Native Instruments file for insolvency...

[DCrown]

Typewriters were used a lot back in the day and they were really useful and good, but does anyone still use typwriters?

[Sascha Franck]

Typwriters were used a lot back in the day and they were really useful and good, but does anyone still use typwriters?

Computers are nothing but hyped typewriters. The hype will be over soon.

[Sindikhate]

The only company that can do justice to NI is Yamaha/Steinberg. No one else.

Arturia has a totally different sound to NI and they will ruin every single piece of software NI has made if they change to their sound engine in future updates.

I have thought quite a bit about this since the announcement

I initially thought Steinberg was the answer, but I no longer do. Steinberg will simply not keep Kontact development moving along or any of the Synths when they have the HALion Ecosystem and HALion isn't going anywhere

What they would do is merge Kontact and it's libraries into HALion. Same for Absynth, Massive, FM8 etc. Everything would be jammed into the HALion Sonic Player. While I love HALion I don't want Kontact to merge into it, or massive or Absynth or FM8

The same can be said for UVI with Falcon

Steinberg or UVI would just be buying NI to remove a competitor from the market place and move some of its IP and sample libraries into their existing products which already compete in that space

With Arturia since they don't have a modern sampler, Kontact wouldn't be competing with anything, it would just be a new product they would have and develop, Absynth, Massive, FM8 etc would also happily exist along side of Pigments and the synths in the V collection

Yanaha buying NI does not mean that NI products will merge with Steinberg ones.

If I was Yamaha and bought NI, Halion would be a thing of the past. Not the other way round.

[Sindikhate]

VC could part out the plugins before bankrupting to use as a tax writ off.
Kind of a common scenario really.
Then maybe Kontakt can go on as the new company takes it over.
Others as well.
Just saying the death of NI could be the rebirth of their plugins under different companies.

Absolute horror of a scenario

[Sindikhate]

Maybe slightly off topic but...

I do not know the % of you here following tech trends/news, but one of the most worrying things regarding how we use computers today and what might be coming, is that tech giants want users to get processing power from the cloud in the future whatever that means. Cloud storage, cloud processing power. Add to that, that CPU power advancement has almost stalled or even stagnated lately, and that the non-US world is trying to detach itself from US software (even the EU is planning to develop its own OS, software and platforms). A company like NI having to maintain 400 products for the many OSystems in the future will need a lot of money and hours to achieve that (add the PA stuff and the iZotope stuff on top) (even having to update 400 NI products for MAC OS every year is a huge issue). The modern stagnation of cpu power (and possibly gpu power as nvidia has moved the 6000 series for 2028, and the power difference from 4000 to 5000 was so minimal while the prices skyrocketed) tells us that tech has reached a point where they will force changes in order to survive. Instead of buying a computer, you will be paying a sub for a service. NI and its huge archive can be sold to one of the tech giants if they see profit in it.

The so called multipolar world that is shaping today is bringing challenges that we did not really imagine a decade ago.

People keep asking for new software from NI, and wish for great new ideas etc. NI has more than enough products already. The latest Kontakt has nice new features no one is even bothering to explore really or even talk about. Yet people moan about new features not been developed.

Let's talk about plugins for example. The most exciting thing that has come out the last few years is a plugin like Soothe, and some AI assistants that become a little bit better with every release. What kind of soft synth can be so ground breaking that NI could bring in the future? So where does it all come down to? UX/UI design? Companies should focus on sound quality nowadays than features anyway. Companies like Acustica Audio for example (the quality is already there Nebula or Acqua) could focus on optimisation. What else is there that people wish they could have in plugin form? Maybe more MPE instruments and more expressive midi/mpe controllers? How many more guitars need to be made every year? How many more soft synths do we really need? (Reverbs are a different matter and constant development for an eternity and a half is a must! hah)

Let's not add the new wave of code vibing produced plugins that spawn left and right, and some are quite good to be honest.

I always said that the last three or so decades we have been archiving things of the past and present (anything and everything) for them to be used in the future. Think of a Kontakt library, say the Spitfire BBC Orchestra. It has been archived in software form and saved for future generations, or all that hardware AA, UAD and others have transfered into software form.

