Sad state of Native Instruments

[Echoes in the Attic]

Where is this roadmap you speak of?

[dayjob]

And it wouldn’t make any sense. It’s the thing that launched the company. There’s a user library with thousands of synths samplers sequencers and effects. “Winding it down” would be idiotic and would make them less interesting. It’d be like Porsche discontinuing the 911.

...and that's exactly what is happening. They told us back in Jan 23 - https://community.native-instruments.co ... ment_48110 .

Sorry, but besides the addition of native Apple Silicon support and the new VST3 plugin there will be no new features implemented.

At this point, perhaps it is time to comment on the situation. For a variety of reasons, NI is not in a position to invest major resources in this product, which has not been news for some time.

As 143 pages here attest, this is not the same company that launched.

You put in the fact no Reaktor products are included in the new subs packages, that Reaktor is absent from the roadmap they published, it tells you all you need to know.

I think Reaktor 6.5 will carry on working for a long time, a VERY long time for Windows, probably. But its days of development are over.

thanks for the reminder of that forum post at NI. i remember reading previously. not adding new features/improvements is kinda what i expected.. if they can fix things that crop up with new OS updates etc.. that's enough for me.. just keep it alive and breathing.

you're right though... letting it die a slow death is likely. at least we got apple silicon support. i do have a windows laptop around so if it comes to that.. ugh.. i'll fire up that old ass machine for reaktor meddling.

[noiseboyuk]

Where is this roadmap you speak of?

https://community.native-instruments.co ... cer#latest

[bmanic]

Considering that Reaktor was THE piece of software that put Native Instruments on the map, it would really be a shame if it was abandoned.

Still, even if it's just kept alive, that would be enough for me. It's absolutely amazing as-is.

[CrystalWizard]

Considering that Reaktor was THE piece of software that put Native Instruments on the map, it would really be a shame if it was abandoned.

Still, even if it's just kept alive, that would be enough for me. It's absolutely amazing as-is.

I have multiple old Windoze machines that will be used for Reaktor.

[bmanic]

Yeah I'm probably going to source a few mac mini m1 versions at some point and keep them as my "outboard" synths in the future. They can be sometimes found really cheap (like 200 euros) and are such small units and so compact (and apparently quite reliable too!).

And of course windows based stuff would be even better as you can get those stripped down windows distributions and put them on a tiny little palm sized mini-pc to run all your old stuff.

[gentleclockdivider]

ffs

[jsp1979]

ffs

Is he playing Hollow Knight back there?

[_leras]

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

The unfortunate nature of the market is that old synths and plug ins generally sell less.

Why not knock them out cheaply. Some money is better than none for those products.

[jlgrimes11]

I'm just curious as to what folks think the UI issues with Massive X are? It's laid out in a pretty clear and standard way, signal flow from left to right, modulators at the bottom. There are issues with knowing what is modulating what (Pigments does this brilliantly) but it's actually still not that confusing. Most big wavetable synths with multiple tabs/pages require some information to be always hidden, Massive X is no different. It could do with a mod matrix tbh.

My biggest complaint is how CPU heavy it is.

I'm suspecting many were wanting a Serum killer. Serum kind of took the concepts of the original Massive and made it more customizable with the wavetables. Serum is a bit more visual in being able to tell what is controlling what.

Massive X doesn't try to really compete with Serum. That said it is a nice sounding synth and is definitely it's own thing in a world where almost every VST is wavetable.

I think too for preset browsers, Massive X is a step down from the original, as I think the Massive v1 era of NI synths had some of the coolest browsers.

[Scoops]

Where is this roadmap you speak of?

https://community.native-instruments.co ... cer#latest

That's not a roadmap!
That's a sales pitch
Roadmaps give dates for features, and usually go out a few years

[noiseboyuk]

Where is this roadmap you speak of?

https://community.native-instruments.co ... cer#latest

That's not a roadmap!
That's a sales pitch
Roadmaps give dates for features, and usually go out a few years

Forgive the shorthand. The point is there is a "Major updates for our key software platforms" section. Reaktor has been a key software platform since forever, and yet it is not mentioned at any point in the document. Given what the developers have already said, that 6.5 will be the last feature update, imo anyone thinking there is a future for Reaktor is indulging in wishful thinking.

[BBFG#]

The question regarding Reaktor is whether they'll see fit to release the gems created in it to their own standalone or simply use it as a trash can of "things tried, but no longer worth their time"? There's tons of things in it, but 98% of them are as useful as a kid's art on their parents refrigerator. IMO, Razor deserved more respect from them than the chain to that host they insist upon it. AFAIC, the rest are just distractions that are cute and/or sometimes interesting, but eventually gets tossed for the next project brought home.

And the "sad state" is continuously not about their products nearly as much as their approach to the market and customer base with Access being their greatest indicator of disdain towards all.

[Ficciones]

From that road map or sales pitch or whatever I wonder if they're planning to add Reaktor features to Kontakt. Maybe port the Core layer for DSP. I can't say that this wouldn't make me interested in Kontakt again.

[noiseboyuk]

I think Super 8 has put to bed any idea of standalone Reaktor synths.

From that road map or sales pitch or whatever I wonder if they're planning to add Reaktor features to Kontakt. Maybe port the Core layer for DSP. I can't say that this wouldn't make me interested in Kontakt again.

I've no idea if this is possible or likely, but it would be good for my mythical Kontakt X.