Native Instruments file for insolvency...

[Sascha Franck]

- UVI? Not a lot of third party support (insufficient scripting abilities?),... so I don´t see the alternative platform that could take over the world.

Orchestral tools' Sine player seems to be decent for typical orchestral libraries.
8Dio starts moving to Soundpaint.
East West isn't using Kontakt anymore but their own player since quite some time already.
Cinesamples/Musio have their own player.

So these things are happening already.

Sure, there's all the other libraries possibly requiring a more sophisticated synth engine on top of the sample playback engine, but at least on paper these could as well be moved to, say, Halion (which has its own share of issues but at least Steinberg doesn't look like going bankrupt any day soon).

Of course, Kontakt *did* become a de facto standard and it's pretty tough to break that up - especially in case you have older projects you still want to work with, templates you're used to and an established workflow. But maybe now is the time to say "better late than never".

Whatever, personally I defenitely don't even wish for NI to recover. They can just F right O. They have never proven to work in favour of their customers at all during the last years (it's been pretty different back in the days when Stephan Schmitt et al have still been there), more to the opposite even.

[Ah_Dziz]

For the things that Kontakt is very useful for, (playing back hundreds of voices from massive libraries of wav data in a hard drive and allowing a decent front end to be customized for the same) it's still the best around. Offering access to the biggest selection of 3rd party instruments is major for composers anyway. Old versions of Kontakt on 12 year old hardware outperform every other sample playback platform (except the old VSL player). I'd prefer Kontakt to be split off as it's own company if NI is toast. I'd happily use it forever and not have to hear about what the rest of the company is trying and failing at this year.

[starflakeprj]

For the things that Kontakt is very useful for, (playing back hundreds of voices from massive libraries of wav data in a hard drive and allowing a decent front end to be customized for the same) it's still the best around. Offering access to the biggest selection of 3rd party instruments is major for composers anyway. Old versions of Kontakt on 12 year old hardware outperform every other sample playback platform (except the old VSL player). I'd prefer Kontakt to be split off as it's own company if NI is toast. I'd happily use it forever and not have to hear about what the rest of the company is trying and failing at this year.

I would agree to this. Kontakt (and 3rd party libs) is pretty much the only thing from NI I'm using from the whole Komplete Collector's Edition. I don't even know why I keep upgrading to every version. GAS or FOMO, I guess.

[ksandvik]

If the outcome of this is a forced monthly/yearly license for NI products (similar to the Adobe Creative Cloud forced licence), then it's bye bye for me and NI tools I use.

[Ah_Dziz]

For the things that Kontakt is very useful for, (playing back hundreds of voices from massive libraries of wav data in a hard drive and allowing a decent front end to be customized for the same) it's still the best around. Offering access to the biggest selection of 3rd party instruments is major for composers anyway. Old versions of Kontakt on 12 year old hardware outperform every other sample playback platform (except the old VSL player). I'd prefer Kontakt to be split off as it's own company if NI is toast. I'd happily use it forever and not have to hear about what the rest of the company is trying and failing at this year.

I would agree to this. Kontakt (and 3rd party libs) is pretty much the only thing from NI I'm using from the whole Komplete Collector's Edition. I don't even know why I keep upgrading to every version. GAS or FOMO, I guess.

I stopped on kobtakt 7 a couple versions ago. I also use maschine and now I have like 80 expansions I'll never use, but they're sometimes fun to install and play with. I guess I'll be holding off on that Absynth upgrade for even longer than I had planned.

[Ah_Dziz]

If the outcome of this is a forced monthly/yearly license for NI products (similar to the Adobe Creative Cloud forced licence), then it's bye bye for me and NI tools I use.

I'll definitely drop Kontakt moving forward if they try to move to any kind of subscription. They haven't added anything I care about since v6 anyway.

[dexrow]

cakewalk would make alot more sence as a subscription with something like native instruments attached to it.. we will see what happens I am keeping my fingers crossed.

[nanostream]

It seems it was the needless expansion that broke NI‘s neck, for now anyway. Do we know who was responsible back then for kicking off this whole process? I want to throw some tomatoes.

[epiphaneia]

Orchestral tools' Sine player seems to be decent for typical orchestral libraries.
8Dio starts moving to Soundpaint.
East West isn't using Kontakt anymore but their own player since quite some time already.
Cinesamples/Musio have their own player.

Fair point (even though I only find Opus usable - that´s a matter of personal preferences. But I would never want to rely on anything that says "8Dio" on the tin)

So these things are happening already.
Sure, there's all the other libraries possibly requiring a more sophisticated synth engine on top of the sample playback engine, but at least on paper these could as well be moved to, say, Halion

It´s technically surely possible for some 98% of all the Kontakt libraries out there. But it´s difficult to justify investing hundreds of hours into porting your library when you can´t recoup the time by extra sales. When you decide the target format, you look at the installed user base because, let´s face it, very few libraries are SO special that a significant lot of people would add another plugin.

