https://www.frieze.com/article/maximal-hochgepumpt
All of this, and ED’s comments, probably goes a long way to explain the thinking behind MX and its „limitations“.In this light, the trademark Massive sound, pumped up to the max, leaving no room to breathe, is cut-throat capitalist competition turned into music. And fittingly, Daliot himself describes the sound of his brainchild as ‘bass in war mode’. He doesn’t seem especially proud of this.
Interestingly, many of those interviewed for Presets emphasize the importance of ‘limiting the options’. They include Robert Henke, who not only produces techno as Monolake, but also helped to develop the production and performance software Live.
Most of them are obviously conscious design decisions: why develop another super synth, an „eierlegende Wollmilchsau“, as Germans would put it, especially when there’s already Massive and Reaktor around? Why not try a different approach, guided by the idea of ‘limiting the options’, after years and years of sometimes questionable „innovation“ leading to synths with endless options and 10.000 effectively meaningless wavetables nobody‘s going to listen to anyway?
„Less is more“ is hardly a new concept, but it’s something else to walk the walk. I have to respect Daliot and NI (at the time) for trying to do exactly that, even if they released an imho clearly unfinished product.
I imagine the pressure within and outside the company must have been immense to release a „worthy“ successor to Massive — mostly meaning MOAR of the same, judging by the initial reception after MX’s delayed, yet rushed release and the discussions in this very thread 6 years later. It must have been crushing for everyone involved that MX seems to have been a commercial failure, as far as I can tell.
That said, NI hasn’t helped themselves by ignoring imho reasonable user requests for years. Personally, I couldn’t care less about the preset browser f.e., but it seems obvious to me why users as well as commercial sound designers would want at least basic functionality. After all these years, we’re still not there, even if it got a bit better lately.
It will be interesting to see which direction NI is about to take with MX2. Will they stay true to the original vision by focusing mostly on obvious (imho) quality of life improvements like a better browser, more useful modulation options and modern features like poly AT or even MPE?
Or will they throw the kitchen sink at it in the quest to catch up, and we’ll get 8 tabs of FX, 64 macros, an awkward WT editor, and a preset browser with customizable gif animations? Can’t wait to find out
P.S.: I’d love to read a behind-the-scenes book about the period between 2012 and 2022 or so. Please, someone write it, my family is dying.
