Good Bye Reaktor, good bye NI synths

[Ah_Dziz]

Blocks is fun too. Definitely worth playing with if you like modular silliness.

[BONES]

I haven't been using it much recently only because of new synths like Atomika...

On a side note, how f**king good is Atomika? We're using it all over our new album. It has such a distinctive tone and what I really like about it is that we'/re not only using the LP filter, we're using patches with the Notch or HP filter doing all the work, too. We've got into a bit of a groove with it, it has a really distinctive sound you can pick straight away.

[electro]

Not understanding why Reaktor can't be rewritten. Big expense?

[machinesworking]

On a side note, how f**king good is Atomika? We're using it all over our new album. It has such a distinctive tone and what I really like about it is that we'/re not only using the LP filter, we're using patches with the Notch or HP filter doing all the work, too. We've got into a bit of a groove with it, it has a really distinctive sound you can pick straight away.

I've looked at buying a hardware Polivoks over the years because of how great they sound, but the hassle of owning a synth with super rare parts just made it unrealistic. So yeah Atomika being so dead on, and even adding in some cool new dirt and grime is a lifesaver, it solved a hardware GAS that I've had for at least 15 years. I even thought about getting a the Waldorf KB37 and filling it with the developer of Polivoks's modules, but they're all out of production, the modules and the KB37. Cherry in this case saved me from $1200 to $2000.

[machinesworking]

Not understanding why Reaktor can't be rewritten. Big expense?

Kind of answered your own question there. They make so much money off of Play series ROMplers for the Kontakt engine that they just don't care about their flagship object oriented programming language. It's also IMO not 100% determined that Reaktor will never get updated.

[Winstontaneous]

Not understanding why Reaktor can't be rewritten. Big expense?

Maybe it was coded in that itty-bitty aliased font they use in all the popups, and they're having a hard time reading it to re-write?!

[0degree]

Not understanding why Reaktor can't be rewritten. Big expense?

I've read somewhere it's an old codebase and would require some significant investment to make it a bit more up to date. Also Reaktor fanbase is actually quite small (looking at you music nerds now ) so I guess not a big priority for them. I can also imagine Reaktor was canibalizing their other products because the user library contains every possible instrument imaginable.
For me personally Reaktor is an absolute marvel of music software engineering and I'd be very sad if they drop it sometime in the future

[Morty-C-137]

NI have announced there will be more synths. I wonder if they will all be based on Reaktor?

"Synths

While 2024 was the year Kontakt got its biggest update in years, in 2025 you’ll see more from NI in synths. It’s too early to share the rest of our plans, but I’m super jazzed about what the team is cooking up – including bringing some innovative new features to our synth products later this year."

Source: https://community.native-instruments.co ... 1f84812e7a

Yeah, Kontakt based 'synths'

[Michael L]

Yeah, Kontakt based 'synths'

and when you read that link, their focus is on outside developers, because the original NI innovators have been replaced by bean-counters who just collect license fees.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Yeah, Kontakt based 'synths'

... made by outside developers, because the NI innovators were replaced by bean-counters who can't wait to collect license fees.

“The Tools SDK is an important addition for instrument developers, opening up Kontakt 8 to a new realm of possibilities. We can’t wait to see the groundbreaking innovations that developers will bring to life,” says Tim Adnitt, Vice President, Product Management at Native Instrument

Pretty hard to innovate in the current market, no? If the resulting instruments are good then this would seem like a win-win.

[Michael L]

Pretty hard to innovate in the current market, no? If the resulting instruments are good then this would seem like a win-win.

no-no
With all its financial resources NI should be even more innovative than Dawesome!
But NI are focusing just on adding incremental features for other developers incremental updates.
We should *expect* more than sample packs, or samples packaged in a sampler.
Like fixing the bugs in Iris.
No?

[Echoes in the Attic]

Yeah, Kontakt based 'synths'

... made by outside developers, because the NI innovators were replaced by bean-counters who can't wait to collect license fees.

“The Tools SDK is an important addition for instrument developers, opening up Kontakt 8 to a new realm of possibilities. We can’t wait to see the groundbreaking innovations that developers will bring to life,” says Tim Adnitt, Vice President, Product Management at Native Instrument

Pretty hard to innovate in the current market, no? If the resulting instruments are good then this would seem like a win-win.

I'd love to see them innovate back to around 2008 NI, when synths had automatable parameters, nice clean browsers, their synths knobs responded to trackpad scroll and other things that OG Massive has over Massive X. Plus cool things like Kore, back when they new that buttons are important too in controllers, not just 8 knobs that need to act like buttons sometimes (NKS).

I wonder if they consciously decided to remove almost all the quality of life features in their products, or if they just kinda forget about things.

[BONES]

I've looked at buying a hardware Polivoks over the years because of how great they sound, but the hassle of owning a synth with super rare parts just made it unrealistic. So yeah Atomika being so dead on, and even adding in some cool new dirt and grime is a lifesaver, it solved a hardware GAS that I've had for at least 15 years. I even thought about getting a the Waldorf KB37 and filling it with the developer of Polivoks's modules, but they're all out of production, the modules and the KB37. Cherry in this case saved me from $1200 to $2000.

There was that tiny analogue/digital hybrid synth, Trueno, that was basically just a USB dongle. It was supposed to sound like a Polivoks, did you ever try that? I had one and it did sound good but, sadly, it was a bit fiddly to be using on stage and it eventually stopped working, like most USB peripherals. I don't even know where it is now.

[Milkman]

Reaktor best synth, use now

No Plasmonic is the best synth.

Im just going to reply to every person with some other synth that I enjoy.

[DrGonzo]

On a side note, how f**king good is Atomika? We're using it all over our new album.

How do you balance Atomika in your tracks? Are you using just one or two instances per track or are you having a bunch of them? I played around with the idea to make a whole track only using Atomika and that quickly turned into an unbalanced mess...

/C