March 2024 – a community update from our Chief Product Officer
Comments
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@Simon_NI just wanted so say thank you for this community. i recently joined this community about a month and a half ago. people have been very helpful!! I've been using traktor since 2000/2001 and have used many different pieces of equipment with traktor. i love the software and been very picky of the hardware i use. i recently bought a S4 MK3 after months of research. it turned out to be the right choice!!! this group has helped me a lot with my S4. if you guys are goin to work on new hardware i would like to say this, build a S4 a little bigger so you can add the screen of a D2 and all of its controls and knobs. I've incorporated the D2 with the S4 MK3 and there isn't anything you cant do!! Individual volume channels on remix decks, individual channel control of stems decks, the list goes on. and a screen!!! if you guys build it there's no need for shift plus this and that. you can add an x1 or f1 to the S4 MK3 but trust me the individual channel faders and knobs on a D2 with the screen and FX control with the pads to manipulate a loop is just amazing!!!
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That's a dishonest, straw man argument.
Industry Producers are not using Serum as a Preset Rompler. Learning how to design your own Kicks, Subs, etc. is a pretty early thing most of the producers you're referring to get a grip on. Their music may not be up to your taste, but learning at least the basics of synthesis is a priority for almost all of them.
Synths have Presets and Preset Expansions. Kontakt has a Factory Library and Sample Libraries. Both product types deliver this. All synths have tons of users who only use presets. The bottom of the market is huge - why do you think so many companies target it (e.g. Play Series, Maschine/Massive X Expansions, etc.). Most of the growth space in the market is there.
The difference is the degree to which Kontakt is not used as an "actual sampler" by the vast majority of people who own them when juxtaposed against synth users.
Using Synth Presets is no different than beginners using iZotope Assistants when they are rookies at mixing and mastering. With Kontakt, people generally never move beyond that, though. The fact that it doesn't live sample and the UX being designed for 90s era display resolutions doesn't help...
Most musicians on the planet are irrelevant - in terms of notoriety - regardless of genre. Point?
If I were referring specifically to people who [only] make beats, I would have called them Beat Makers.
"Producer" is a genre-neutral term.
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In any case, the thing I am most looking forward to (re: Kontakt) is seeing how they revamp the UI.
Not sure I could get myself to plop down cash for it, though, as anything they add it likely to be redundant and I've already been doing the things they would enable in such an update in other products.
Why split up my body of work?
The Maschine updates are the most interesting thing overall. Wonder which ways they're going to cook up to try to urge MK3 users to buy a new Maschine device - cause that's the only reason they would invest heavily in updating the software.
If this launches without a new Maschine device, I will be very surprised.
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So, we’re looking at support for polyphonic aftertouch in 2078, or so?
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Maschine+ desperately needs some love.
- Macro editing
- MIDI learn
- Sample Tagging
- File Management for samples
- Better step sequencer
- Better UI on most of the plugins
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It doesn't look like that when reading the Native Access threads (it's quite a nightmare to be honest), but I may try to install NA2 after april (I have gigs until end of april, and don't want to spoil my machine like I did some times in the past with installing NI last versions plugins without checking the forums).
What I wanted to say was that the priority should be to deliver working tools. New features and updates are cool, but Battery 4 knobs glitching, Kontakt 7 taking 25s to load, Native Access glitching with so many people, updates for Kontakt instruments not compatible with what is installed on the user's machine, no availability of different versions... etc. etc. should be fixed first.
And regarding updates, there are thousand suggestions made by users since ages, and it doesn't seem NI is listening. Battery 4 is a good exemple : there are many ergonomic issues, that seem to be quite easy to fix, but none have been and none will ever be I guess... Kontakt 7 is nice, but similarly many GUI issues have not been fixed and I guess will never be.
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I'm very pleased to meet you. Thank you for your analysis of the past and your forecast related to NI's future.
The only thing I'd personally like to see from NI in the very near future is the desire to not just win new customers (e.g. those buying MK3 keyboards) by promising new fancy NKS2 features which will actually be implemented a few years later only, but also not to alienate existing customers who have already proven their loyalty to NI and who are still using the "ordinary" NKS.
