Native Instruments to be acquired by inMusic

[mabian]

Can't believe nobody already commented like ... "I can feel it coming in the AiR tonight"

I used AiR plugins, and they were great. But... I felt betrayed when they didn't fulfill their kind of promise to update the GUIs to support higher resolutions. Since then they've been in free downfall for me, releasing new stuff that was constantly abandoned shortly after. And doing mostly nothing about their GUIs. Same for BFD after they got it, never felt like they were evolving it in a good way.

Can't tell about Akai and MPC. And, I was a loyal NI customer. But now, they will have to be really compelling to convince me to get some of their new stuff again.

For now, for me, it's farewell NI...

- Mario

[havran]

Does every f*cking thing have to turn into an argument over AI now? Can you move this sh*t to the AI forum?

It certainly feels that way, and as of May 2026, you are not alone in that frustration."AI fatigue" is now a recognized phenomenon, with 54% of Americans reporting they are tired of hearing about artificial intelligence, despite high levels of adoption.

Here is a breakdown of why everything feels like an argument over AI in 2026:

The "Push" Factor: Many people feel AI is being forced into products where it isn't needed, from "smart" appliances to workplace tools, causing a backlash against its constant, often superficial, presence.

Generational Resistance: Despite being told to adopt it, many young workers and students (Gen Z) are resisting AI-centric futures, viewing it as a driver of inequality rather than a neutral tool.

The "Brain Fry" Effect: Three years into the generative AI boom, many professionals are experiencing "AI brain fry," where tools that were supposed to reduce work are actually causing higher levels of burnout.

High-Stakes Stakes: The arguments are heated because the debates often center on existential risks, job displacement, and the potential destruction of creative fields, and

The Trough of Disillusionment: Excitement has faded to 19% among consumers in 2026 as people realize AI can generate 1,000 words in seconds, but often at the cost of genuine human insight.

In short: Yes, it is a dominant topic because it is being aggressively integrated into daily life, creating a "hype vs. reality" conflict that breeds exhaustion and debate.

[havran]

It seems odd (to me) to have one company own so many large pro audio brands.

Yeah. Originally I was thinking that maybe there is some cost-saving in consolidating the admin departments, but it also seems kind of "all one's eggs in one basket" -- e.g., what if airborne hantavirus does come along and one of the side-effects of the milder variants is that people go deaf?

[Jim Roseberry]

I think the fear and loathing that many of us have is that inMusic will focus primarily on making NI part of MPC and allow everything and everyone else who doesn't want to be involved in the MPC ecosystem to wither on the vine

It seems the people most excited about this are all MPC users, but the very reasons you are excited over are things the rest of us worry about

I completely understand how you feel.
Though I have MPC XL and MPC Live III, I'm still a hardcore DAW user.
I'd prefer if NI stayed in business... and actually started innovating again.
If they happened to port products over to MPC, that would be great.
FWIW, I'm not a typical MPC owner.
I got those two because the synth/sampling capabilities are starting to rival (and even surpass in some ways) the best workstation keyboards.

IMO, NI have been stagnating a bit.
I haven't been excited about a Komplete upgrade for years.
I doubt I'll upgrade to from 14 to 26 Collector's Edition.
Just not enough there that I'd actually use.

The jury is still out on InMusic owning Moog.
Thus far, it doesn't seem to be any worse than before the acquisition.
Time will tell...

[havran]

We already have threads about this, see below. please close this one.

viewtopic.php?t=629988

A lot of good that did.

[jamcat]

Can't believe nobody already commented like ... "I can feel it coming in the AiR tonight"

I used AiR plugins, and they were great.

Ahhh... nevermind.

[pekbro]

Lol I thought they already owned them.

[nanostream]

I think we are approaching this from two very different sets of assumptions.

Same here, I assumed this was a thread about NI being acquired by inmusic.

Anyway, I’m glad NI escaped liquidation. I’m probably reading too much into this, but the more detailed inmusic press release mentioned only Kontakt and Traktor by name. This doesn’t necessarily mean other products will linger, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll focus mostly on these 2 products. Still holding up hope for MX2, though!

[Teksonik]

I would doubt that the developers of Air plugins still work for Air, and that, leads to stagnation.

Possibly but for the record Air did remove the requirement for iLok from their old plugins so some credit is due to them for that.

"InMusic officially announced the acquisition of the AIR Software Group (along with M-Audio) from Avid Technology, Inc. on July 2, 2012. The deal included the AIR team (formerly Wizoo Sound Design, based in Germany)".

June 2017:

some time ago I read something about larger GUIs for AIR instruments would be in the pipeline. Does anybody know if that is correct and when this will come? Will it be a free update?

Yes this is planned to be a free update

Of course it never happened for whatever reason.

Nomad Factory managed to not only provide larger sizes but entirely reworked GUIs for many of the plugins in their catalog for free even after Bernie passed away and they are working on the others so it's not an impossible task.

Whether we'll see larger GUI sizes for N.I. products is yet to be seen but if I were a betting man (I am) I'd lay odds it will not happen or at least not in the near future.

Like I said earlier Battery 4 could really use larger sizes and I seem to remember people asking for that for almost as long if not more. I've only owned it a short time getting in one of their "session" bundles so haven't paid that much attention to its history over the years.

To be honest I haven't touched an NI plugin since the world "insolvency" first popped up but I feel a little more comfortable doing so now. Of course who knows if the entire NI catalog will live on or if there will be casualties along the way.

[Teksonik]

Does anyone know if Plugin Alliance was included in the package? I care as much if not more in some cases about their plugins than NI's.

