Sad state of Native Instruments

[Milkman]

I always appreciate how "the sad state of NI" - a thread created for frustrated NI customers to discuss this - always morphs into "ok ok ok, now that those icky, basically mentally ill critics are done, lets talk about THE LATEST DEALS"

lmao

Well, the problems with “software activations” are not just an NI
problem. All providers of commercial libraries and plugins struggle
with exactly this problem:

On the one hand, they want to offer their software to everyone,
but on the other hand, they also want the software not to be
easily copied using an unbreakable security system - and in
doing so, they limit its usability for users.

With software that is older but is still used by many people, this
always leads to activation problems. A lot of time has to be
invested in telephone calls, queries, etc.

Everyone has to decide for themselves what “activation risk” they
want to take and how “future-proof” their studio equipment as a
whole should be.

Right, and this has been a frustrating issue for me, considering I have 100s of 3rd party kontakt instruments. All of this made me pretty frustrated considering the time and money spent with NI, and that on top of the recent 'culture' changes they've brought to their forums is just a bit too much for me. Its super upsetting to me to be abandoning a brand Ive loved very much since 2000, but such is the nature of the economy lately. This really hasnt been about securing their software as much as it has been about pushing people to retire anything a few years old, pushing them to buy new.

NI made a "pinned community thread" about it. One of their brand managers said, in so many words, "who is tired of all these old, duty VSTs and things laying around their studio, and is planning on cleaning house? Im going to get rid of all my old VST right now, and move on to fresh stuff that supports NKS. WHOSE WITH ME???" There is is literally a thread started by a brand manager that says this.

https://community.native-instruments.co ... ent/102292#

"Throw it in the gutter, go buy another" is NI's philosophy.

Arturia seems to be holding the line, along with a handful of smaller developers, but there is so much consolidation going on! Im constantly finding out this or that company are now part of some other large conglomerate.

[psycho45039]

I always appreciate how "the sad state of NI" - a thread created for frustrated NI customers to discuss this - always morphs into "ok ok ok, now that those icky, basically mentally ill critics are done, lets talk about THE LATEST DEALS"

lmao

Well, the problems with “software activations” are not just an NI
problem. All providers of commercial libraries and plugins struggle
with exactly this problem:

On the one hand, they want to offer their software to everyone,
but on the other hand, they also want the software not to be
easily copied using an unbreakable security system - and in
doing so, they limit its usability for users.

With software that is older but is still used by many people, this
always leads to activation problems. A lot of time has to be
invested in telephone calls, queries, etc.

Everyone has to decide for themselves what “activation risk” they
want to take and how “future-proof” their studio equipment as a
whole should be.

Right, and this has been a frustrating issue for me, considering I have 100s of 3rd party kontakt instruments. All of this made me pretty frustrated considering the time and money spent with NI, and that on top of the recent 'culture' changes they've brought to their forums is just a bit too much for me. Its super upsetting to me to be abandoning a brand Ive loved very much since 2000, but such is the nature of the economy lately. This really hasnt been about securing their software as much as it has been about pushing people to retire anything a few years old, pushing them to buy new.

NI made a "pinned community thread" about it. One of their brand managers said, in so many words, "who is tired of all these old, duty VSTs and things laying around their studio, and is planning on cleaning house? Im going to get rid of all my old VST right now, and move on to fresh stuff that supports NKS. WHOSE WITH ME???" There is is literally a thread started by a brand manager that says this.

https://community.native-instruments.co ... ent/102292#

"Throw it in the gutter, to buy another" is NI's philosophy.

Arturia seems to be holding the line, along with a handful of smaller developers, but there is so much consolidation going on! Im constantly finding out this or that company are now part of some other large conglomerate.

This is why I stopped using and relying on VST's and have went back to hardware. I even paid to to update Midiquest to the latest version to have an editor for old rack synths I've bought to make editing and storing patches easier and have to say they have some of the best support I've ever encountered. They even responded to a request to add support for the Waldorf M in week. I had forgotten how much fun it is to work with things that are real.

