Sad state of Native Instruments

[swilow11]

There's a reason no one else in the history of ever has made an LFO waveform selector that's a knob surrounded by a huge arc of the available waveforms.

What's the reason? I concede that they look completely naff but beyond the momentary confusion upon first seeing them, they're LFOs that work like all LFOs. Although changing synced time is unnecessarily difficult. It's a poor stylistic choice to be sure but most synths suffer from these to some degree.

But really these are fairly minor compared to the other issues with the synth.

What other issues?

[jrwaltb]

Speaking of software samplers, isn't Kontakt basically the only thing keeping Native Instruments afloat these days? After their disastrous development of Massive X which no one wanted or even expected, the only NI "instruments" these days appear to be mostly boring Kontakt-based sample libraries. NI and third-party developers are creating something that superficially looks like a synth plugin (if the sample library includes its own "scripted" UI) but actually isn't one.

And Reaktor is pretty much dead, right? Or have "rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated"? (Is that how that expression goes?)

MassiveX is a great synth. It got a lot of hate from people that don't know a lot about synths. Reaktor is still maintained. Ni has a lot of great products.

You are right about the kontakt thing. Every new product they make these days is a sample library. And I guess is because they sell more. Reaktor and MassiveX or all their other synths are products for a tiny market. I guess that 90% of people that make music don't know how to use a synth and are using them only for their presets.
Why should they develop a complex synth that only a few people will care about, when they can simply design a few pads, slack an UI on it and sell it as a cinematic sound library for 100$ ? From a business perspective they are doing everything right.

Reaktor is not maintained, unless there is a huge bug that breaks it, its not getting anymore updates. Battery 4 has been severely broken for 2 years now with a severe kit recall bug that kills the workflow and requires a tedious workaround to find samples on saved kits. Kontakt has severe breakages with M2/M3 recently that took months to fix. NI is in a bad place right now, the fact the company has not issued any feedback on the issue and future plans is crazy unprofessional. If they have , please post a link ..

[swilow11]

There is a bunch of stuff on their forums re: future plans. Eg https://community.native-instruments.co ... cer#latest

[noiseboyuk]

There is a bunch of stuff on their forums re: future plans. Eg https://community.native-instruments.co ... cer#latest

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/c ... ound-2024/

Summer Of Sound sale is up now. Deepest discounts are for all the Reaktor synths, which adds credence to the entire Reaktor platform nearing EOL. It was unmentioned in the future plans quoted above.

I'd guess we'll see Kontakt 8 in September / October with Komplete 15:

Later this year, we’ll significantly expand what's possible in Kontakt, our flagship instrument platform. We're excited about the new sonic opportunities this will enable for both instrument builders and music producers. I can’t say much at this point, but there’ll be new ways to import and manipulate sounds, enhanced capabilities beyond just samples, and innovative methods to help you play instruments, not just control them.

Sounds like they'll be adding a lot more synthesis options to Kontakt, maybe that will take the place of Reaktor to some degree, making a Falcon-style host that can do pure synths.

All well and good, but (as much discussed here) in a year and a half they haven't made Kontakt 7 load in under 20 seconds on blazing fast machines. Apparently they haven't even been able to find the problem yet, still less fix it. And I hope to God they don't remove the library side panel in Kontakt 8, the full screen thing is still bloody awful.

On the plus side, the regular sales are continuing after they've launched their new subs offerings (and I notice the subs aren't yet in the sales).

[SLiC]

''Reaktor platform nearing EOL'' - If this happens its pretty much all over for NI I think.

[carrieres]

Maybe a fusion between Reaktor and Kontakt ?

[noiseboyuk]

Maybe a fusion between Reaktor and Kontakt ?

I can't see that being technically possible if you mean literal code, but I do think there are pure soft synths in Kontakt's future.

I am worried by the state of that code though. If they can't isolate a major problem in 18 months in K7, how much worse it is going to be with a ton more features duct-taped to it?

[swilow11]

Picked up Molekular today as well as the "Ireland" Kontakt bank. Both are great, the former being perhaps too complex given the pay-off but for $29, why not? I must admit, the extremely low prices do seem symbolic. But anyone who likes...music and synyhs should absolutely pick up Razor which is imo the easiest to use and best sounding additive synth out there.

And now to scratch my itch for making Celtic folk ambient

[gaf_thit]

Yeah, I am considering getting Razor, as it is one of those synths that I have wanted since I hears it first, but never bought. Use Razor for music and let my beard grow.

