Sad state of Native Instruments

[jancivil]

"serum drops and becomes the best selling vst for the last x years. To top it off it was written by one person over 5 or so years.

That’s bad for business. Especially with the overheads that NI has. A relative unknown release a plugin on his own with no infrastructure and blows away most of NI library."

nothing personal, you seem alright, but you just hyped the thing into total bullshit territory. It's just one synth.
Not sure how much infrastructure or expense is required to code one thing so it looks apples v. oranges, and in no way does a synth touch something like Thrill or Mysteria or any of my SonicCouture, let alone blow it away, and it's also in all likelihood not something to even replace Absynth for me. Looks like a capable synth anyway. Oh I just bought Massive (not-X) - not for the first time - for 41 bucks, speaking of modulation capability. I ignored so much of it before, I guess owing to a certain kind of stupidity. I really got off on the sound the one time I really used it but I don't like its appearance.

[SLiC]

MYSTERIA and Thrill was produced by Galaxy https://www.galaxy-instruments.com/ NI are just a host and shop window for a lot of other good developers, What have NI actually developed, they havent kept Kontakt up-to-date with what's expected in 2024? I agree Massive stands up to the test of time because it was (is) a great synth, pity they didn't keep doing that.

[jancivil]

Yeah, and SonicCouture entirely did their line, which are Kontakt products full stop; and as
businesses both they and Galaxy are inextricably intertwined with NI as the sort of face.
I was trying to be affirmative and positive in the midst of a very bad day, and a tear I was on.

The negative waves and entitlement of this crowd is always present here, I should learn patience.
"NI doesn't develop any more" is bullshit anyway though.

[jancivil]

Latest Native Access ver. 3.8 finally resolved long standing issue on macOS prompting for entering password with "Installing Dependencies" after each restart of computer.
BIG Thanks NI

Wow, I hope it works. That is/was somewhat irritating. I found that it did it once rather than twice after I gave it full disk access.

[jancivil]

and it f**king does work!

I guess "Evolution Series" is not strictly from NI, but is NI de facto regardless.
I'd pick up Lores if I had the drive space for it. When so much is right under your fingers with that cross-fade MO like that. and have already I think five things which are like that... I mean I'm doing so little and hearing so much sound in my current project I'm kind of thrown or donno, skeptical.

[glokraw]

My 2c,
The new rompler crap? No not interested thanks.
--------------------
Native instruments have let down their user base by releasing over priced romplers that appeal to a more casual market. As a large company why choose between the two. Why not develop both sides.

Also dropping absynth actually hurt me

Hi, and Happy/Musical 2024. A few points maybe worth considering...

Labeling things you don't use or like as 'crap' is neither accurate or helpful to those
who wish to make music.

I don't see many things in the plugin-daw market that are overpriced. Sure, there are comparative price differences, and sales strategies like IK's MAX deals, and Komplete etc,
but the capabilities that $500 wisely spent make possible, are enormous, and even a $70 Reaper license, using all freeware products is great with capable hands/minds.

Almost all old Komplete items still work, despite the march of tech and time, so I see NI as expanding their market, in a quickly changing world, rather than abandoning it.

And even the venerable Absynth can load samples freshly created this morning, for making new
Absynth sounds as yet unheard, as long as one should desire to do so.

Serum was not alone in kompeting with NI, there are U-he, Tone2, KV331, discoDSP, SugarBytes
the whole AIR/Pro-Tools collective, among a myriad, and dawmakers like Bitwig and Ableton adding significant content, as well as some devs who joined Apple under the hood. Not to mention KVR's own 'One Synth Challenge', lighting a path that's easy to follow when low on cash.
Mi dos centavos, now maybe only worth 'uno y tres décimos'.
Cheers

[kritikon]

I've had nothing to do with NI over the years, as they never had anything I consider "essential". This week I bought ReplikaXT for the measly sum of $35, which is a superb price for what I consider a superb delay, in fact it has pretty well everything in a delay that I've missed. That's cheaper than Valhalla Delay FFS, which is a leader IMO. I got the usual blurb for other NI offers after I bought Replika and I had a good look. Actually some very good deals, though none of it interests me - mostly channel strips (extraneous fluff), 1001 varieties of esoteric compressors that likely all sound very similar, and some other collections that I've already forgotten about. BUT - they were very good deals and I've no reason to believe they're any lesser quality than Replika. The installation is easy, prices are good, they're all VST3 from what I saw, so actually NI are very relevant and have good products. My first real interaction with them was good. I saw nothing to show me they're a crap company.