That´s why there are... how many, 5, 6, 7 big names with their own players, a *few* handful smaller developers who buy into ecosystems like UVI´s and hundreds of "Kontakt only" developers.

Of course, Kontakt *did* become a de facto standard and it's pretty tough to break that up - especially in case you have older projects you still want to work with, templates you're used to and an established workflow. But maybe now is the time to say "better late than never".

Or newer projects with Kontakt libraries without which I would work much less effectively. I made the move from Kontakt to Sine for the OT Metropolis series, but unless I get Project Sam, Sonokinetic and Heavyocity for "the new future
player", I will fight with teeth and claws. Not being able to use these anymore would cost me *tons* of money.

Whatever, personally I defenitely don't even wish for NI to recover. They can just F right O.

With regard to the kind of company they have become, I understand your sentiment. With regard to the several hundred people who are working there, I can´t wish ill on them - simply because I am sure there´s many people there who try their best under adverse circumstances and who have families to feed. I merely wish them a better future, one where they can proudly write "great place to work" on glassdoor, not "dumpster fire".

[rod_zero]

NI had very succesfull products along the way but they didnt capitalize on some, specially traktor hardware was a total fail. They were very close to dethroning Pioneer as the dominant player in the DJ bussiness but their hardware sucked, they went for looks instead of quality and Pioneer came back since people wanted reliable equipment, and then the XDJ killed any chance to comeback, NI lost a huge market there.

They never developed the equivalent of Machine for synths.

They went with KK keyboards and the NKS standard but I don't see what benefits it has brought them, yeah they sell hardware than they later abandon and burn their customers but is is not that popular with users.

Arturia did it waaaay better going into hardware of various quality but actually making hardware that is more desirable. Ableton also didi it better with Push. The quality of the hardware matters and NI dropped the ball there, big time, and support has been less that stellar, their USB drivers were quite mediocre for a software company of their size.

NI basically decided to be a consumer brand instead of a Professional one, they went for quantity over quality and it seems to me they hit a ceiling in sales.

I hope someone buys their SW portfolio, I think maybe traktor should be operated separately, imagine if pioneer buys it and just makes it interchangeable with Rekordbox.

[Sindikhate]

YouTube videos on the subject are starting to appear:

because that is what we need, "influencers" and people who would trash and bash a company for a few clicks and create echo chambers, that spread on reddit and other forums and damage company reputations etc. Great job! Apart from a few youtubers that have proved themselves over the years I have red carded a lot of the noise out there.

[Ah_Dziz]

NI did develop the equivalent of maschine for synths. It was called Kore and it got dropped after a couple years.

I'd think maschine could be a standalone brand as could traktor and Kontakt. There doesn't appear to be much professional overlap in those products and all 3 are near the top of their market.

I'd guess that all 3 could be much more successful if the dj team didn't have to worry about how composers work, and the "beat maker" team didn't have to worry about incorporating massive multi samples libraries into their product.

[IvyBirds]

It´s technically surely possible for some 98% of all the Kontakt libraries out there. But it´s difficult to justify investing hundreds of hours into porting your library when you can´t recoup the time by extra sales. When you decide the target format, you look at the installed user base because, let´s face it, very few libraries are SO special that a significant lot of people would add another plugin.

That´s why there are... how many, 5, 6, 7 big names with their own players, a *few* handful smaller developers who buy into ecosystems like UVI´s and hundreds of "Kontakt only" developers.

Many of the small developers only develop for Kontact as they only have the resources to develop for one

Would also add that Yamaha could easily buy Native Instruments and fold Kontact right into HALion7 with minimal issues. There is no functionality in Kontact that isn't in HALion7, but loads of things in HALion7 that are not in Kontact

HALion7 even loads Kontact libraries perfectly that are previous to Kontact 5 when Native Instruments locked Kontact down with propriety encryption, and could easily do so with newer Kontact Libraries if they owned the encryption

Owning the encryption and being able to import Kontact libraries into Montage would also be a huge selling point for them

[jamcat]

I bought Kontakt and paid to upgrade it once, to version 7. NI turned around and released version 8 on a very short upgrade schedule that appeared to just be a desperate cash grab. I didn’t bite.

I still haven’t actually used Kontakt in a single song.

[parma]

Kontakt will likely live on in some form but this is almost certainly the end of Reaktor. Now it won't even be maintained to run on current OSes. Serious bummer.