In particular, I'm talking about folks who already own an MK2 keyboard and had already the pleasure to work with KK2.x which included so many great and useful functionalities which were suddenly removed by NI from one day to the other. The introduction of the new KK3 application was even sold as an ordinary "update"; but as you know by yourself, in fact it was a massive "downgrade", especially for all MK2 users and their established workflow in terms of NKS usability. There was a very impactful sidenote from NI, pointing out that KK3 won't be officially supported anymore for MK1 users. Of course, this is somehow understandable, as the MK1 had its years already. But the fact that KK3 - with its limited functionality - should now represent the only officially supported successor in the whole KK line, especially for MK2 owners as well, is really the icing on the cake. In fact, this is a slap in the face for all users not having an MK3 keyboard yet. And most of all, for those who have purchased an MK2 keyboard less than one year ago (like myself). Well, as already mentioned by other mates in this thread before, that's not the way a company like NI should really act, especially by making excuses later, mentioning that a collection of (obviously faulty) user data has led to this fatal decision. Following other threads and NI comments, KK3 is not going to nearly achieve any "feature parity" compared to KK2, not even until the end of this year.
This all leads to the question how you want to motivate existing NI customers to step up and follow NI's next generation H/W and S/W product evolution paths if you just (= October 2023) have degraded the majority of existing NI keyboard users by depriving them of important functionality they have been already relying on for a long time. I hope you can understand why the level of frustration is currently that high for some NI customers using the "good-old NKS". As already mentioned, there's a whole community behind that well-established NKS approach, and I'm personally very thankful to those guys who are willing to put all their efforts into the task to make NI products even better. Also NI should be thankful for that instead of punishing those people. Thanks for reading.
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Sorry for being harsh, but I’m a bit frustrated l, but loyal customer. I’ love to see updates for Maschine Plus, and Maschine software so that I could use it as it was marketed originally. But over the years so many products of other companies evolved so fast… Eventually, after 3 years of waiting I am switching to Roland gear and don’t want to invest into NI no longer.
I’ll keep M+ as a beloved sequencer, buy some popcorn and watch what happens to NI while making music on other gear.
We need stability, what I see are promises every year. Hope this time you (NI) get it right… I am still here to watch. But the clock is ticking.
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Would be nice to see Massive X getting some love, it is still lacking some basic essential features such as the ability for users to save their own banks.
Now NI keyboards have poly aftertouch support for that needs adding too. Even better would be full MPE, this is a synth that really needs to have as many expression features as possible. Also microtuning support.
Haven’t seen any decent sound banks recently either, it feels like it needs a renewed development focus.
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wow ! This is an amazing amount of new stuff I see coming over the horizon. in particular the "Major updates for our key software platforms" with respect to Kontakt had me rather flabbergasted , I certainly did not see that one coming. But that immediately makes me think Kontakt 8 ! And following that Komplete 15 but I can not see if it will be this year or next year (?)
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Quote : "Making this work reliably for over 500 products on many operating systems and hardware setups is no easy task – especially as operating systems and security tools add additional permissions and friction. But we recognize we have more work to do here – this is a priority for us in 2024."
I think that I have a fairly good understanding for the need for DRM and some of the challenges in connection with that (I wrote this over here and that over here) . But based on my experiences here then I can not help thinking that there still are need for Native Access to have improved it's awareness of the environment that it's installing in both to prevent faulty installations but also to be able to provide better error information to user. I could imagine that one could let the N.A. installer have two modes , a standard mode and then a troubleshoot mode where the installer will attempt to probe the environment rather than just launch at it ! Same troubleshooting mode could also be used to diagnose not only installation problems with N.A. itself and installation of anything else but also to try to diagnose download problems ! Or if N.I. and Hayo_NI does not like that idea then build an app for N.I. product platform diagnostic purposes only (however that probably would not relieve the N.A. app from having to become smarter) ! Also N.A. ought to be smarter at understanding user setup/environment and not install updates to libraries on setups with e.g. Kontakt versions not supporting the updates. (You can download free Kontakt Players ? , then what if people do not want to open their library in the Player version ?). (Same goes for KK3 on systems having KK2 where they uses VST2 version in their DAW ! People ought to be at least informed of consequence of updating with a big popup asking if they are sure that they want to do that with a warning explanation !)