[LFO8]

Just wait a bit longer until those Reaktor synths are given away like they did with Super 8

Seriously though.. Rounds, Flesh and Form seem like fun synths. Too bad they are tied to Reaktor.

[noiseboyuk]

Maybe a fusion between Reaktor and Kontakt ?

I've been thinking more on this. Here's my new pet theory:

Kontakt X

Announced with Komplete 15 in September, released Q1 2025. A rewrite from the ground up to include sample and synthesis engines.

They'll have been working on it for years, explaining the decision to wind down Reaktor. Reckon we'll see a new synth or two with the launch, to partially make up for the dozens that are now deprecated.

Here's the big but - it won't be compatible with all past NKIs. Who knows how far back (maybe if we're lucky the .nicnt era). But some old libraries will continue to need K5/6/7 to run, and ultimately they will reach EOL.

This would make sense of a lot of NI's decision making of the past few years.

[db3]

This theory makes sense if NI has retained a strong management and development team over the last few years. An all singing and dancing ground-up version of Kontakt could explain the lack of development in core products. However, on the flip it feels as though NI has been largely managed by marketing and it's development capability has gone to waste.

Looking at the newest Maschine Expansions, they still include presets for Maschine, Battery, Massive, and Monark (Reaktor). I think whatever happens they will continue support this in some format.

[Dr.Gunjah]

I would be fine with that - IF that new product is well made and not a half-assed mess like Kontakt 7 or Massive X. Breaking backwards compatibility with an industry standard product sounds like a bad idea though.

[sacer]

Right now after one year, I got two days ago a Kontakt 7 beta, that should fix the loading times.

I have tried out the new Kontakt download, it is now much faster. It takes only 15 seconds, after closing DAW and restarting Ableton to open Kontakt 7 it takes on the second run only 6 seconds - before it was ONE minute too like the first start of Kontakt7. When i don't close the DAW - remove Kontakt 7 and open it again it takes 2 seconds! Kontakt 6 and Kontakt 5 both take only 5 seconds on the first run. So the 15 seconds of Kontakt 7 on first start up on Ableton is better, but could get better !!! It's 3 times slower than Kontakt 6

Also Maschine 2.16 (6 seconds), Battery 4.2 (3sec), Guitar Rig 6.3 (2 sec) Komplete Kontrol 2.8 (6sec) -> all latest versions of these Plugins take one Minute like Guitar Rig 7 (48 sec) and Battery 4.3 (57 sec)

It depends on amount of plugins and files in the VST2 and vst3 folders.

I also asked for a battery fix, because the missing samples is really frustrating, especially when all these libraries are linked in battery and native access.
They told me that they are working on a fix and I am pretty sure that they will optimise the loading time of their plugins. I am sure the final fix will perform better than 15 seconds. So NI is doing something to get rid of their bugs. These bugs are really workflow killers. When first reported these bugs, support wasn’t able to solve it, and I got the impression that it doesn’t matter them. Now they have taken care, because there are more users out there with a big amount of plugins.
On the otherside I reported bugs to Ableton like long preset change time with some VST3 synths like Korg or Avenger and an Auto Arm function from Push3 hardware, that arms every track I click automatically.
These bugs are also driving me mad, but I got the impression that Ableton can reproduce these bugs and will fix it soon.
I have reported the VST3 issue two years ago and the push3 disaster one year ago and nothing happened - when I asked back, they told me that it doesn’t get any priority as long as not many user report these bugs.
Even Korg has reported the VST3 bug to Ableton but nothing happens, so in this case I got the feeling that Ableton would fix it soon and NI would ignore these bugs, but right now it looks that NI is much faster to address these issues than Ableton.
My impression is that NI is listening and are aware of losing customers if they completely ignore them.
I remember a time when Ableton was also fixing a lot of bugs some years ago, right now their whole VST3 implementation is really shady.
Compared to small companies like U-he, Synapse Audio, Xils Lab or Tone2 they offer fixes within days and weeks.

[paramita123]

So we'd have to run Kontakt, Kontakt 7, AND Kontakt 8?
Good luck to NI, but with the quantity of paid and free plugins coming out daily it's not going to be easy unless they truly innovate.
I often think of Kodak as a business model change story.

At least NI has the hardware market. They should create guitar controllers, I think there is a gap in this area. Perhaps developing something like Touché but for the feet