Sad state of Native Instruments

[jancivil]

I'd say if your voucher is failing, to clear out your browser's history and such, or use a diff. browser

[aMUSEd]

He has a point though. You simply can't put money and effort into something which won't sell enough to make the development costs worthwhile. Obviously. Naturally.

I get it. It's always annoying when you're personally affected, but, that won't change anything about the bigger picture.

Obviously but NI have a habit of deprecating products by a gradual and pernicious process of neglect, then eventually they claim 'no one was interested anymore' but a lot of those people lost interest because NI were no longer showing interest themselves in actively developing it and so they jumped ship. This is in danger of happening now with Reaktor. How long before we are told there are not enough people interested in that to keep it going?

Who knows? It could happen, if it isn't profitable. Unfortunately, a common rule of economy. It can happen to everyone and everything.

Synapse Audio does synths, while they used to do a DAW. It wasn't worthwhile, so, they terminated it. Just an example.

Yes but the point I'm making is that these situations don't just 'happen' they are created by what people do, including companies. If no effort is put into maintaining, promoting or further developing a product then people are bound to lose interest apart from a few hardcore users (who then get called 'niche' users). It happened to Kore and if we are not careful could happen to Reaktor.

If anything, there simply is no audience for Absynth. If there is enough of an audience for Reaktor, I don't know.

I don't agree, I think there could easily be an audience for Absynth but NI couldn't be bothered to really market or develop it and just let it die on the vine. Absynth was dated in some ways but also way ahead of its time, at the time when it came out very few people were working in surround, and granular and all the other novel sound generation and processing tools in Absynth were still seen as niche and even 'academic'. Now we even have 'spatial' audio in Apple Music, cinematic sound design in Atmos and other surround formats is huge, and granular/pm etc synthesis is mainstream and musicians do want to experiment with new synthesis approaches. A new envigorated Absynth could have been positioned to be part of that but NI simply lacked the vision to recognise the potential it had.

[cptgone]

Absynth was an innovative product, and highly regarded.
Massive, if done right, should be a crowd pleaser.

People keep saying the market has changed - but there are still companies selling instruments.

- To me it feels, NI went for the quick buck, focusing on sample packs.
- It's said that most of the old devs (e.g. Brian "Absynth" Clevinger) have left NI.

The assertion its GUI 'wasn't competitive' from the start is not supported by facts, as it came out in 2002. You weren't using such modern GUIs when Absynth was released, or when Absynth 2 under NI's purview was released in iirc 2003. Pure argumentum ad culum.

Absynth's GUI was above average, even before NI prettified it.

[jancivil]

I'm only going to see that in quotes, but if I am going to be subject to it I will question it:
"there simply is no audience for Absynth"
where is the evidence, what surveys have you, what data is informing this opinion stated as though a given fact?
That's a rhetorical question.

You don't use it, you don't get it, end of story. Why go to this length to make it more than your own personal take?

I guess I need to move away from this forum now. I may wind up saying what I genuinely think.

[cptgone]

(never mind, I responded to a post that has been edited in the mean time, clarifying things)

[Dr.Gunjah]

The assertion its GUI 'wasn't competitive' from the start is not supported by facts, as it came out in 2002.

Maybe, but besides the fact that my post was actually PRO absynth I was talking about Absynth 5 which was released in 2009. And yeah, the only reason I didn't use it more often was the UI was ugly, too small and generally not fun to use at all, even compared to other NI products.

I agree that there could be a target audience for a new absynth, but obviously it will fail if they half-ass it like their latest creations (including massive x)

[cptgone]

I agree that there could be a target audience for a new absynth, but obviously it will fail if they half-ass it like their latest creations (including massive x)

This.

I own K12S and didn't feel enticed to upgrade (even at €50).
If it included a new Absynth, and if that had the right features/implementation, I would have.

[Scoops]

Merry Christmas

I had been a longtime NI user since Komplete2, and currently have Komplete14 UCE
I had been a longtime Izotope User since Ozone4, and currently have the "everything" bundle

I have elected to jump ship before it totally sinks

Has anyone seen TrustPilot Reviews of their service lately
77% are 1 star, with an over all rating of 1.4 - BAD, and we're talkin almost 300 reviews

The market is filled with really great stuff.
FabFilter has replaced anything Izotope, although Symphony 3D is really sweet

Now while NI has great sounding synths, it's only a matter of time before they mess up FM8 and Kontakt.

The straw that broke the camels back was when they put NI adverts in Kontakt.

My $0.02

[Trensharo]

Absynth 5 Almost no one used it and it was a very niche synth. There was no way NI would put developers on that product. There was nothing to gain from it, and apart from a very small very vocal minority of people... it will not be missed.

what a lot of overbearing obnoxious nonsense. what I get from this quality of post is exactly reducible to 'this person has no clue how to use this instrument' {and nowt but this}.
muted for all the negative waves coming off you like metallic armpits stench (not limited to this shart)

Nothing I wrote was untrue. You are just crying because you feel like your "precious" was killed off.

Nothing of note in this reply.

Also, what does not having to use an instrument has anything to do with what I wrote? I stated that it was a niche synth that very few people used. That has nothing to do with anyone's proficiency in using it. Those that wanted to use it, learned how to use it. That's a basic assumption anyone on a forum like this SHOULD be capable of making.