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With respect to the old versions of software then I think that there ought to be selected versions of all apps available as downloads for users that are logged in and are registered owners of the product. . With selected versions I mean versions that people like (e.g. Traktor Pro) and are considered to not have any major bugs that will annoy people. But also simply maybe always also have last two or three versions available for download to allow for roll backs for test for apps that do not have such a feature builtin.
With respect to why the old versions are not available at the moment then , sorry I do not mean to be rude here but in the end it's often a matter of cost, both for the infrastructure and bandwidth needed but also very much for the administration and maintenance of it all !
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Also , since no one else will do it then I will have to : I think that it's about high time that N.I. changes it's stance on spare-parts for the products !
If N.I. does not want to carry and supply an ample amount of spare-parts for the Kontrol keyboards , the Maschines and the Traktors then N.I. ought to have at least one authorized spare part seller in (each of ?) the Americas as well as at least one in the EU and at least one in the Asia/Pacific region ! People should not have to beg for information about where to buy the exact right felt strip for their keyboard repairs (or whatever else they need) and the same goes for spare-parts for the Maschines and the Traktors. Nobody is asking that N.I. gives the spare-parts away but I am sure that many would be happy just to be able to at least buy spare-parts at fair prices !
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Finally, then I myself personally am impressed that you and other N.I. officers takes time out of your/their busy schedule and valuable time to do presentations and take feedback and I think that it is great that N.I. officers will take their time to at least once in a while get their user feedback directly. As for feedback and quality of same as it has been discussed in this thread then you can collect all the data that you want but in the end since it also involves the art of interpretation then quality of what you get from the data to some extend highly depends on the skill of the interpreter. In a forum like this then one ought also take care to not listen only to those making the most noise but also to do some filtering and try to understand where all the noise is coming from.
I understand that it's not always easy to navigate it all and that you have to make the right decisions for the future always even if not popular (like e.g. N.I. retiring Absynth 5) and I shall most certainly not pretend to be able to tell you how to do your job. But with respect to tech and especially with anything that has to do with design or software then I'd like to point out that a little smart goes a long way !
Thank you for your appearance and participation !
Best regards
P.S.
I think that both you , Simon_NI , and Matthew_NI is doing a excellent job at communicating here in this forum ! 🙂
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This is of course very needed but in current development situation looks more like science fiction to me.
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Thanks for the update Simon. Appreciate there is a focus on new features, but how about getting your current product line to a point where they all support Sonoma? It's almost April and there's still no compatible version of Maschine.
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This is currently in beta. We typically ship a few weeks after beta.
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Thanks for this thread and your involvement. Truly feels like a breath of fresh air. I have three requests:
- Please get back to innovation and not just iteration.
- Please invest and support your "home run" products for the long haul. Kontakt, sure (as you are), but also Reaktor, Battery, and Massive X. Arturia Pigments has been updated and improved 5 times since debuting in 2018. Battery 4 came out in 2013 (which was 7 years after Battery 3). I mean, come on...
- Please do a better job preparing new products to work out of the box. The issue with the power supply of the new MK3 keyboards was known ahead of time by NI, but it was not disclosed (an example of the opposite of transparency). And it was weeks before this was officially acknowledged (and only tacitly so) by NI representatives on the Community forum. Failing a better power supply design, the correct action here should have been to ship these keyboards with the proper cables and/or adaptors to prevent the power failures, or at the very least have an official troubleshooting solution ready to go on Day 1.
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Thank you all so much for the feedback and participation in this new quarterly update from @Simon_NI.
We're now closing this thread and we'll make sure to address some of the questions that haven't been answered in this discussion as soon as possible. Keep an eye out for more comments from the team 🙌
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