 looked to be the first in a line of non separate versions, but they reverted to numbered version names again with Kontakt 7.

[_leras]

Fair? How about simply wanting to talk about Reaktor and having every single thread here about cross platform software end up being another frankly idiotic debate about mac vs pc?

Reaktor 6 is not engineered to be backwards compatible in terms of your DAW, otherwise it would automatically replace Reaktor 5 instances and it does not, what you can do is save the patch in 5 somewhere on your computer the load 6 into the VST slot 5 was in, then load the patch from 5 for that song.

I am talking about Reaktor, and you've misunderstood what I said.

Yes, you install Reaktor 6 alongside Reaktor 5. Reaktor 6 runs Reaktor 5 ensebles. Reaktor 6 ensembles had features not in Reaktor 5. To me that's backwards compatible with the newer version having new features, but still loading the older ensembles.

But look, when discussing a topic, of course it will surface where something doesn't run for one set of users but doesn't for others. I hardly think any windows users are aiming for one-upsmanship here.

[machinesworking]

I am talking about Reaktor, and you've misunderstood what I said.

Yes, you install Reaktor 6 alongside Reaktor 5. Reaktor 6 runs Reaktor 5 ensebles. Reaktor 6 ensembles had features not in Reaktor 5. To me that's backwards compatible with the newer version having new features, but still loading the older ensembles.

This is a separate issue, but there's no reason that I can think of that makes any sense to always make new versions of their software essentially separate plug ins to the DAW. Reaktor 6 opens up Reaktor 4 plug ins just fine, but NI and others will publish the version as a new device, so it doesn't automatically replace the old version, you have to have the old version installed or it doesn't open up anything. It looked like for a second that NI were changing that with Kontakt 6 which did not have a version number in its name, then they reverted back to versions numbers with Kontakt 7.

NI have also, and this is more pertinent to the conversation, deprecated dozens of pieces of soft and hardware over the years. They've gotten better, but in the past they would just blanket discontinue developing soft and hardware all the time. Absynth is not a lone or unique situation here, they've depreciated hardware as well, and at least a dozen other plug ins over the years.

But look, when discussing a topic, of course it will surface where something doesn't run for one set of users but doesn't for others. I hardly think any windows users are aiming for one-upsmanship here.

When people affiliated with NI claim or insinuate that all compatibility issues their software has is due to Apple, I beg to differ, It's that simple. NI have consistently been last in line for big changes whether it be PPC to Intel, 32 to 64 bit, VST3, resizable GUIs, MPE. Every, single, time, someone from NI will attempt to claim its Apples or the weathers fault. This time they weren't completely last in line with their line up if you don't count them discontinuing Absynth. That hardly counts in the bigger picture as fantastic backwards compatibility though, and they still have GUIs that need work, and MPE only with Reaktor, though I've yet to read up on how to set it up in Reaktor.

Essentially NI are a great company, but they have been counter issue. That has always been a problem, coding for modern features like 64 bit, VST3, GUI's that look good on 4K monitors, Apple Silicon, MPE etc. if it doesn't look like a huge money maker they drag their feet. Compare them to Arturia, who still produce 99% of their line up, have MPE, resizable GUI's, VST3, and were Apple Silicon ready years before NI completed their transition. To top that off, the last deprecated or discontinued product from Arturia is Spark, which was updated along with the rest of the line up to at least run on Apple Silicon in Rosetta with no issues. Absynth did not get even that, so it works randomly here, Spark works in all of them.

[vurt]

less jibber jabber, more cool ensemble!

[gentleclockdivider]

[martiu]

is there some real good physical modeling ensembles ?

[vurt]

hey now!
theyre not really in an ice cave
no tricks!

[gentleclockdivider]

is there some real good physical modeling ensembles ?

Look for chet singer ensembles , his silverwood flute ensemble is nothing short of amazing , so is the string ensemble ( no pun intended) .
Chet singer is a legend , he surely knows his modelling stuff

[machinesworking]

^^^ That physical modeling stuff looks fantastic!
I'm a big fan of some of the "simpler" ensembles.
I get more mileage out of Techno Tribe than I expected.

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/r ... how/11395/

[EvilDragon]

This is a separate issue, but there's no reason that I can think of that makes any sense to always make new versions of their software essentially separate plug ins to the DAW.

The reason is safety. Working composers can keep on using the established version without potentially wreaking havoc to their existing projects if a newer major version of a plugin replaced the old one. There is always a period of growing pains and fixing lots of bugs after a major release, so the way to avoid this while still allowing people to check out the new features and stuff is to just make things a separate plugin.

For hobbyists like most of KvR this is annoying, understandably. For people whole livelihood actually depends on all this stuff it's a godsend. Hope this puts things into perspective for you.

That said for supporting hosts (currently: Cubendo, Maschine, KK) there is now a VST3 migration feature implemented in Kontakt and Reaktor, where latest version will replace previous older versions, even from VST2 to VST3 - IF they are not found on the system.

[machinesworking]

This is a separate issue, but there's no reason that I can think of that makes any sense to always make new versions of their software essentially separate plug ins to the DAW.

The reason is safety. Working composers can keep on using the established version without potentially wreaking havoc to their existing projects if a newer major version of a plugin replaced the old one. There is always a period of growing pains and fixing lots of bugs after a major release, so the way to avoid this while still allowing people to check out the new features and stuff is to just make things a separate plugin.

For hobbyists like most of KvR this is annoying, understandably. For people whole livelihood actually depends on all this stuff it's a godsend. Hope this puts things into perspective for you.

Thanks for the reply, I can't agree that it's a godsend to professionals, I'm in constant meetings with plenty of industry people, and not one of them upgrades to the latest version of anything on their working machines, and almost all of them are technically inept enough to where this is actually the sort of "tech support" questions they ask me, "Why doesn't Kontakt 6 replace 5? On the other hand, any sort of tweaking to a plug in after it migrates to a new version can lead to mad forum rants from end users, so I get why this "made sense", even if logically it doesn't.

That said for supporting hosts (currently: Cubendo, Maschine, KK) there is now a VST3 migration feature implemented in Kontakt and Reaktor, where latest version will replace previous older versions, even from VST2 to VST3 - IF they are not found on the system.

IMO this should be the standard. All DAWs should have access to this. Kontakt and Reaktor are great candidates, upgrades don't generally break old patches, I've never migrated a patch to a new version of Kontakt for example and thought it killed the patch in any significant way. The removal of the old version sparking the next to replace it in projects would be the ultimate solution, best of both worlds but probably tough from a code standpoint.

[EvilDragon]

It's not about "killing the patch in any significant way" - as far as patch loading Kontakt and Reaktor are striving to be as bwd compatible as possible. It's about stability and performance differential, which can (and did in the past) have teething issues every time a major release happened.

[machinesworking]

It's not about "killing the patch in any significant way" - as far as patch loading Kontakt and Reaktor are striving to be as bwd compatible as possible. It's about stability and performance differential, which can (and did in the past) have teething issues every time a major release happened.

For sure, I just think it's one of those concerns that exists for the small audience of professionals that upgrade right away. I can't really think of a single person I've met or helped troubleshoot their setup that works in the industry who doesn't wait 6 months to a year to upgrade a critical plug in like Kontakt? Pretty much for all the reason you listed, they would rather underground artists and hobbyists iron out the bugs before they jump in.

Reaktor is amazing though, sometimes I wonder why people bother collecting plug ins? Reaktor, Kontakt, some U-He synths, and what do you really need?