It’s been some time since Massive X was released, and it’s languished with missing features that are considered standard with other developers, and poor design. The sound is universally praised, as are the general feature set, but many don’t use it that much, or have not purchased it because of the issues. This thread and poll is just a way to show how the community on KVR, who care deeply about using software instruments, are disappointed with NI and how it’s going. This post will be updated as users and potential customers comment. I’ll start with my issues about Massive X, but these mostly translate to all your instruments. To KVR members, let’s keep this to improvements only and please select a poll option as if a signing of a petition.
The UI is ambiguous and unintuitive. No real progress has happened since release.
A lot of things are not labeled, or not clearly labeled. What’s L1 to a new user? There’s plenty of room for LFO or EG.
Many elements are ambiguous. Is that number something you click and drag on, or double click and type in, or is it just a display?
Many of your competition are using visual cues to show modulation interaction and where in time an envelope is at any given time. This can be helpful with complex patches.
Scroll wheel support is something that should be standard.
The browser is a step back from Massive. Just going back to Massive’s design would be a huge improvement. You can’t easily edit meta data because you have double click on a sound to hear it and then the window closes. Fundamentally what is needed is for the user to be able to use the browser to author, tag, organise and manage user created content. At the moment all the work has been to make the browser good for finding NI authored content, but users can't even organise patches into banks, which makes it really hard for anyone wanting to sell or share patches to do so as they just get lost in the User list of hundreds or even thousands of patches. I am certain this has severely constrained the market for Massive X banks as third party developers want their banks to stand out and not get lost. User tagging is still very poor even after the latest update, as it can only be done one-by-one, and the tools to do it are hidden away - in practice it's still easier to do it in Komplete Kontrol despite the deficiencies of KK too.
All parameters should be directly automate-able, without having to create a Macro.
There are about to be 6 keyboards in production with polyphonic aftertouch, and pretty much no Native Instruments plugins react to it. Your free competition, Vital, not only uses it, but also offers excellent MPE support. I used to have a tee shirt you sent me that said, “The Future Of Sound.” Well, this is that future and you’re nowhere to be seen. Or did you think the future of sound was preset and sample packs? I think a future can contain both.
Look at how Zebra’s MSEGs work. That’s the way Massive X’s Performers should work, with options for global or polyphonic use.
LFOs should work identically to the wavetable oscillators, but slower.
The included wavetables are great, but wavetable import is pretty much a standard now, and an editor would be really nice. Throw in some lo-fi mode that emulates a PPG, while you’re at it.
The MSEGs are nice, but the layout is terrible. You could save a lot of space by making elements of the display directly editable. Curves should go in both directions.
I honestly think if these improvements were made, Massive X would be hands down the most used wavetable plugin. A lot of these improvements could be mirrored in your entire line and make Komplete even more desirable for new users, or old users who’ve stopped upgrading.
