Sad state of Native Instruments

[kelvyn]

Just thought I would chime in with something positive.
I was having huge problems with Native Access not installing Komplete Ultimate. Went through the usual hoops and fire rings with Google searches, forums etc but no joy. I didn’t contemplate NI help desk because, well! You know why.
As a desperate last attempt I folded and submitted the dreaded
help me request form. And lo and behold help was found and solutions sought, problem solved. That after a very fast response and each email replied to in hours or a day. Not so bad!
Komplete is an amazingly eclectic collection of really inspiring
tools.
So! Despite some relevant gripes there’s life in the old girl yet:)

[Septic Underground]

NI is a relic from the past, move on. Ppl glued to their kontakt libs, you have my sympathy.

[ralfrobert]

And still, Komplete is a good offer for newcomers. If you get into the ecosystem for around 200 bucks like I did, it cannot be beaten.

[pdxindy]

I'm only buying hardware these days. Ok, I'll show myself out now.

What was your latest hardware purchase?

Mine is the Anyma Omega - Polyphonic physical modelling synth

[BONES]

Side note, it says you’re suspended but you’re able to post? WTF?

Mind over matter, baby!

I'm really disappointed Netflix wont be making a second season of 1899

Surely it would have to be called "1900" if they did?

NI is a relic from the past, move on. Ppl glued to their kontakt libs, you have my sympathy.

What on Earth are you talking about? Far from being "glued", I keep flitting from library to library because NI (and others) keep pushing out new and inspiring libraries that keep Kontakt at the cutting edge. If you want to see what I mean, check out Heavyocity's Mosaic Tape and tell me what else I could use to do all of that so effortlessly and elegantly.

[funky lime]

NI is a relic from the past, move on. Ppl glued to their kontakt libs, you have my sympathy.

I've tried. Spitfire, Orchestral Tools, Cinesamples, EastWest, Mntra, UVI, and a bunch more all have their own non-Kontakt romplers, and they all fall short in at least one major way (often much more). For my needs, VSL is maybe the only contender with Synchron. But they all lack something that is specific to an ecosystem like Kontakt: the ability to build complex multis with libraries from multiple developers in the same patch... and the ability to edit a patch under the hood to meet your own needs! Now I've got like 8 different completely isolated and closed sampler/rompler ecosystems (i.e. wheel reinventions) to learn instead of just the one.

Kontakt is still king of that hill in a number of ways, and probably won't be going anywhere for quite some time, despite the all-around disaster that K7 has been. Too many working composers are very heavily dependent on Kontakt and the myriad 3rd party libraries.

[zerocrossing]

NI gets more attention simply because far more people use their products.

That’s part of it, but I don’t think it’s that simple. I think a big part of it is that their products actually sound very good, and have some novel features. Combine that with their shift in focus as a company, and you have a head-scratcher. I don’t think anyone would fault them for going for a new market, but why abandon your old market?

Even if Massive X isn’t your cup’a, it’s good to have a flagship synth that is talked about in a good light. Treat your customers right and you get evangelists. Treat them wrong, and they chase you around with torches and pitch forks. If I was someone who was starting to get into electronic music and I wanted to go ITB, I’d see all these threads and complaints, and even if I didn’t quite understand what people were complaining about, I’d think twice before I bought anything from them. The point that they’ve always been like this (Kore, etc) isn’t really an excuse to just accept it.

[zerocrossing]

Just thought I would chime in with something positive.
I was having huge problems with Native Access not installing Komplete Ultimate. Went through the usual hoops and fire rings with Google searches, forums etc but no joy. I didn’t contemplate NI help desk because, well! You know why.
As a desperate last attempt I folded and submitted the dreaded
help me request form. And lo and behold help was found and solutions sought, problem solved. That after a very fast response and each email replied to in hours or a day. Not so bad!
Komplete is an amazingly eclectic collection of really inspiring
tools.
So! Despite some relevant gripes there’s life in the old girl yet:)

I’ve not had an issue that needed support in a long time, but previous times I’ve had similarly good customer service from NI, so sure. The good should also be appreciated.

[zerocrossing]

I'm only buying hardware these days. Ok, I'll show myself out now.

What?! You may as well become Amish!

I’m actually sort of going the opposite direction. Working from home means I’m keeping my studio up and running all day, and while we’re lucky to have A/C, that isn’t cheap to run. My studio gets quite toasty. I’m looking around to all of these little space heaters and asking, “do I need you?”

[zerocrossing]

While we're all arguing about the same stuff we've all been arguing about for years, NI released Valves Pro yesterday.



This looks and sounds like an exceptionally well conceived library. There isn't anything else that has taken this approach - it feels best in class. It's vast but elegant, and looks like a lot of thought has gone into the different ways you can work with it.

It will be another product dismissed here as bloat. And I can understand that - most KVRers are eternally wanting old synths brought back, current ones better developed or new ones brought to market. The likes of Valves Pro is not for everyone, but like Lores or their recent guitar products they form a formidable arsenal for those working with acoustic instruments, especially composers.

NI's synth-based era is over. What remains of their focus isn't bad - quite the opposite. But it is undeniably different.