[enroe]

This is why I stopped using and relying on VST's and have went back to hardware. I even paid to to update Midiquest to the latest version to have an editor for old rack synths I've bought to make editing and storing patches easier and have to say they have some of the best support I've ever encountered. They even responded to a request to add support for the Waldorf M in week. I had forgotten how much fun it is to work with things that are real.

@psycho:

Yes - "relying on hardware" is one way to avoid the "activation
trap".

Another option is to consistently rely on “freeware” and “open
source”. You have to search and try out a lot more - but I think
it's worth it. There is actually everything and more in the world
of freeware. Of course you won't find the same synthesizers or
libraries there as at NI, but you will find other, brilliantly great
synths and libraries.

This gives you the incredible security that libraries will still be
loaded in 10 years and VSTs will work even after many years.
And without any “activation hassles”.

[noiseboyuk]

Yes - "relying on hardware" is one way to avoid the "activation
trap".

Another option is to consistently rely on “freeware” and “open
source”. You have to search and try out a lot more - but I think
it's worth it. There is actually everything and more in the world
of freeware. Of course you won't find the same synthesizers or
libraries there as at NI, but you will find other, brilliantly great
synths and libraries.

This gives you the incredible security that libraries will still be
loaded in 10 years and VSTs will work even after many years.
And without any “activation hassles”.

You are very much at the mercy of being unsupported through OS changes though, so this isn't a panacea either.

Really the most obvious solution for all this is something that hardly anyone embraces. When we talk about the security of hardware and go misty-eyed at the good old days of never having to worry about any of this ugly stuff like authorisation, we forget that we can very easily emulate the good old days just using software. In fact we can better it.

Just print everything to audio when done. That's it. To be the most bombproof, render the audio as individual WAVs, so you don't even need your DAW to work - you can load it into anything. Storage is cheap as chips, just make sure you are backed up to two places, one of which is offsite.

If you work this way (I don't btw), then the only plugins you will ever need are the ones for writing your song right now. And that is exactly the same - better even - then the good old days of 24 track masters. You can have as many tracks as you want, you can print with mix effects / automation or not (or both), and - most importantly - you don't need a working 24 track tape machine to play it.

[bmanic]

Also remember that you can "freeze" a computer, as long as you don't have challenge and response software that requires constant or regular internet connection. Then it becomes essential like any other hardware, frozen in time and it'll work as long as the hardware stays alive.

[DrGonzo]

Also remember that you can "freeze" a computer.

Best solution there is, but very impractical. I got three Macs just for this.

[D-Fusion]

Also remember that you can "freeze" a computer, as long as you don't have challenge and response software that requires constant or regular internet connection. Then it becomes essential like any other hardware, frozen in time and it'll work as long as the hardware stays alive.

That is a huge problem with todays offerings from most companies these days.
Online protection, C/R Protection and download managers that works as protection that requires constant updates or the software will stop working.

There is actually 1 company that does it right when it comes to C/R Protection and that is Korg since you can backup the folder after it has been authorized and that folder will act more like a license key for future hw upgrades by copying and pasting the folder back to the same place and manually install the plugins without the Korg manager after a os reinstall.

Synapse audio has the worst kind of C/R where you even have to re-authorize your plugin when doing the smallest changes to your system and even a Bios update get the plugin de-authorized and before you know it you have to beg for a Authorization Reset from them which i find very annoying.

[revvy]

How do you have to beg, are there guidelines?

[D-Fusion]

How do you have to beg, are there guidelines?

When you suddenly get a message that you have activated the product to many times and can't re-activate it you have to contact the company to reset the activations.

So yes. you have to beg for new authorizations for something you have bought when that stupid message pops up.

[noiseboyuk]

Also remember that you can "freeze" a computer.

Best solution there is, but very impractical. I got three Macs just for this.

Indeed. You can still use an Atari ST after all, but at some point you might fancy a new plugin and that's that. In that sense, the analogy with old analogue is a poor one, you could always buy a new piece of kit and it wouldn't wreck your old kit.

