REAKTOR NI lovers

[martiu]

Reaktor is now considered a nerd plugin, brain dead gen z need sampler libraries so kontakt is the future because they are majority

[funky lime]

hey now, i'm a brain dead millennial and i need kontakt libraries too. although seeing how they've been treating kontakt the past few years, i wouldn't mind if they stop "developing" it....

[gentleclockdivider]

Reaktor is and will still be a a top notch dsp environment for a verry long time to come , because of the core dsp language .
That being said , they paid too much attention to user requests to jump on the patchable modular bandwagon , dumbing shit down .
It's a testament to show how great reaktor actually is , using the existing framework to build blocks but 99% of users just didn't get it , instead they wanted onscreen cables , another layer of obfuscation ( racks ) etcc , reaktor as an environment received no tlc whatsoever , still using 90's era bitmaps
I'll keep using it becasue I have been for the past decades .
It's safe to say that's reaktor is dead, ( just visit the forum...sigh ) , but they ought it to thesmelves ..so f... them .
For pure audio dsp it's top notch , for anything else ( midi ,sysex ,sequencing your hardware ) there are better free alternatives , just look at what the community has done to Plug(pure) data , it's mindblowing .

Oh yeah forgot to mention , the way Reaktor handles polyphony/dsp voices is still unsurpassed
Creating a 256 bands vocoder or partial generator is easy as pie because of the voice info module

[martiu]

just make alien sounds never heard before and call it a day

[kidslow]

Honorable ways to handle the future of Reaktor by NI and Francisco would be to put the Reaktor portfolio up for sale, or open source it. I expect neither. Honor is orthogonal to profit & loss ... and even though there is a balance sheet item named goodwill it does not reflect much of the sort.

[paradiddle]

If they would put it up for sale (which I doubt), I'd totally chip in money in some sort of crowd funding thing and just release it open-source. I'd go as far as a 1000 dollars. That would be reaktor and everything related to it including the user factory content.

[funky lime]

i'd imagine the tech debt of the 20+ year-old code base would not be conducive to a successful open source project

[gentleclockdivider]

i'd imagine the tech debt of the 20+ year-old code base would not be conducive to a successful open source project

How do you know ?
Supercollider and Plug(pure) data are two examples of succesfull open source projects , both have a 20+ year old codebase yet significant changes has been made to both programs .

[funky lime]

i'd imagine the tech debt of the 20+ year-old code base would not be conducive to a successful open source project

How do you know ?
Supercollider and Plug(pure) data are two examples of succesfull open source projects , both have a 20+ year old codebase yet significant changes has been made to both programs .

i don't know. as i said, i'm imagining... based largely on previous EvilDragon post(s) about how Reaktor (and other NI stuff) has, to quote him, "a ridiculous amount of tech debt."

supercollider has been open source for 22 years. that's a bit different than a 28 year-old closed software suddenly being opened overnight.

[EvilDragon]

Open sourcing Reaktor is never going to happen. Too much is bound to internal NI-only libraries (which are shared between multiple products) that is required for the product to build and actually work.

[kidslow]

Unfortunate but at least a fair technical explanation. Means that selling is out of the question too. So Reaktor dies an ignoble death. Rest In Peace little software brother.

[oobesan]

I don't think it's the "vast majority". On the Community forums it was mentioned by someone at NI that tracking is turned on about 55%.

Ahem...

https://community.native-instruments.co ... ment_99451

Gotcha. I could have sworn I saw an NI employee (maybe Matthew) post a smaller percentage sometime in 2024 (I wasn't even on NI Community until Nov or Dec 2023), but maybe I'm just imagining it. Oh well. When the data doesn't align with the user experience, usually the data is wrong.

[oobesan]

Too late now I guess, but I think NI were on the right track when they made a standalone version of Super8 before abandoning it. They should have separated Reaktor into multiple products:

Standalone versions of instruments like Razor, Monark, Super 8 etc. More accessible to people who don’t like to open Reaktor, an easier to handle preset system, CPU savings then it comes to polyphony.

Blocks version with a proper module browser and presets, optimized for front panel patching. Blocks sound amazing but are annoying to use.

Full Reaktor version for builders and people who enjoy ensemble and snapshot nonsense.

Completely agree. Except that I don't think NI has a single decent preset system in any of their products!

[machinesworking]

Ugh the problem IMO is always the same, X company neglects Y product for years on end in terms of modern user interface features, then it becomes to unwieldy they can't make a profit from it. IMO Reaktor like a lot of great products always has suffered from a mediocre UX, and really all that I would need out of it is updates for modern OS's and a resizable GUI.

I don't know why companies think we all need some awkward new feature to get motivated when I really at this point gravitate towards plugins that I can scroll presets in quickly and aren't tiny on modern screens. So new Reaktor instruments would I bet have impact if the interface had improvements, but hey Play libraries are where NI exist these days.

[MisterSperm69]

oh wow... what happened to Everything Turns. I have their Reaktor products but their site is gone. RIP

Can you share them with me if possible. They look amazing.