Things like this is why I recently upgraded from Komplete 11 to Komplete 13 Ultimate. They are really knocking it out of the park on things like this, and I get a lot of use out of them. Maybe they’ll never be the NI of the 00s, but surely they could divert a bit of resources to their stand alone synthesizers.

[machinesworking]

i thought the rot started right about when they tanked Kore. When they "updated/downgraded" Battery from 3 to 4. That's when it started to seem like NI had changed direction from a cutting edge soft synth developer into a money grubbing corpse. Doing Only what will bring in the most $. Yeah, yeah, all the corp bootlickers, now is your chance to chime in and say "b b but that what corporations do, they just exist to make money" ok. sure. Fortunately NI wasn't following that philosophy in the 2000s or i we would be missing some amazing software.

Kore wasn’t near the first casualty. There were literally 6-12 other plug ins that got deprecated before Kore: B3, Pro 53, Akoustic and Elektric Piano, Spectral Delay, Kompact, Intakt, Vokator… I’m probably forgetting a few?

So no, the rot didn’t start when they tanked Kore. A rep in their forums claimed it would be the last main product to be deprecated, and only the gullible would have believed that after the previous trail of blood! They did in fact slow down their abandoning of plug ins after Kore, but anyone paying attention knew it will never stop.

Like i commented sometime around then. Spectral Delay was abandoned, those others were all downgraded into other products. Glad someone is keeping track better than i and can correct me on my opinion.

Yes Pro 53 and Vokator were rolled into Kontakt, oh wait?...
Kore was simply the one that made you the most angry, even the sample based instruments weren't magically better downgraded into Kontakt.
I didn't mention the train wreck of Komplete Care, the broken promises with PPC to Intel transitions etc etc.

When you go online and state an opinion as if it was fact, you have to expect that people will bust holes in it. NI very arguably did not start "rotting" with the abandoning of Kore, that's all.

[machinesworking]

NI gets more attention simply because far more people use their products.

So they’re held to a higher standard because they’re more popular, got it!

Not in my case...

You keep trying to make conclusions for others. Just speak for yourself. You're not actually good at accurately summarizing the comments of others.

You and others state things as if they're facts, then get upset when holes can be poked in those "facts". Ad hominem is the proof of this. Here's the hole you could poke that would have made for a good argument to my obvious silly comeback.

"Their popularity does not equal a higher standard, although I guess I could see why you would think that."

You actually made a good case there, but your emotional attachment to the conversation makes you do things like ad hominem. Lighten up, this isn't a serious conversation, no one is dying.

[pdxindy]

You and others state things as if they're facts

What others say is not my business or responsibility. If I stated something that is inaccurate, quote that and be specific. If I said something that is inaccurate, I don't mind being corrected.

But what you constantly do is read the responses of a bunch of different people, draw conclusions as if it were one person saying those things and then apply those conclusions to all those people. You lump them together and put words in their mouths that they didn't say. It's sloppy and it's rude.

[machinesworking]

NI gets more attention simply because far more people use their products.

That’s part of it, but I don’t think it’s that simple. I think a big part of it is that their products actually sound very good, and have some novel features. Combine that with their shift in focus as a company, and you have a head-scratcher. I don’t think anyone would fault them for going for a new market, but why abandon your old market?

Even if Massive X isn’t your cup’a, it’s good to have a flagship synth that is talked about in a good light. Treat your customers right and you get evangelists. Treat them wrong, and they chase you around with torches and pitch forks. If I was someone who was starting to get into electronic music and I wanted to go ITB, I’d see all these threads and complaints, and even if I didn’t quite understand what people were complaining about, I’d think twice before I bought anything from them. The point that they’ve always been like this (Kore, etc) isn’t really an excuse to just accept it.

It's weird to me to be in this position, but NI have never been great at maintaining their library of products. They put out amazing stuff with dozens of products rolled into Komplete, but IMO I would guess they sometimes lose, or for whatever reason are not able to hire the original developer to fix their product line, so things stagnate for years and sometimes go away. So something like Battery seemingly getting downgraded likely means that the main developer left, and the guy who took over cut some corners to get it close enough.

When Arturia developed their resizable GUI's the thread on that here was as damming, and long. The method they used ate up drive space and people trashed them. They survived it and moved into a position of prominence around here. You came here ten years ago and saw the exact opposite, NI lauded and Arturia dragged through the mud.

I just don't see them changing, it's been the same their entire existence, they haven't changed. To be fair I started a thread on their user forums to get Kore to work without the hardware. They coded Kore at first to treat the hardware as a big dongle and Kore would not run without it plugged into your computer. They actually listened and made the Kore software work without hardware attached, then they abandoned Kore entirely.

[ghettosynth]

I'm only buying hardware these days. Ok, I'll show myself out now.

What?! You may as well become Amish!

I’m actually sort of going the opposite direction. Working from home means I’m keeping my studio up and running all day, and while we’re lucky to have A/C, that isn’t cheap to run. My studio gets quite toasty. I’m looking around to all of these little space heaters and asking, “do I need you?”

I still use lots of software, I just don't want to buy it anymore. I have too many plugins that I just haven't, wait for it, plugged in, since, well, forever.