Sad state of Native Instruments

[Vocalpoint Studios]

I too am heavily invested in NI - and just upgraded to Komplete 14 ULT - which should keep me busy for years to come. But I do have concerns about the state of play for the Komplete Kontrol keyboards, Komplete Kontrol software and its related items.

My main reason for ramping up on NI stuff (after years of keeping it in the background) was when my workflow turned a 180 with the Komplete Kontrol/NKS integration in Studio One. That alone is enough to keep me happy for the foreseeable, but I am hoping we see some actual movement in the hardware (Komplete Kontrol MK III) and an updated, modernized version of the Komplete Kontrol software/plugin someday soon.

KK is an area that remains totally useable (for now) but is getting a tad long in the tooth.

Cheers

VP

[gentleclockdivider]

For those that question it , Reaktor was 100 percent build in house by the original N.I. founders stephan Schmidt ( who left and started non linear labs ) and Volker Hinz , it was called generator and required a hardware accelerated dsp card .

[CrystalWizard]

They seem to be deprecating things at about the same rate. Is two years ago lately? I'll use a search engine on the internet and look it up. My memory is subjective.

Yeah your memory is flawed here. Ten years ago they stopped developing Kore, This was after alluding that the great kill offs they'd done in the past (Pro 53, B4, Spectral Delay, Kompact, Intakt, etc. etc.) were over. They swore up and down that Battery was safe and Maschine would be developed at Kores pace etc. Since then it's been two incidences that I can think of Absynth last year, and hardware drivers for Mac OS for Rig Kontrol. So their kill rate is more like rest of the industry than when they were just abandoning things left and right pre 2012.

If one reads this thread carefully one can see that NI doesn't actually develop a lot of their software, U-he and PSP develop everything in house. My opinion is that is a flawed comparison.

Yeah this is just speculation without any logic behind it. A company making a sample library they incorporate into Kontakt isn't them not doing things in house.

Every single software company including audio ones is subject to buy outs and developers quitting. U-He could have the same issues if some of Urs's developers leave to work for Meta or Apple etc. and are forced to be exclusive to those companies. What we see with larger companies is just a higher chance this happens. XiLs is a company made up of ex Arturia developers, it might be why the Jupiter emulations are separate instals, too hard to backwards engineer the original at the core level they wanted to. It's arguably why Arturia abandoned Storm back in the day. It's probably why Iced Audio doesn't respond to emails and haven't developed AudioFinder at all for over a year after stating they were. The rumor is they were bought up by Meta.

We see the developer of Absynth say he would have been happy to have been hired to develop on Absynth but we do not know what he was asking money wise to do that, it's a business and they have to make decisions about where the money goes. I don't have to like it, but it doesn't mean that Reaktor, Kontakt, Komplete Control or Maschine are not built in house. On that line though, one of Maschines developers is the guy behind New Sonic Arts. That sort of thing where a developer leaves will slow down development.

On that line, this means that U-He for instance should be miles ahead of NI in terms of Apple Silicon Support etc. They're small enough with a dedicated enough staff to where I don't think any developer has up and left? so in some ways NI getting Maschine done before U-He port Filterscape is a more impressive achievement.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2020/0 ... -products/
yeah flawed. NI is a dumpster fire as far as development goes.
That's mine, thanks for your opinion.
Yes, U-he has turnover, too, although they don't seem to fire 20% of their staff at a time either.

[CrystalWizard]

For those that question it , Reaktor was 100 percent build in house by the original N.I. founders stephan Schmidt ( who left and started non linear labs ) and Volker Hinz , it was called generator and required a hardware accelerated dsp card .

Yes, it is a work of genius from "the good old days" at NI. As you posted, Generator is what made a name for NI. My post (about in house/ contracted) wasn't about Generator/Reaktor but about NIs whole product line. I'm too busy to do the research to determine exactly what is developed in house and what isn't right now. It seems to me that not much is coming from in house lately and a few of those newer items seem half fast. (massive x and native access)

[machinesworking]

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2020/0 ... -products/
yeah flawed. NI is a dumpster fire as far as development goes.
That's mine, thanks for your opinion.
Yes, U-he has turnover, too, although they don't seem to fire 20% of their staff at a time either.