I was thinking that freezing tracks on each project might work quite well, if you always keep the complete project file structure and back up. In Cubase it's not straightfoward to freeze effects though, you need to route their output to audio tracks, record the output etc.

Anyway, I'm dragging it all off topic sorry. So to make ammends:

I recently migrated to a new PC and NI stuff was pretty simple to get up and running - a bit long-winded, but NA2 did its job well in the main. Kontakt 7 is still a mess of course, still incredibly slow to load even on a blazing fast new PC. We're getting on for 18 months of life for K7 now, and Evil Dragon says they still haven't got to the bottom of why it is so sluggish, which seems insane to me. Someone identified it was calling literally a million processes compared to a few thousand in K6, so I don't think that's any sensible excuse. It's not the end of the world, but for now I'm sticking with Kontakt 6 in day to day use on Windows.

[djquest]

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NI made a "pinned community thread" about it. One of their brand managers said, in so many words, "who is tired of all these old, duty VSTs and things laying around their studio, and is planning on cleaning house? Im going to get rid of all my old VST right now, and move on to fresh stuff that supports NKS. WHOSE WITH ME???" There is is literally a thread started by a brand manager that says this.

https://community.native-instruments.co ... ent/102292 (https://nativeinstruments.sjv.io/c/4241666/2395443/29910?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcommunity.native-instruments.com%2Fdiscussion%2Fcomment%2F102292)#

"Throw it in the gutter, to buy another" is NI's philosophy.

Even though I agree with the sentiment of clearing your system of random clutter - stuff like demos or something that you tried out and didn't end up liking or using, I think it's something that only beginners go through. I guess it takes a few years to figure out what you like and prefer and most of the professionals I know keep their systems very clean and down to only what's actually necessary (there goes another deep topic haha).

But I do feel like the constant "evolving" of software/hardware and never-ending upgrade cycle that some companies gently force on you (looking at you, apple) just doesn't seem like something that should go with the general move towards sustainability in business models that modern "conscious" companies are supposed to be leading. Plus everybody trying to push the subscription model with just about every imaginable product and service - I mean digital trash is still trash, right? Not even talking about stuff like NI making the 1st gen Kontrol S-series (which I think are still new enough for most users to have them in great condition) basically obsolete and not compatible with the new software - I mean some of the "old" hardware obviously goes to the 2nd hand market but if you can't use it with the latest OS or DAW or even some random new plugin that you might like - it just becomes trash for everybody at some point..

[ChancyLegs]

Yes - "relying on hardware" is one way to avoid the "activation
trap".

Another option is to consistently rely on “freeware” and “open
source”. You have to search and try out a lot more - but I think
it's worth it. There is actually everything and more in the world
of freeware. Of course you won't find the same synthesizers or
libraries there as at NI, but you will find other, brilliantly great
synths and libraries.

This gives you the incredible security that libraries will still be
loaded in 10 years and VSTs will work even after many years.
And without any “activation hassles”.

You are very much at the mercy of being unsupported through OS changes though, so this isn't a panacea either.

LOL - sounds like a Mac user... What PC VSTs from Windows 7 days don't work on Windows 10 or even 11 today? Much as I hate the rubbish 'improvements' that Microsoft have put into Windows 10 and 11, they still work fine with all my old VSTs.

Mac users, on the other hand...

[martinjuenke]

Mac users, on the other hand...

can afford it ...

[Rumdrum]

I stopped updating Native Instruments 3 years ago. I find them one of the most cost driving companies in the software music business. Updating has through the 15-20 years with Native always been a hazard. Each update has made me lose good 3. party instruments.The spiral of always wanting a "perhaps better sounding instrument" has been replaced with a "still good enough" attitude, thus no upgrading of OS, no upgrading of instruments, no upgrading of DAWs. Money is spent on good Champagne instead. I can still make music that sounds great and nobody can tell the difference between my recordings and the guy next door with Kontakt 89 or whatever the version it will be in a couple of years.

[digitalboytn]

Mac users, on the other hand...

can afford it ...