Sad state of Native Instruments

[zerocrossing]

That's the argument anyway, which I don't think is accurate. As pointed out numerous times across the 43 pages, NI are producing absolutely top end stuff...

Such as?

Most recently, Valves Pro looks and sounds terrific. The scripting and UX looks pioneering, and yet they've done the recordings really well too - you don't often get both. I don't have that yet, but I do have Lores and Strummed Acoustic Nylon, both are outstanding. With Lores they've pulled off what Spitfire have been trying to do for years but never quite nailed - a contemporary scoring tool that sounds human, organic and not cliched. Concept and execution superb. The Nylon is fabulous - I've often said (and stick by) that virtual guitars are never a patch on real ones mostly because you have to play them with a keyboard not six independent strings whose pitches criss-cross. It's impossible. But they take a subset of what IS possible, and they've made it sound fabulous. Highly musical.

These products may not be for everyone, but they are best in class at what they do. And they do plenty I dislike, but most here don't ever hear their best stuff. Everything on KVR is filtered through a synthesis prism. On that, I've hated Massive X since release, to me it sounds cold, sterile and uninspiring. Others think it's the best synth on the market. Shrug emoji.

I was right with you up until your explanation of Massive X. If you think it's cold and sterile" and therefor uninspiring, you haven't really dug into it in any real way. Some of the filter models are really among the best analog emulations by any company. There are plenty of reasons to find it uninspiring, but "cold and sterile?" I can't imagine making that assessment. What other wavetable plugin are you comparing it to?

[noiseboyuk]

I was right with you up until your explanation of Massive X. If you think it's cold and sterile" and therefor uninspiring, you haven't really dug into it in any real way. Some of the filter models are really among the best analog emulations by any company. There are plenty of reasons to find it uninspiring, but "cold and sterile?" I can't imagine making that assessment. What other wavetable plugin are you comparing it to?

I use Avenger frequently and Pigments occasionally - I want to use the latter more and get better used to it.

For any synth I start with the presets and if I like what I hear I dig into it. I'm not sure I've ever heard a single Massive X preset I've liked. I got a ton of new ones with K14, but nothing fires my imagination. I hear everyone raving about the filters... can't explain it. I have a similar issue with Falcon - just terrible presets to my ears, yet I keep reading how it's the best thing ever. (In that case it's also the worst UI ever devised). In general I'm an analog-head, but it doesn't stop me liking Avenger or Pigments.

ANYWAY. Point is people here love binary thinking when it comes to devs. They're either heroes or villains, and users either haters or fanboys. Yet with almost every developer I can think of there's pros and cons, and for me that's especially true with NI. I strongly dislike how they jettison good product, and in some cases replace them with worse ones. Tech debt legendary, not in a good way. Their tech support is really slow. Their synth innovation has dried up, and their browsers terrible. But their cinematic stuff, world series, the recent guitars (and I'm a lover of Guitar Rig - stupendous for ambient) are really good. Licensing is great, installers a cinch.

Lots to like, lots to not-like.

[pdxindy]

I was right with you up until your explanation of Massive X. If you think it's cold and sterile" and therefor uninspiring, you haven't really dug into it in any real way. Some of the filter models are really among the best analog emulations by any company. There are plenty of reasons to find it uninspiring, but "cold and sterile?" I can't imagine making that assessment. What other wavetable plugin are you comparing it to?

I like the sound of MX, but I am not surprised at their characterization. To my ears, it does lean a touch towards cold and sterile. I remember regularly putting in effort to overcome the core tone of MX. In terms of sound quality, I consider MX world class... but not always an instant favorite.

[zerocrossing]

In general I'm an analog-head, but it doesn't stop me liking Avenger or Pigments.

I think that a lot of what you're experiencing is probably the presets, which I can't even remember liking or not liking, but I know that Massive was a darling of the Dub Step crowd and EDM crowd, so I bet they targeted a lot of the sounds to be harsh digital lamentations of robots dying in battle.

And unlike Pigments, which has a drift control in the analog oscillator module, you have to manually do everything like that in Massive X, which I feel is a pain in the butt. It would be nice if you could just have a "slop" control that gave you a bit of drift and voice offset of the usual parameters. Doing it manually also takes a modulation slot, and because they didn't do a mod matrix, it means you are limited to 3 and sometimes even only 2. So, if you have an LFO modulating fine pitch, you only have one more slot for "VR" which is what they call their random modulator... I don't even know what it stands for. "Very Random?" Too bad there's no abbreviation for the word random.

Anyway, so yeah, there's no simple way to make it sound like a Prophet VS, that's for sure, but there are enough things in it that will get you there and a lot farther. I'm not really pushing Massive X, because I'd rather use Pigments most of the time too, for basically every other reason you can imagine, but when I want something that does what it does, there's not anything as good.

