KVR Audio

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:07 pm

Yeah, it's a sad state for NI... and the contrast is stark.

U-he has an obscure little synth which is part of the Filterscape plugin called Filterscape VA. I'm sure many more people over the past few years have used Absynth than have used Filterscape VA. Yet while NI has killed off Absynth, u-he is close to releasing a huge, free update for Filterscape VA that includes a new GUI and much more.

rod_zero · Post by **rod_zero** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:25 pm

I think people are not expecting Absynth 5 to be revolutionary, or FM9, but to bring them to current usability and compatibility expectations: apple sillicon support, vst3, MPE, resizable and more usable GUI, better filters. People would be content with that because the core of those synths is good enough.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:41 pm

rod_zero wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:25 pm I think people are not expecting Absynth 5 to be revolutionary, or FM9, but to bring them to current usability and compatibility expectations: apple sillicon support, vst3, MPE, resizable and more usable GUI, better filters. People would be content with that because the core of those synths is good enough.

Absynth was killed off... it's done and gone in terms of any future development.

anttimaatteri · Post by **anttimaatteri** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:50 pm

theyre goin the way of a state of mediocrity.
one of THE elements one can deduce the state of ni is the resizable window of reaktor or kontakt.
it resizes nothin, just the empty window itself. not a single isntrument i ever opened in these windows is resizable in terms of modern 2023 state of the art plugin gui. it stucked in a 12inch laptop wscreen world forever.

its an "empty suits" case

bundoo · Post by **bundoo** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:55 pm

I would recommend people search cdm for details on NIs turmoil. Some interesting and revealing info there. The non resizeable resizeable window is a great metaphor.

dune_rave · Post by **dune_rave** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 6:01 pm

sad: just compare the new NI flagship synth (massive x) to competitors like Avenger, Pigments, or Phase Plant. I admit that Massive x received some cool feature from reaktor, but it lacks so many things. Of course I mainly upgraded to K12 for Kontakt, but I was an absynth/fm7/fm8 fan dammit, and these were not really updated in a way i'd like.

bundoo · Post by **bundoo** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 6:16 pm

That's venture capital baby. Get those flashy beat making videos and sample packs going and shelve the very roots of the company. Same old story. Profit over innovation.

martiu · Post by **martiu** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 7:34 pm

any optimization on Massive X or it is the same CPU hog?

Ficciones · Post by **Ficciones** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 8:30 pm

anttimaatteri wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:50 pm theyre goin the way of a state of mediocrity.
one of THE elements one can deduce the state of ni is the resizable window of reaktor or kontakt.
it resizes nothin, just the empty window itself. not a single isntrument i ever opened in these windows is resizable in terms of modern 2023 state of the art plugin gui. it stucked in a 12inch laptop wscreen world forever.

its an "empty suits" case

The resizable window in Reaktor goes way back and no one expected it to zoom the instruments. It's been great for me as a builder because I have more building room while running as a plugin.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Tue Jul 18, 2023 11:57 pm

machinesworking wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2023 6:14 amHave you checked the support site? They have a bad habit of not having their "answer" send you an email, and the "ticket" is sitting there on their site. They may have answered and it didn't generate an email notifying you they did. (it's a stupid system IMO, but that's how they do it)

I spent 10 minutes last night trying to find my support ticket on their site. I eventually gave up and just opened a new one.

pdxindy wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:07 pmU-he has an obscure little synth which is part of the Filterscape plugin called Filterscape VA. I'm sure many more people over the past few years have used Absynth than have used Filterscape VA. Yet while NI has killed off Absynth, u-he is close to releasing a huge, free update for Filterscape VA that includes a new GUI and much more.

You could just as easily interpret that as U-he having run out of ideas and regurgitating old stuff, couldn't you? I mean, when was the last time U-he released a brand new synth? Absynth has to be 20 years or more old, it's had its day, surely? Maybe someone could do an emulation of it?

bundoo wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2023 6:16 pmThat's venture capital baby. Get those flashy beat making videos and sample packs going and shelve the very roots of the company. Same old story. Profit over innovation.

But that isn't something that's changed since they were bought out. I only became a customer in 2018 and that's how I would have described them then. They impressed me with the sheer amount of krap they were willing to give me, just because I bought a piece of their hardware.

The thing is, it feels like NI are in a similar situation to Adobe - too many rusted on professional users who don't want anything to change because they are too set in their ways to adapt. So they leave the old stuff the way it is and make new stuff for other users.

Daimonicon · Post by **Daimonicon** » Wed Jul 19, 2023 12:38 am

My thought about NI is it won't be long before NI close the door. Another dev will take over Kontakt, Reaktor and some other stuff. The golden era with so many software dev's is over. A very few of them will survive in the end.

plexuss · Post by **plexuss** » Wed Jul 19, 2023 12:41 am

Daimonicon wrote: Wed Jul 19, 2023 12:38 am My thought about NI is it won't be long before NI close the door. Another dev will take over Kontakt, Reaktor and some other stuff. The golden era with so many software dev's is over. A very few of them will survive in the end.

Big audio plugin "devs". There will likely be more small and mid plugin companies as the industry and economy change.

mixyguy2 · Post by **mixyguy2** » Wed Jul 19, 2023 12:53 am

Daimonicon wrote: Wed Jul 19, 2023 12:38 am My thought about NI is it won't be long before NI close the door.

Yeah right; so not happening.

Re the scalability, I think they fixed that (finally) in a recent release, but can't say.

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Wed Jul 19, 2023 1:31 am

BONES wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2023 11:57 pm I spent 10 minutes last night trying to find my support ticket on their site. I eventually gave up and just opened a new one.

they send you an initial email when you open a support ticket with the address of the ticket. You would've had better look looking through your emails.

The thing is, it feels like NI are in a similar situation to Adobe - too many rusted on professional users who don't want anything to change because they are too set in their ways to adapt. So they leave the old stuff the way it is and make new stuff for other users.

They get no new sales on old software so they always make something "new". The Play series is just proprietary Kontakt libraries, but to their credit, some people are less likely to buy them without a GUI that hides that fact. That's the silly state of it. IMO they could refine and update Kontakt and Reaktor for the next 20 years and I would think they're a valid company, but in order to stay relevant they have to introduce essentially sample packs with GUIs.

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Wed Jul 19, 2023 1:38 am

pdxindy wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:07 pm Yeah, it's a sad state for NI... and the contrast is stark.

U-he has an obscure little synth which is part of the Filterscape plugin called Filterscape VA. I'm sure many more people over the past few years have used Absynth than have used Filterscape VA. Yet while NI has killed off Absynth, u-he is close to releasing a huge, free update for Filterscape VA that includes a new GUI and much more.

Filterscape VA is part of Filterscape, I'm not aware of any impetus to partition VA off from Filterscape? IMO though it also shows that even small agile developers struggle with technical debt, that U-He has not yet gotten Filterscape to Apple Silicon, and has not yet finished Zebra 3, which was supposedly happening 5 years ago or thereabouts. Honestly Zebra 3 is a great example of how even the venerable Urs can be bogged down by code.

It's a weird position to be in for me, I've used NI products for 20 years and done my share of complaining, but the chorus here is absurd. NI aren't going anywhere and their current state isn't any different than they've always operated in.

Sad state of Native Instruments