Yeah they received backlash for that, and to be clear, it was for activation of already discontinued products. I'm not arguing that NI are perfect, and when you move the goalpost it doesn't help the conversation much.

To bite on this, can you still download Storm on Arturia's site? I'm pretty sure that's not happening. What about Zebra 1?

[edit] Just checked, I can still download Kore and Spectral Delay from my account, so they backpedaled on that move thankfully.

[machinesworking]

Yes, it is a work of genius from "the good old days" at NI. As you posted, Generator is what made a name for NI. My post (about in house/ contracted) wasn't about Generator/Reaktor but about NIs whole product line. I'm too busy to do the research to determine exactly what is developed in house and what isn't right now. It seems to me that not much is coming from in house lately and a few of those newer items seem half fast. (massive x and native access)

Not trying to pick on you, but if you're not willing to do the work to back up your assumptions, then why assume?

[jeffn1]

I always thought the thing that "made" NI was streaming samples.

Gigastudio was the dominant softsampler because it was able to stream samples form disk.

NI was able to use Gigastudio samples and stream from disk, and than really eclipsed Gigastudio it in terms of sample streaming.

Jeff

[Dencheg]

1) NI forgot that they became THE MAN cause they made Massive.

WHat makes you think that ?
N.I. was the man right from the start with the release of generator( pre reaktor ).

Cause Massive influenced music

Massive influenced a few EDM subgenres over ~10 years. Kontakt influenced the whole musical landscape over decades, is by itself a huge ecosystem and still the backbone of NI.

So one can say "wow cool, I think it sounds like Kontakt"

[machinesworking]

I always thought the thing that "made" NI was streaming samples.

Gigastudio was the dominant softsampler because it was able to stream samples form disk.

NI was able to use Gigastudio samples and stream from disk, and than really eclipsed Gigastudio it in terms of sample streaming.

Jeff

Yeah that and Generator/Reaktor. Plus Absynth in the beginning was well ahead of its time.
Massive was a later success. They had a lot of successful products early on.

[osiris]

https://www.sync-modular.org/

At least you can still download it. Take a look at the pic. Awfully familiar.

[Trancit]

... it was called generator and required a hardware accelerated dsp card .

I don´t know what version this was but I used the early versions of Generator (and how was called the other product??) natively without any additional hardware on my old early Pentium CPU...

Edit just found a quote:

Generator (from Berlin‑based Native Instruments) is a software synth that will run on any Pentium PC (100MHz or better).

[Trancit]

...They had a lot of successful products early on.

(just quoting you because of the matching word )

I think the important word is "had" and this is actually what the OP claimed... there is not much innovation anymore but there was a lot of pain in the past and the everlasting damokles sword what product they might cancel next... "the cat does not let the moult"

Don´t forget they mostly just had the "time" advantage...
Something like their "Massive success" was mostly because there was nearly no real competitor at this time...

Same for Kontakt... it´s not that Kontakt is the greatest software on earth... it´s just that most content is available for it... again the time bonus ... there was very little competition...

How did they changed the music world with new innovations (and please don´t tell me nks) in the last 10 years with more competition???
Honestely??? Not the slightest bit apart of wining the competition "Who can upset most of their users?"
They still live from their past success but really delivering something new and good is now a foreign word for them... i.e. MassiveX was a deasaster from neverending release delays to a userbase going on barricades because of the flaws of the 1.0 release...
Oh, I forgot... they won a competition more: "Who is able to delay HDPi UI´s the longest time for most of the products" ...

[coroknight]

It's time for you all to emotionally uninvest from Native-Instruments. What's happening here is just capitalism. It's the same thing that happened to Blizzard (if you're a gamer) and will eventually happen to everything you love. If not now, then a year from now, 10 years, or 50+ years. It'll happen.