According to Production Expert and NI, yes PA, Brainworx, and Izotope were included in the agreement:

Thanks for the info. That doesn't really give me a warm and fuzzy feeling since many of the PA/Brainworx plugins are mission critical here. I could live without any of the NI software I own but you'd have to pry several of the PA/BX plugins from my cold dead hands.

Now that I think of it PA/BX did just issue free GUI updates for many of their old plugins so maybe that spirit will spill over to NI.

[osiris]

I hope they don't go with the iLok.
https://paceap.com/products/ilok-softwa ... pricing-5/
$5000 per year or...
Prices so bad on other tiers they won't list them

[IvyBirds]

It seems the people most excited about this are all MPC users, but the very reasons you are excited over are things the rest of us worry about

The Air instruments designed to work with the MPC in standalone also work as AU and VST, so there's some precedent for further compatibility not making NI an embedded instrument only in the MPC, if that's your worry.

Plus, these are all the new Air instruments, not Loom, Hybrid etc. with technical debt etc.

And that's great however the situation with NI is different than what went down with AIR all the way back in 2012 which was 14 years ago

InMusic got AIR from Avid along with M Audio. They were Protools software so putting an AU or VST wrapper on them wasn't a giant leap forward
.
With NI, and Izotope they are buying a company that makes software that already works in all major DAWs without issue

The issue is that most of the NI and Izotope catalog has withered on the vine already for far to long and the move to inMusic will only make that situation worse

Rather than spend time developing new and exciting things for say RX, my fear is that inMusic will develop RX to enhance the sampling aspects of MPC, same goes for Ozone and Kontact. So we won't get new and exciting versions of RX, or Ozone or Kontact, we will get the all new 2027 MPC Super Deluxe that loads Kontact Libraries and can enhance your samples with RX Technology and sweeten everything with the Machine Learning from Ozone

As a musician, what I crave most from plugin developers the most is innovation and I fear than innovate plugins that work cross platform in every DAW that matters the innovation will go to the closed wall garden of MPC hardware

While that would be great for MPC users, for non DAW users we can already do that in our DAWs and computers. I can sample something in my DAW from a record or a tape or a field recording and clean it up and enhance it with Ozone and RX and I can already play Kontact Libraries

InMusic only has so much money to put towards so much development after all and the founders and lead developers of NI, Izotope, and PA are now all gone

[VOODOO U]

as of May 2026, you are not alone in that frustration."AI fatigue" is now a recognized phenomenon, with 54% of Americans reporting they are tired of hearing about artificial intelligence, despite high levels of adoption.

Here is a breakdown of why everything feels like an argument over AI in 2026:

The "Push" Factor: Many people feel AI is being forced into products where it isn't needed, from "smart" appliances to workplace tools, causing a backlash against its constant, often superficial, presence.

Generational Resistance: Despite being told to adopt it, many young workers and students (Gen Z) are resisting AI-centric futures, viewing it as a driver of inequality rather than a neutral tool.

The "Brain Fry" Effect: Three years into the generative AI boom, many professionals are experiencing "AI brain fry," where tools that were supposed to reduce work are actually causing higher levels of burnout.

High-Stakes Stakes: The arguments are heated because the debates often center on existential risks, job displacement, and the potential destruction of creative fields, and

The Trough of Disillusionment: Excitement has faded to 19% among consumers in 2026 as people realize AI can generate 1,000 words in seconds, but often at the cost of genuine human insight.

In short: Yes, it is a dominant topic because it is being aggressively integrated into daily life, creating a "hype vs. reality" conflict that breeds exhaustion and debate.

•This post was made possible by ChatGPT. Your source for information.

[sin night]

I don't know how to feel about this acquisition. I'm happy that NI is not going bankrupt anymore and I think it's probably a good thing that the new owner is a company making musical instruments / pro audio products.


What struck me is the size of the InMusic group right now. For example: MPC and Maschine are the two main choices in their market segment, now they are on the hands of just one owner. The MIDI keyboards market segment is being consolidated as well (now they own the NI midi keyboard line) and the dj market as well (InMusic probably needed to own a software like Traktor to complete their dj product line, especially since the AlphaTheta acquisition of Serato)... InMusic is a big player...


I wonder what this means for overlapping product lines in the long run... but, on the positive side, some very valuable non-overlapping assets (Kontakt, some synths like Massive...) are not going to disappear anytime soon and maybe some tech is going to be shared/adopted across multiple brands as well.
I'm thinking about NKS hardware support for example, last year it was adopted by / opened up to other brands like Akai, M-Audio, Arturia, Korg, Nektar and Novation, with first two already part of the InMusic group at the time. Now, if you're looking for a new midi keyboard, there are high chances you end up buying an InMusic product, either under the Akai, M-Audio or Native Instruments brand...



My other concern is what this means for product activation in the long run.

The situation is a bit of a mess at the moment, with AIR moving from iLok to online activation (for some products I still own the iLok license, so I can't get the updates, unless I get in touch with support... which is an option to be fair, but I'd rather wait for them to roll out the licenses to users rather than having a ad-hoc solution...). Now, add the NI/iZotope/PA account/activation systems, which were never fully merged. I don't know if they are going to keep things separate or if they plan to merge them in the long run; for example my Moogefoogers plugins started as iLok protected and later changed to online activation (I think it was about the same time Moog was bought by InMusic, but I'm not sure), although they are not handled by AIR Portal at the moment (I don't know if they have plans to do so).
I wonder if they'll want to consolidate things in the long run and what it means for "offline" activation methods (for example, my PA plugins licenses are activated on a usb pendrive at the moment).


Anyway, at the very least NI is not going bankrupt and their products and technology are not going to dust or split into small chunks across multiple owners.

[Alchemedia]