It might sound bleak, but soon the world and every day life might change in ways we did not think possible. And Battery 4 missing features from Battery 3 will be even more unimportant than it already is today. Imagine having to spend your rationed processing power and time to do basic things for your day to day life, and arts being gatekept for a select few, the same way big labels and copyright holders are fighting spotify trying to convince us all that it is evil personified. People will miss getting paid 0.004ct for a spotify stream and the choice paralysis of having too many reverbs. That is if we are all alive and well to have such memories.

You will be talking to an amazon echo hub, or your personal robot assistant to load a Freshly Squeezed Samples Sunny Lax bass preset for a trance rolling bass on track 5 which if the robot's memory serves well you always colour yellow, and you will be having the daw picture loaded on your glasses or headset while listening to all of it at 95db without the person next to you hearing a thing. This world is not that impossible to happen and not that far away in the future. The issue for some time will be that the footprint of such advancement and usage will be too heavy for the environment to serve all of the people today. So either things will be gatekept and not available to all and/or there will eventually be less and less people.
Considering ECB president's words that some country's people will have a higher montly allowance than people from many other countries will when the digital currency will be fully implemented and you can understand where all this will go.

Where does a company like NI fit in this? Do you think the Fransisco partners are not aware of such a possible future when everyone is pushing for it? This is the future humanity is aiming for at the moment.

TL/DR maybe but we need a (future) reality check some times.

$300m debt despite the products and their quality, even today is not little money. Maybe in the end only a tech giant could afford this.

Personal advice and note to self as well.. buy more acoustic instruments.

[oobesan]

Yes, and the more you participate/support AI-anything- even your stupid ChatGTP assistant- the more you accelerate our future of enslavement to billionaires (while burning down the rainforests). You will own nothing and subscribe to everything. Even your meals. You won't even go shopping for groceries. You will be on a subscription plan for food.

[Sindikhate]

Yes, and the more you participate/support AI-anything- even your stupid ChatGTP assistant- the more you accelerate our future of enslavement to billionaires (while burning down the rainforests). You will own nothing and subscribe to everything. Even your meals. You won't even go shopping for groceries. You will be on a subscription plan for food.

You say that, but they do not even need your support. You are early beta testing at the moment.

[IvyBirds]

The only company that can do justice to NI is Yamaha/Steinberg. No one else.

Arturia has a totally different sound to NI and they will ruin every single piece of software NI has made if they change to their sound engine in future updates.

I have thought quite a bit about this since the announcement

I initially thought Steinberg was the answer, but I no longer do. Steinberg will simply not keep Kontact development moving along or any of the Synths when they have the HALion Ecosystem and HALion isn't going anywhere

What they would do is merge Kontact and it's libraries into HALion. Same for Absynth, Massive, FM8 etc. Everything would be jammed into the HALion Sonic Player. While I love HALion I don't want Kontact to merge into it, or massive or Absynth or FM8

The same can be said for UVI with Falcon

Steinberg or UVI would just be buying NI to remove a competitor from the market place and move some of its IP and sample libraries into their existing products which already compete in that space

With Arturia since they don't have a modern sampler, Kontact wouldn't be competing with anything, it would just be a new product they would have and develop, Absynth, Massive, FM8 etc would also happily exist along side of Pigments and the synths in the V collection

Yanaha buying NI does not mean that NI products will merge with Steinberg ones.

If I was Yamaha and bought NI, Halion would be a thing of the past. Not the other way round.

Yamaha owns Steinberg and uses Steinberg to make and distribute it's audio production software

Even the Montage plugin which I own uses Steinberg's licensing and download manager

There is zero reason for Yamaha to buy NI and keep it separate from Steinberg. On the hardware side Yamaha has AWM2 for sample playback they don't need Kontact for that

If Yamaha were to buy NI it would be merged with Steinberg. Kontact would be merged with HALion and they would simply create Kontact's and HALion's scripting to allow HALion to load Kontact Libraries. You can already do this with older Kontact libraries

Individual Kontact libraries would also just become individual titles that could be played back in the free HALion Sonic Player

Moving forward Kontact would basically just cease to exist and new libraries by Steinberg or 3rd party developers would just be created for HALion natively.