[zerocrossing]

So for fun, because I'm all about fun as everyone knows, I started going though the Massive X presets. Yeah, most are pretty dismal or at best interesting but not really usable. I did find one, though, called Blue Jupiter, that does a pretty good job of showing Massive X's more "analog" side.

[DrGonzo]

Point is people here love binary thinking when it comes to devs. They're either heroes or villains, and users either haters or fanboys.

This stretches far beyond our heated passions for things that makes sound. You are either with us or the worst human in existence. Pick any area in life at the moment. Everything is so polarized it's almost a joke at this point.

When you identify with a group, you have a sense of belonging. If that group is rooted deeply in anger and hate you can vent your frustrations. Like the hate-rage-stampede with saw with Waves some months ago.

I almost feel nostalgic with threads like Softube Prophet-5 vs U-He Repro-5 vs the Real Thing. It's so ridiculous at this point that even though the products are so insanely good and no one could pick out anything from a blind test, oh my we have to bring out our knives, because if you like Repro5 - you are CLEARLY one of THEM...

Native Instruments have broken my heart so many times I can't feel anything any longer. I couldn't for my life invest any money into them. It's like their R&D department is so connected with the sales department that anything beyond the initial release is seen as lost cost. Maschine is effing brilliant and could have been a major player. Maschine Plus was an excellent idea and counter-point to the Akai MPC eco-system. Their NKSF format was a brilliant idea and could have been something extraordinary at this point. The momentum they had with the original Massive was unique and almost a once-in-a-lifetime chance to capitalise on NI being on the forefront of plugins. And yet they are just sleepwalking through it all.

The only part where I feel NI is doing something really good is their expansion libraries. And that's probably where they want to be. After the release there is no more updates, no pesky bugs, no outcry over updates etc. Just release and move on to the next library. Repeat.

/C

[machinesworking]

Native Instruments have broken my heart so many times I can't feel anything any longer. I couldn't for my life invest any money into them. It's like their R&D department is so connected with the sales department that anything beyond the initial release is seen as lost cost. Maschine is effing brilliant and could have been a major player. Maschine Plus was an excellent idea and counter-point to the Akai MPC eco-system. Their NKSF format was a brilliant idea and could have been something extraordinary at this point. The momentum they had with the original Massive was unique and almost a once-in-a-lifetime chance to capitalise on NI being on the forefront of plugins. And yet they are just sleepwalking through it all.

The only part where I feel NI is doing something really good is their expansion libraries. And that's probably where they want to be. After the release there is no more updates, no pesky bugs, no outcry over updates etc. Just release and move on to the next library. Repeat.

/C

Honestly I think for me the thing that strikes me isn't the disappointment with NI's glacial product upgrades, or technical debt that keeps things like VST3, resizable GUI's or Apple Silicon support still not completed really years later. It's that people had some golden age with it. I've always loved their products, but their ability to keep a large varied portfolio updated with the latest features has always been pretty terrible. They release great things, but they do not follow through, there's not one of their products that has gotten the type of attention that Falcon gets, unless you picture Komplete as a single product, then you see all kinds of movement.

All that said, I wouldn't be surprised if Komplete 15 included Massive X v2, FM9, some improvements to Kontakt and of course more Kontakt based locked down romplers!

[noiseboyuk]

So for fun, because I'm all about fun as everyone knows, I started going though the Massive X presets. Yeah, most are pretty dismal or at best interesting but not really usable. I did find one, though, called Blue Jupiter, that does a pretty good job of showing Massive X's more "analog" side.

Love your posts, your thinking sounds plausible to me and you may have hit on the reason why I don't get on with MX.

I duly loaded up Blue Jupiter and you're quite right it's a perfectly nice patch. And of course the kind of patch that a gazzilion other synths can do as bread and butter. I get that this isn't what its really designed to do, and what it is designed to do I just don't like aesthetically.

Given this, I do lack all motivation to really get to know it. I'm old, I just lack the will do make a lot of effort for something I'm not into. And maybe worth adding - I bet there's ton of presets and fairly simple programming that I'd like if I did bother. I'm not saying it's bad or can't make good sounds. But something about the DNA just leaves me cold.

So back to NI as a whole - I'm really happy that a lot of people love this synth. Super 8 would me more of my bag, but it just feels like another version of what I have a hundred of, with a UI and browser I find offputting. And there's the weird thing about releasing then almost instantly abandoning a standalone version of that, which leads on to the even more inexplicable fact that Reaktor never got a proper browser at all - even the one with Kontakt 7 would have helped.

I tend to ignore the NI synths as a result. I don't need any more is the thing - between Omni and its expansions, the Arturias, the u-hes, Avenger and Nexus... I have waaay too much. So I can be pretty sanguine about NI under-performing in this area. They excell in different areas, and I'm content with that.

[noiseboyuk]

Point is people here love binary thinking when it comes to devs. They're either heroes or villains, and users either haters or fanboys.

This stretches far beyond our heated passions for things that makes sound. You are either with us or the worst human in existence. Pick any area in life at the moment. Everything is so polarized it's almost a joke at this point.

