iZotope, Brainworx, and Plugin Alliance are now part of NI

Mutis

This is a common case of Brandkeinstein…

nightjar

Another Soundwide partner was the team behind JUCE. What's up with that?

Vagus

Honestly, this makes a lot of sense. Echoing others, Buying Unfiltered Audio would hav been a better long-term bet than Plugin Alliance. Yes, they've got experience with subscriptions, but really, outside of Kniff Audio and Unfiltered Audio, there's not much shouting at me.

Izotope makes sense, as others have suggested.

One thing I've started to notice recently, is asking the community what they think once NI has done someting. Interaction is great, but you can analyse sentiment from the forum without asking what people think after the fact; as a community, we have no input, and nor should we, but asking how we feel about things after you're already committed is only going to spring negative results.

However, the biggest bit of news that will come from this, is when you announce the new hardware lines. Please don't bundle all the software, because some of us will just want to upgrade the hardware itself. I own most of Izotope's products, all the good stuff from Kniff and Unfiltered Audio - and Komplete CE (and too many 3rd party products) - a hardware upgrade without the bundle would be sweet.

Percivale

Industry shake up and consolidation going on right now. Who knows bigger fishes will eat up the small players. Way of the corporate world. How long this new entity will last anyway.

Oxy

Traktor says hello.

Percivale

Yeah. Give us F2, D3, X2 and Z2.

tetsuneko

RIP Soundwide, thanks for the free plugins

I sincerely hope NI survives this "merger"

LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77517#Comment_77517

Uuuuh yeah…don’t make me remember the PPG case… some of my most used apps on iPad that suddenly disappeared….

Yes, thank you acquisitions Brandkeinstein (copyright @Mutis 2023)

musictechtuition

I've got products from iZotope, PA and NI. While I'm not averse to having them all under one stable, I hope some actual thought has gone into this in terms of aligning everything as far as offers, upgrades, etc., is concerned.

iZotope's upgrades have often been terrible value, and it's been easy to get a far better result buy buying from third parties - in fact, I think it's always the case. But sometimes the upgrade path is AWFUL. Their site is pretty confusing as far as product lines and purchases is concerned, and it's not something I relish looking at.

PA has generally been good, and I actually like that you can build a custom installer, download it, and then get your offline DAW sorted in one hit.

I've had some bizarre offers in the past - NI doing me a better deal than iZ do on some software, or offering me an 'upgrade' to something that's below what I already own.

Please make sure you actually think about your users (many of whom will be across more than one brand), rather than just chucking it together on a Friday afternoon.

nightjar

I am hopeful that products from NI, iZotope and Brainworx will all eventually be sold & managed as if they all had originated from NI.

However, I'd expect the 3rd party stuff sold by PA will be messy. Some will smoothly come over to the unified NI catalog.. but some will remain as quasi-orphans in some maintenance-only version of the current Plugin Alliance until it fades away.

I'm glad I have very little 3rd party PA stuff!

Kymeia

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/14146/izotope-brainworx-and-plugin-alliance-are-now-part-of-ni

I just had a wonderful thought. What if Native Instruments resurrected iZotope Iris? You are missing an additive spectral synth from your portfolio. You could do the same with the PPG plugins that were bought by PA then neglected or maybe even get together with the Unfiltered Audio devs who are very innovative to combine the tech into some new Additive/Spectral resampling synth to rival Logic Alchemy

Paul B

To add some positivity…

The Plugin Alliance installer is a joke - it can't even tell you if there are updates (their website doesn't either, since the Soundwide takeover) so you have to periodically reinstall everything if you want updates. The iZotope installer has improved a little (it's no longer launching the full installer for each plugin and asking me to go through every step of selecting what and where to install) but still asks my password for every plugin and has a separate activation step instead of what smart installers do – one click install+activate. For all the problems of Native Access (the latest of which is working mostly well for me, though it sometimes insists on reinstalling NTKDaemon even though it's already installed and running. I say no and restart NA and it works the second time) it's well ahead of either of the others in user friendliness.

So if we're getting everything in Native Access, that's good news for me.

Mutis

Some of you maybe remember from the old forum my concerns about Avidfication of NI…

https://sonicscoop.com/inside-the-m-audio-acquisition-why-inmusic-made-the-deal-with-avid/

Once upon a time there was an ahead of its time dj software called Torq…

nightjar

InMusic in the news now for buying Moog... Just an FYI since it relates to Mutis post...

https://synthanatomy.com/2023/06/inmusic-acquires-moog-music-and-promises-groundbreaking-new-instruments.html

Mutis

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77711#Comment_77711

Well just brand merging as usual… thinking that has something to do with how products became better or worst after that is conspiracy theories…

BTW Chad Carrier who was at Synchroscience developing Torq and xponent was hired later by NI before S4mk1 release. He was also the person behind stems and haptic feedback on the S4mk3 but now is at Zplane… slate digital.

https://de.linkedin.com/in/chad-m-carrier

He was also at Maschine team after Traktor and before leaving NI (but I believe he still collab as consultant).

I know, just coincidences… nothing related to management and roadmaps but anyways… who’s the actual Traktor hw manager? Pedram was in charge for the whole division… he’s still there?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedramfaghfouri

nop.

I dunno…