Oh, maybe they're not going to update Replika every year for the next 35 years, but personally I could care less. I don't buy anything for what it might be. I buy it for what it is and what it does. If they did free updates that were better, then it's a bonus, not an expectation.

[Dalle]

If they did free updates that were better, then it's a bonus, not an expectation.

I expect it if they say they would do it. Guitar Rig 6 was sold on a promise of rapid free updates. Massive X still is. They failed to deliver on both.

[glokraw]

GR6 arrived about nine months in to the covid fiasco, and I doubt there was any way to foresee
the staffing and economic changes that likely turned GR 7 and the rest of NI into a shell of what they had planned. Businesses are still recovering and adapting, and changing hands. Those that survived. It could have been worse. Computer based music, and the guitar busines did better than many.
Cheers

[SebAV]

I bought ReplikaXT for the measly sum of $35, which is a superb price for what I consider a superb delay, in fact it has pretty well everything in a delay that I've missed. That's cheaper than Valhalla Delay FFS, which is a leader IMO.
…
I saw nothing to show me they're a crap company.

NI products are very good. It’s difficult for any company to come with « breakthrough » new products. That’s why we have 5 or so prophet replika
Massive X is great but people just scream it’s bad. Wonder what they expect…
As you said NI plug-ins are vst3, Apple Silicon optimized. So they still deliver. Only thing missing is hidpi support but I understand the difficulties with « plateforms » such as Reaktor and Kontakt.

[soulata]

If they did free updates that were better, then it's a bonus, not an expectation.

I expect it if they say they would do it. Guitar Rig 6 was sold on a promise of rapid free updates. Massive X still is. They failed to deliver on both.

Yup!

Komplete Kontrol (to me) seems worse with every update to the point I'm not using it anymore (although I have their S series keyboard).

Plus they stil install vst2 and vst3 with every update. And aax, too. Probably. If you delete vst2, which I usually do, NISC reports broken install...

Eh...

Session Percussionist looks right up my alley, though. It could replace all my percussion loops, probably.

[LFO8]

This week I bought ReplikaXT for the measly sum of $35, which is a superb price for what I consider a superb delay, in fact it has pretty well everything in a delay that I've missed.

Bought it for a grand total of €7 when Plugin Alliance was offering it in some kind of bundle we could aplly a €25 loyalty voucher to…

I have the stripped down version in GR6 as well, but Guitar Rig takes quite a bit longer to load on my system, so often just loading up Replika XT is wat faster when I only need a delay.

It’s a great delay and I am still laughing at the price I payed for it!

[noiseboyuk]

People forget GR6 did get free amp updates eventually - 3 or 4 I think. Hardly the masses people expected, but its wrong to say it wasn't updated at all.

Massive X - I don't like it, but I don't say it's bad. The sound is just not for me.

Komplete Kontrol - this is objectively bad. If you wanted to pick one product to demonstrate everything bad about NI, it's right here.

[machinesworking]

"stopped supporting new installs of deprecated products"
Hmmm. Only one of these I have is Absynth 5. It's installed here and installable still. I can't use it in the SOC silicon situation except as under Rosetta 2 translation to the machine, but it worked really snappily like that, as did BFD3 (the other thing I can't use in all-silicon projects), which survived fxpansion's floundering shockingly enough. Is this not true per se?
I'm on Mac OS 14.3 on an M1 Macbook, this is connected to Cubase 12 or now 13.

Hmm? I don't own Cubase, but Absynth 5 is like you say only good under Rosetta, and as AU in Rosetta, the thing is buggy as hell. Worse is Air instruments, but the kicker is they all work well in Bitwig, since they did their own x86 VST to Apple Silicon sandboxed VST hosting implementation.

I see you can still download Kore 2, I don't know if it's possible to authorize it? the Kore Sounds were pretty great, they haven't matched Kore, it's a shame.

[SLiC]

People forget GR6 did get free amp updates eventually - 3 or 4 I think. Hardly the masses people expected, but its wrong to say it wasn't updated at all.

GR6 got one amp and one pedal after release, that all- then it was a paid $100 upgrade to get a few more.