It HAS to happen because eternal growth is the name of the game. Everything that was good will be milked and destroyed eventually.

[noiseboyuk]

It's time for you all to emotionally uninvest from Native-Instruments. What's happening here is just capitalism. It's the same thing that happened to Blizzard (if you're a gamer) and will eventually happen to everything you love. If not now, then a year from now, 10 years, or 50+ years. It'll happen.

It HAS to happen because eternal growth is the name of the game. Everything that was good will be milked and destroyed eventually.

See, sounds like a smart and clever post, but it’s just cynicism. There’s a ton of good companies, some big some small, that have somehow resisted the temptation to become evil.

Spectrasonics may be divisive in some ways, but they’ve never changed their basic principles in 20 years. As a customer you know exactly where you are with them.

[machinesworking]

...They had a lot of successful products early on.

(just quoting you because of the matching word )

I think the important word is "had" and this is actually what the OP claimed... there is not much innovation anymore but there was a lot of pain in the past and the everlasting damokles sword what product they might cancel next... "the cat does not let the moult"

Again, their rate of deprecating products has gone down considerably since Kore ten years ago.
I was/am 100% someone whose trashed on them for hundreds of posts about this, but I have to admit their rate of deprecation these days is not anything to single them out for.

Don´t forget they mostly just had the "time" advantage...
Something like their "Massive success" was mostly because there was nearly no real competitor at this time...

Same for Kontakt... it´s not that Kontakt is the greatest software on earth... it´s just that most content is available for it... again the time bonus ... there was very little competition...

In both cases there was and still is huge competition in those areas. Sampling wise, Halion, MachFive (which is now Falcon), and Structure were out then. Those weren't the only ones, there was probably a half dozen others that didn't make it to modern times. Basically two of the biggest competitors to Kontakt were around when Kontakt secured all the third party deals.

Massive I never really got, Zebra 2 was out, I to this day use it more than Massive. I think Massive X sounds better than Massive, I'm still trying to figure out why people don't like it?

How did they changed the music world with new innovations (and please don´t tell me nks) in the last 10 years with more competition???
Honestely??? Not the slightest bit apart of wining the competition "Who can upset most of their users?"
They still live from their past success but really delivering something new and good is now a foreign word for them... i.e. MassiveX was a deasaster from neverending release delays to a userbase going on barricades because of the flaws of the 1.0 release...
Oh, I forgot... they won a competition more: "Who is able to delay HDPi UI´s the longest time for most of the products" ...

I'll tell you nks if I want to thank you very much!
Seriously someone has to do this, VIP failed, was a PITA to work with, Unify isn't the answer.
I avoided it for years but having recently picked up an S88 I have to say it makes life a lot easier with Kontakt libraries. the light guide for key switches is worth it alone. When you use one of their keyboards with it, it's a great experience so far here. I'm new to it, but I don't rose color anything. They could easily kill it with neglect, but it's innovative for sure.

Plus and I really do think this, who cares about "innovation", to me that's industry buzz words these days. I want older products to get updated and upgraded. I don't need new synths from NI, I need them to upgrade Reaktor to 7 by Komplete 15 and continue to improve Kontakt. I would have rather seen Zebra 3 than any of the synths U-He has released since 2 besides Diva. I love the newer stuff don't get me wrong, but I would rather have Zebra 3.

Their issues with moving forward on VST3, Apple silicon and GUI improbvements are exactly why Komplete 14 is filled with mostly new sample libraries. I don't get why people have a hard time with that concept? Sure, 100% trash them for not cleaning house years ago, but if you have been a customer since the early 2000's you know this is nothing new, and they are not alone here. They're one of many companies that haven't made those switches completely yet.

Their success was/is because Komplete was/is a hell of a deal. You get a lot for what you pay, that's just a fact. They will "innovate", I'm betting AI is part of Komplete 15.