Sad state of Native Instruments

[digitalboytn]

If they even have a PR person, they need sent off on a long unpaid vacation.

[machinesworking]

Plenty of soundbanks exist for Massive x, but I think a dozen libraries known to be based on massive x, would marginally boost sales of both massive X and Kontact. And as the K7 release appears to be a fiasco, every little sale is important. The quality of both in-house marketing and coding is certainly flailing madly in rough seas. If they even have a PR person, they need sent off on a long unpaid vacation.

IMO the marketing department for NI has always been it's Achilles heal. I mean since 2004 or so when I bought Komplete and Komplete Care, a failure of an update plan.

[Hanz Meyzer]

I agree, it is horrible, if marketing decisions are made over feature, quality, maintainance and customer care considerations. IMO almost everytime ruins the company, but the business adminitrators might disagree, this won't quickly rush profit. Also if a investor is inside, the company tends to make the shareholders happy, and the customers are just annoying cash cows you have to squeeze out in any possible way. And there are many ways doing that: Subscriptions, outdating old versions, doing new, in compatible versions (without new features except os support), bundles, crippled license protections, trapping customers in a proprietary company world, you name it... Oh, that sounds like NI to me

Also, what most people do not get, at some point, the bigger the company, the less productive it will be. Most time now is spent managing the company, internal (mis-)communication and doing marketing, reselling the same stuff over and over again. Also the less innovative, because shareholders want steady benefit. Like cancer.

[digitalboytn]

But damn it....

They have some GREAT products in their portfolio

[enroe]

... Also if an investor is inside, the company tends to make the shareholders happy, and the customers are just annoying cash cows who have to be squeezed out in any possible way. And there are many ways doing that: Subscriptions, outdating old versions, doing new, in compatible versions (without new features except os support), bundles, crippled license protections, trapping customers in a proprietary company world, ...

Yes - but for this a large company - and so does NI - also needs
the appropriate customer clientele to whom you can do exactly
this. A clientele that allows itself to be led like lambs to the
slaughter and doesn't make a fuss.

[osiris]

I don't understand why if NI and Izotope are basically the same company why can't they cross pollinate talent and fix the latency on Izotope stuff. I realize some of it's 'AI lookahead', but I don't get really any PDC wit NI plugins. Some Izotope stuff is almost 50 ms and that's a lot.

[Vocalpoint Studios]

I don't understand why if NI and Izotope are basically the same company why can't they cross pollinate talent and fix the latency on Izotope stuff.

When you are owned by a venture capital firm - while it would be nice to think that these two would make some sort of effort to optimize, fix or maybe even (god forbid) - lead the field once in a while - the reality is much more simple: "Make more products so "we" make more money and do not waste precious resources looking back"

We all remember the NI of old - where they had maybe a dozen or 20 products and all were well coded, well designed and in some cases - the standard of their time.

Those days are long gone - espeically in iZotopes case - where it appears they do almost nothing between Septembers - except add more questionable, hard to justify features to already well-established products plus give each the usual UI tweaks to make them "look" new - all under the guise of "Look what's "NEW" in iZoTope (insert product name here) Version x.x" all in the spirit of moving ($$$) more new product while instantly forgetting the one that came out last September.

Fixing anything for both these companies (unless it is an actual shopstopper) is not in their game
plan whatsoever.

VP

[paramita123]

Whilst there are things I do not like about NI,
It is also important to recognise and focus on the positive :

- they have a very large selection of more than decent free software and soundbanks
- the free Kontakt Player does have a fair amount of really good 3rd party free libraries
eg Fracture Sounds Blueprint electric keys https://fracturesounds.com/product/blue ... tric-keys/
- and today a new free NI Jacob Collier choir library
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/p ... nce-choir/

So thank you NI for the years of providing good stuff. I wish you improve things where users feel the need and carry on the good deed.
And I wish fellow musicians and producers to focus on the positive and enjoy what they can, whilst they can.
Cheers

[noiseboyuk]

And I wish fellow musicians and producers to focus on the positive and enjoy what they can, whilst they can.

You're not from round these parts, are ya?

There's some absurd hyperbole in this thread that NI are the spawn of Satan. But I think there are some valid reasons to be critical of some things, some frustrations that are often inexplicable.

But of course much of what you say is equally true. I've said it many times, but part of the reason KVR is so hostile to NI is that the membership has an almost exclusive and purist focus on synths and beats, and this area has been relatively weak for a decade or more. Anything else tends to get dismssed as bloat or romplers, seemingly unaware that there are other types of music, ways of making music and musical instruments in general. It's seemed to me for a long time that NI gets stuck with a one-size-suits-all badge, whereas the reality is that some parts of the company are brilliant and others poor.

And I agree with free. Komplete Start and the various other freebies it has given away over the years are fabulous.

[jules99]

NI is running sales with new bundles, both with Image-Line and with Thomann (different bundles) - some of these are pretty sweet deals!

I think besides the purist POV on NI, much of the frustration stems from the creativity and innovation that NI represented 10-15 years ago - they were miles ahead of every other plugin company, didn't try to emulate every Moog and their mother, released one brilliant VST after another. And then Maschine came. And they made too much money, so the marketing department and the investors took over.

[statue]

I'm in the process of sampling some of the NI VST instruments I own, and then I will uninstall them.
Their interfaces are all unusable for me. They take many seconds to show up on the screen, preset categories reset when you close the GUI... and even without these, the UX is quite bad in Kontakt, Guitar Rig, Reaktor.
It's a shame, they do sound great.

[SLiC]

NI is running sales with new bundles, both with Image-Line and with Thomann (different bundles) - some of these are pretty sweet deals!

Sweet deals for new users, but upgrading if you already owned NI, iZotope and PA stuff is now just a lottery as you probably own most of what they are bundling...like I just noticed Guitar Rig 7 is now part of iZotope Music Production Bundel with loads of PA stuff etc...

Its a race to the bottom IMO...if you owned £1000 worth of NI and iZotope software before, its probably worth £100 now if you tried to re-sell, no one trusts that the process wont drop further and dramatical..PA/iZotope/NI will really struggle from here I think...it all looks like a fire-sale....you cant just keep lowering prices to get new sales, at some point you need new/better products.

[Echoes in the Attic]

I'm in the process of sampling some of the NI VST instruments I own, and then I will uninstall them.
Their interfaces are all unusable for me. They take many seconds to show up on the screen, preset categories reset when you close the GUI... and even without these, the UX is quite bad in Kontakt, Guitar Rig, Reaktor.
It's a shame, they do sound great.

Guitar Rig received a pretty nice makeover a few years ago and isn't bad at all. But yeah kontakt and Reaktor are basically still rocking UIs from 15-20 years ago.

[machinesworking]

But damn it....

They have some GREAT products in their portfolio

They do. This is why there's a 127 page thread on why they aren't great. In other words no one spends this much time on a company that releases terrible things.

Ten years ago Arturia were the whipping boy around here and NI the golden calf.

[SLiC]

Ten years ago Arturia were the whipping boy around here and NI the golden calf.

That's because 10 years ago Arturia were not very good and NI were good!-- Over the last 10 years Arturia improved until they were one of the best, improving and modernising even their oldest products.

NI on the other hand have declined the last 10 years (and in particular the last 2 or 3) in terms of both interesting new products and support for older products (and some of the best like Absynth have now gone all together)