It just wouldn't make sense for Yamaha to maintain Kontact and HALion as separate software products, or make Kontact hardware when Montage and AWM2 exists

As far as the other instruments go, Yamaha would end up killing most of them off, or fold then into freebies with Cubase that would require minimal upkeep on them. They would just keep the VST3 version of them working natively inside of Cubase

The more popular ones would also just be merged into HALion. Yamaha/Steinberg view HALion as a platform and that is what it would be used for

[Sindikhate]

Although I love Steinberg's DAWs and their plugins, the only reason I open one track of Halion on every project is because Cubase spreads processing power better at the early stages of a project, while I have at least 20/30 instances of Kontakt on every project. There really is no comparison between the two. And especially on the quality of the libraries and of course the amount of them.

The total number of Halion libraries is smaller than the S Tier Kontakt ones. imagine that..

Regarding your other views/business ideas, no one would spend 300m plus to just enrich Cubase with Massive, FM8, Kontakt and Absynth and keep it all dongled and locked with it.

If Yamaha would buy NI they would run it separately, but I have no idea what AI advancements Yamaha or Steinberg have made the last few years. People complain that Cubase has not got that many new features or changes done, so that might be a sign that they are working on other things in the background. There were talks about logging in their system with a digital ID at some point when they were making announcements about the e licenser getting offline eventually. What did they mean exactly by mentioning digital ID instead of log in credentials only they know.

[Sindikhate]

.double

[nightjar]

NI's core mission should be about converting human movements into sounds... with intention and within a music context.

Ni makes controllers. They should be at the forefront of developing the human/sound/music interface.

There is a TON of innovation possible in the near horizon.

NI could be the "big dog" in this area with the right leadership.

Lock in the software with truly innovative hardware.

[IvyBirds]

Although I love Steinberg's DAWs and their plugins, the only reason I open one track of Halion on every project is because Cubase spreads processing power better at the early stages of a project, while I have at least 20/30 instances of Kontakt on every project. There really is no comparison between the two. And especially on the quality of the libraries and of course the amount of them.

The total number of Halion libraries is smaller than the S Tier Kontakt ones. imagine that..

Regarding your other views/business ideas, no one would spend 300m plus to just enrich Cubase with Massive, FM8, Kontakt and Absynth and keep it all dongled and locked with it.

If Yamaha would buy NI they would run it separately, but I have no idea what AI advancements Yamaha or Steinberg have made the last few years. People complain that Cubase has not got that many new features or changes done, so that might be a sign that they are working on other things in the background. There were talks about logging in their system with a digital ID at some point when they were making announcements about the e licenser getting offline eventually. What did they mean exactly by mentioning digital ID instead of log in credentials only they know.

No one is going to buy NI for 300m. That's just never going to happen. If that's the asking price NI will die and disappear

What other companies might do is buy NI on the cheap which often happens during bankruptcies because a creditor getting some money is better than them getting no money

Yamaha simply won't buy NI unless it super cheap, and even then the purpose would be to remove a competitor from the market place and merge some of its IP into its existing IP, they just won't take on hundreds of millions in debt just to compete with itself. Yamaha as a publicly traded company won't want the redundancy in overhead that would come with owning two separate music software companies

I don't see any entity that will take on NI's 300 million dollar debt. Either NI will overcome that and survive which means no one will buy it, or it will fail and be sold for pennies on the dollar

The best case scenario if NI is to be sold in bankruptcy is for another entity in the music software market to buy it who isn't already in that space and continue to develop it.

[digitalboytn]

I was just wondering

Maybe Microsoft might even be a player here ?

[VladK]

I was just wondering

Maybe Microsoft might even be a player here ?

God forbid...

[Parco Molo]

In January 2023, Image-Line, the creators of FL Studio, acquired UVI.....

It's hard to imagine that UVI swallows NI when it has been eaten itself