Native Instruments Apple Silicon M1 Compatibility

nightjar

Situation is pretty obvious with benefit of hindsight.

Management made some bad decisions about how much technical debt they could run up before needing to pay it down.

These bad decisions made them a slow moving boat, laden with barnelces.

There's a kludgey, smelly old Diesel in the engine room that needs to be ripped out.

nanotable

„Benefit of hindsight“ is giving NI almost too much credit, imho. They took the very risky bet that everything is going to stay the same, lost on several fronts (AS, VST3, possibly standalone Grooveboxes) and are now scrambling to get anything done. It’s sad to see, especially because it was bound to happen at some point.

Other companies like Arturia for example, who have clearly done their homework, are now in a position to run circles around NI. They’ve ported their entire portfolio to new formats and architectures, are gradually updating their old stuff and are putting out new and innovative products like Pigments — while we’re waiting on a modern and unified browser, among other things.

And NI are not only hurting themselves and their customers, they’re potentially damaging 3rd party developers as well. It’s less of a problem, now that Kontakt is native, I guess. But the last couple of days I’ve debated whether I should get the new Tangle Blocks pack by Toybox or not. It should have been a no-brainer (of course!! 🤩) but the uncertainty around Reaktor certainly does not help.

Kubrak

You are right at the point that port Reaktor to AS is way more difficult than any other plugin, entire DAW, ....

Mutis

And the foundation for many others NI products. Let’s hope the moment some pieces get the update the rest of pieces take momentum…

https://youtu.be/B4_VQ0tnzoU

Clay

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/21118#Comment_21118

The comparison with Arturia is depressingly stark. Both they and NI are two of my favorite DSP companies, but Arturia is so far ahead at this point that they aren’t really in the same league anymore. Around 2015 or so, I would say Arturia might have been in the same place: V Collection was as mismatched and inconsistently updated as Komplete. But Arturia started aggressively reinvesting in their products right around then, unifying and future-proofing their frameworks, and today their product lineup is among the very best in the industry.

Alas, NI is still stuck in 2015.

Calagan

@Clay : I was thinking exactly the same thing because I recently updated my Arturia's folder.

Few years ago, Mini V was for exemple super buggy and each update was bringing issues. Then, year after year, I started to see they were updating their stuff more often with better results, always trying to keep the pace with the evolution of software and hardware. As an exemple, their last update for their FX line fixes the issue of the super slow loading of each of their FX plugin. I did a test : they load 2.5 times faster now.

Regarding Pigments, each major update brought amazing new features (additive or granular synthesis for exemple). And it was free each time, with a clever way of making the people pay a bit (they needed to pay a small fee for the new preset banks). Pigments started as a nice soft synth. It's a beast right now, and they even optimized the CPU use so it's less extreme than at the beginning with more features.

NI ? Everything is in this thread...

nanotable

@Clay @Calagan Absolutely, Arturia is literally years ahead of NI as of now. Even if NI manages to overcome their dysfunction at some point, we‘ll be playing around with Pigments 5 and new excellent FX by then. Arturia has built a lot of trust in the last couple of years, delivering free and exciting updates, generous crossgrades, and an unified and all around user friendly experience. They are leveraging the hell out of that, and I’m gladly on board 😃 I went from having zero products from them to owning their whole software portfolio within the last year or so and I love it, even if I don’t really need a Jupiter 8 emulation.

There are still a few NI products I love dearly, mostly Reaktor Blocks, Form et al and the Crush & Mod Packs, and I’m looking forward to using Massive X again when it’s AS native. But who knows. Pigments is getting better and better, and of course there are lots of smaller developers like Unfiltered Audio or Fors who are releasing exciting stuff as well.

MHalloran

Everything I need it to do works over Rosetta 2. Glad to see that Kontakt is now Native.

Problem is that the elephant in the room is Avid and Pro Tools. When the Native version of that is released, NI will be under the gun to catch up.

I suspect that Komplete Ultimate 14 will be when we see everything upgraded to AS. NI has a nasty habit of not offering discounted upgrades for the first year and a half after a major version release.

My 2¢

Clay

@nanotable @Calagan It's kind of amazing, isn't it? Even Arturia plugins that haven't seen a major version update in years don't feel neglected because of their unified platform. Like SEM V, which dates back to at least 2016, went M1-native along with everything else last year and even got the 2022 patch browsing UI just introduced in V Collection 9. Talk about building trust; Arturia has earned it in a way that makes me feel at ease investing time and money in their products.

I very much hope NI can get there someday.

domanca

any update on this? it's driving me absolutely crazy. komplete kontrol is an absolute mess. half the time it doesnt even render the UI properly. my native plugins are slow and heavy, while every single other plugin I use - and I mean *****LITERALLY***** every single plugin I use is m1 native. This is unbelievable - how can this have taken so long as we still have no information?? This whole experience has been awful. I'm so put off from native instruments in the future. What on earth is going on??

Jblogg

I have some colleagues who worked at NI for some time. I don't know if this is appropriate to post, but NI was purchased last year by "tech-focused investment firm, Francisco Partners". What I heard is the new owners see NI as an investment, they don't really care abut musicians or your M1. They inherited tech debt when they bought the company last year. The new owners want return on investment. Ideally owners would buy a company to help artists, not flip it for a profit. This is my take why it is taking so long, new owners don't really care.

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/music-technology-company-native-instruments-acquired-by-investment-firm-francisco-partners/

Calagan

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/21262#Comment_21262

Yep of course. Many of us know that. But maybe it's not the best way of seeking return on investment to make a big part of the users angry at you or wanting to use other stuff (like Arturia).

Mishu Calian

We need an update for NI native M1 plugins ASAP. I don't intend to run everything in Rosetta mode because all the other manufacturers already made the transition. I made a refund ticket request last night as I can't stand this bull*hi* anymore. I'll see what comes out of that, maybe all the users should start doing this.

audiomidiplus

I recently upgraded from Komplete 9 to Komplete 13 Ultimate. I have a brand new Macbook Pro M1 Max 10 core w/ 64 Gb RAM running Monterey OS 12.4 - I cannot get 90% of Komplete 13 Ultimate to even INSTALL on my new studio machine, let alone run stuff in Rosetta mode. I did contact support, and although they aren't the fastest in the world, they have responded. Finally, they went ahead and sent me the USB drive of installers, even though I only paid the $299 for the download upgrade (Summer of Sounds Sale) However, I still cant get much of anything to install... Obviously this is a Monterey OS 12.4 incompatibility issue, which I understand... The issue that I have with all of this is that NI just needs to admit that their stuff doesn't work yet with M1/Monterey - Heck it wont even INSTALL - Why waste people's time?? Why waste Support resources on this??

Why p*ss people off and waste their time??

I will probably just keep everything and wait for compatibility, but this is really, really lame....Apple silicon machines have been out now for close to TWO YEARS, and literally every other library/VI/and effects plugin that I own (and I own most of them) works now under M1/Monterey. Come on NI!!!!

Calagan

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/21351#Comment_21351

I was not nice in my recent posts with NI (with some very good resons), but ALL their plugins are working on my machine in Rosetta mode.

I have a M1pro macbook pro laptop running Monterey 12.4, and I'm using Live and Reaper.

The plugins are not optimized but they are running and Native Access was definitely working on my system. So you may have another issue...