Excuse the snip for brevity, but that is one of the all-time great KVR posts. A thousand times yes to the first half.

And to the point about being once-bitten and twice tired - totally get it. I used to lust after Kore, but before I could buy it they dropped it from a great height. Had I bought it, the emotional drain of feeling kicked in the face would quite probably sworn me off NI forever. And it wouldn't have been irrational... we know NI can pull the rug from under you at any time.

I use Battery a reasonable amount, but pretty much everything else is Kontakt based. Rightly or wrongly I feel that platform is here to stay - it's as close to a standard as anything in VIdom - so I'm at peace with supporting it. Just pragmatism.

BTW on expansions - I wish they'd have an installer for these where you just install the bits you need. I don't want the loops and they take up space, but I'd take the one-shots and presets.

[zerocrossing]

So for fun, because I'm all about fun as everyone knows, I started going though the Massive X presets. Yeah, most are pretty dismal or at best interesting but not really usable. I did find one, though, called Blue Jupiter, that does a pretty good job of showing Massive X's more "analog" side.

Love your posts, your thinking sounds plausible to me and you may have hit on the reason why I don't get on with MX.

I duly loaded up Blue Jupiter and you're quite right it's a perfectly nice patch. And of course the kind of patch that a gazzilion other synths can do as bread and butter. I get that this isn't what its really designed to do, and what it is designed to do I just don't like aesthetically.

Given this, I do lack all motivation to really get to know it. I'm old, I just lack the will do make a lot of effort for something I'm not into. And maybe worth adding - I bet there's ton of presets and fairly simple programming that I'd like if I did bother. I'm not saying it's bad or can't make good sounds. But something about the DNA just leaves me cold.

So back to NI as a whole - I'm really happy that a lot of people love this synth. Super 8 would me more of my bag, but it just feels like another version of what I have a hundred of, with a UI and browser I find offputting. And there's the weird thing about releasing then almost instantly abandoning a standalone version of that, which leads on to the even more inexplicable fact that Reaktor never got a proper browser at all - even the one with Kontakt 7 would have helped.

I tend to ignore the NI synths as a result. I don't need any more is the thing - between Omni and its expansions, the Arturias, the u-hes, Avenger and Nexus... I have waaay too much. So I can be pretty sanguine about NI under-performing in this area. They excell in different areas, and I'm content with that.

I agree with all that, and the only difference between you and I is that I have a particularly high level of interest in distorted sounds, especially ones that have a level of feedback ability. It’s not even easy to find in hardware synthesis, unless you build something with eurorack. My Analog Four does a good job, but is analog. My Prophet 12 does too, and while it’s a hybrid, it’s got a very limited collection of waveforms. Weird, considering they’re generated on the fly by DSP, but here we are.

So what keeps my interest in Massive X alive, despite its considerable shortcomings on a lot of levels, is that it’s great at those distressed types of sounds that I find interesting. It’s what also drives my passion about trying to push NI towards further development that could make it the instrument we all know it could be, even though I know I’m probably on a futile quest.

[apoclypse]

NI really breaks my heart. Such innovation wasted and discarded. Kore was brilliant. Maschine was brilliant. I used to be able bang out songs with full arrangements in Maschine. Something changed in Maschine v2 that made that process just not as fun. The simplicity of version 1.x is what worked for me.

I’ve used Guitar Rig in pretty much all of my guitar based songs. It’s not the most realistic sounding guitar amp emu but it just fits right in without a lot of work. Plus unlike some (Amplitube) they don’t try to upswell on stuff after you’ve paid for the software already.

[kraster]

Kontakt is my most used VI.

Raum and Replika XT get a lot of heavy use.

GTR Rig 6 is one of the best multifx plugins out there.

Massive X is fantastic.

Most other plugins are very specific use and probably not worth NI's time updating.

[strovoknights]

The recently released Maschine Expansion : Bazzazian was of very impressive quality.
I bought the bundle version so I also got the Play Series and have been using the sound randomization generation feature a lot.
Massive X and Raum are also useful for creating heavy and epic bass music.

[sacer]

I have fixed my issues with extreme slow loading times for kontakt7, battery4 and Komplete Kontrol. I use Kontakt 6 instead of 7. I use battery 4 and Maschine samples in Algonaut and have sold my Komplete Kontrol s49 mk2 for a Novation SL Mk3.

if anytime the long loading time will be fixed, i could imagine to use my Maschine mk3 again.
The support was unable to help me, and I don’t think it will be fixed anytime soon. NI doesn’t care to their customers… very frustrating, if you have used it since 18 years. They are far away from how they started, nearly every product and hardware seems half finished.

in the meantime I have learned that NI is dead for me, there are so much better developers out there.

[mi-os]

See! Private equity firms aren't always as bad as some people claim. In some cases they're even helping their competitors gaining market shares. /s