But it doesn't mean that a tiny user base rises to the level that it is worth sitting multiple high-tier developers on it to update it... Almost no one was going to NI to buy Absynth 5. The only acquisition method was via Komplete, and very few people with Komplete were using it, with many of those probably limiting their use to Preset Digging.

The fact that a few loudmouths on the internet "loved" it - as if any product doesn't have some of those - does not change any of that.

Move on.

And keep in mind, the market has changed since 2002. It is far more competitive now than it was back then. Everything is in a race to the bottom in terms of pricing. How low should they be willing to go after investing considerably in development to make it worthwhile for someone to pick up an Absynth 6 [Upgrade] over juse using Falcon, or some other synth.

You also act like Spatial Audio is such a big deal, with many of the heavy hitters have already started moving in that direction - and most production oriented DAWs were limited to 5.1-at-best until relatively recently.

Very few people were going to upgrade to Pro Tools | Ultimate, Nuendo, Sequoia... or abuse themselves with Digital Performer on Windows... just to use Absynth Surround for Spatial stuff in 2018 or whatever. What does Apple Music have to do with anything. It didn't even exist until the market had shifted considerably. By the time it became a thing, Absynth 5 was already pretty much legacy software and other Synths were capable of stepping up.

The issue with being "ahead of your time" is that you don't know if any of that will matter when the times change and people's preferences, expectations and requirements have shifted.

Pro Tools was also ahead of its time, but none of that seems to have mattered to the bedroom producer market that opened up and created a huge growth vector for other DAWs to exploit.

[dune_rave]

I also don't really like NI because they killed Pro-53, Absynth, didn't update FM8 etc....
However, the current -50 coupon code (in case you > 100 shop) makes me think
I have to put an expansion (~14 eur) to the shopping cart to exceed 100, then I can apply the 50 discount,
so from Komplete 12 standard I could jump into Komplete 14 standard for 64 Eur!
If I only consider Kontakt, I receive many things, but overall for 64 Eur it's a killer offer.
But Since it is Native Instruments who sells it, I Rather Think twice.
What do you think? Is there a better place for my 64 Eur? For example I could spend this on uad effects and instruments... or I could update my V Collection but that would cost some more bucks.... And of Course I could buy the new GFORCE instrument .... (but i alreaady have their oddyssey...)

[noiseboyuk]

The straw that broke the camels back was when they put NI adverts in Kontakt.

...which they have (partially) rowed back on. Also changing the double click behaviour is going to be back in 7.8 optionally.

NI aren't a monolith - quite. Because they've been rowing back a lot lately, I wonder if they're starting to get concerned that they are not taking their user base with them. Dunno.

[Orourkekings]

have they fixed native access yet? or the 3rd party plugins not showing up or loading in komplete Kontrol?

[Kypresso]

Interesting deal for UVI on the NI website : https://www.native-instruments.com/en/s ... nks-offer/

I bet there will be some interesting support calls from people who want to know why nothing works on Kontakt.

[dune_rave]

I also don't really like NI because they killed Pro-53, Absynth, didn't update FM8 etc....
However, the current -50 coupon code (in case you > 100 shop) makes me think
I have to put an expansion (~14 eur) to the shopping cart to exceed 100, then I can apply the 50 discount,
so from Komplete 12 standard I could jump into Komplete 14 standard for 64 Eur!
If I only consider Kontakt, I receive many things, but overall for 64 Eur it's a killer offer.
But Since it is Native Instruments who sells it, I Rather Think twice.
What do you think? Is there a better place for my 64 Eur? For example I could spend this on uad effects and instruments... or I could update my V Collection but that would cost some more bucks.... And of Course I could buy the new GFORCE instrument .... (but i alreaady have their oddyssey...)

I decided. I will stay forever on Komplete 12 and not pay for any update until they do real improvement on FM8/Battery4/ Kontakt / Reaktor. I don't need Play series Kontakt libs, I don't need MassiveX and its expansions, I don't need Izotope effects etc...
Here's what I buy/will buy instead: Sonic Charge Synplant2, GForce Software AXXES, and some UAD goodies.

[machinesworking]

Obviously but NI have a habit of deprecating products by a gradual and pernicious process of neglect, then eventually they claim 'no one was interested anymore' but a lot of those people lost interest because NI were no longer showing interest themselves in actively developing it and so they jumped ship.

OK I do agree for the most part with this, but I think what happens is the developers move on. Brian Clevinger who made Absynth stopped working for NI. He came back briefly once for compatibility reasons on v5, but NI declined to do that again for VST3, resizable GUI's and Apple Silicon support. NI also have a long history of jettisoning products that get too deep in technical debt, no doubt. One thing is clear, it has nothing to do with chk071's assertion that it wasn't a cash cow, he can't know that. We can know that it needed a lot of work, and NI would have to pay outside developers for that work.

This is in danger of happening now with Reaktor. How long before we are told there are not enough people interested in that to keep it going?

I think Kontakt and Reaktor are the only plugins by NI that are bullet proof only "down with the ship" if NI folds completely. Everything else recently is based on tech from those two, all the Play series etc. The problem is Reaktor in particular not getting any love for years as they use the tech in other things, could take a decade to see real change.