Native Access problems . . .

Scott Kissel

I want to share my utter dissatisfaction with Native Access. I have spent hours trying to resolve Native Access getting stuck at the "Loading Products" prompt. And when I have been able to occasionally get past this prompt, Native Access will churn indefinitely, not letting me perform product updates. In addition, Gig Performer would not register Kontakt 7, so I have not been able to use Kontakt 7 for live performance. When I would attempt to use Kontakt 7 in my DAW (Reaper) it would take minutes to load (often 10 minutes or more, never less than 2 - 3 minutes). This is a time suck, and completely disrupts creative flow.

Problems with Native Access have affected many users, and they have been reported to NI for months. Native Instruments is a large, multinational corporation that charges a lot of money for their products. I can't believe that, with all of their available resources, NI's programming team couldn't do better than this.

How many hours has Native Instrument's poor programming cost customers? I'm sure, if you added it all up, the cost to customers is thousands of hours over the last year. Unbelievable!

This morning, after spending many hours uninstalling and reinstalling Native Access 2, as well as NTKDaemon, I downgraded to the earlier version of Native Access. "Magically," Gig Performer now recognizes Kontakt 7. Are you kidding me? I guess that I'm the knucklehead for trying to stay current with NI's software environment.

Why did NI release such a poorly executed application in the first place? Why wasn't it rolled back when such a significant number of people reported crippling problems using the program? The solutions suggested by NI include turning off VPN clients or Anti-Virus applications. I have a VPN client that doesn't run unless I want to use it (NordVPN). Turning it on or off made no different. I use Bitdefender as my anti-virus. Disabling my anti-virus application, or adding Native Access as an exception in Bitdefender made no difference. I have had zero compatibility problems with applications other than Native Access.

I don't usually post rants like this, but after working on this problem for the last day and a half, in addition to all the previous times I attempted to find a solution, and finding that the "solution" was not to install an update recommended by NI, I'm just fed up. In my opinion, NI is the poster child for how not to run a software company.

NI, and partner companies, offer some great instruments. But before you jump in, ask yourself if you want the headache of dealing with such an unresponsive company. If I knew 5 - 6 years ago what I know now, I would have made a different choice and found another product. Now I have so much money already invested that I'm stuck. This is an extremely disappointing state of affairs.

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/31391/native-access-problems

Yes , this is bad and your frustration is very understandable alas there is nothing that we in the forum can do other than try to offer whatever fix that we think will help. Also I am not allowed to post my mod for N.A. that I made to stop the N.A. from self auto-updating.

All I can suggest is that you contact N.I. Native Access and Installation Support and ask them to get it all fixed.

At the page N.I. Native Access and Installation Support be sure to scroll down to page bottom to see if there is a log-in request , if there is then log-in , at next page again scroll down and small blue chat box ought occur within 15 seconds. Then write in chat box and when getting suggestions then select did not help when it didn't , that ought to bring you on to either chat with human or open a ticket. (You need to use a browser with Cookie , Security and Extensions settings that will allow for log-in on the page for the page to work)

There has been introduced chat support for Native Access assistance (at least daytime on normal work days) :

Please refer to the page : How to get in touch with our Customer Care

TGICarrie

i work in tech for for a large multinational and my experience tells me, from the outside looking in, that NI either needs to seriously review their testing strategy/ standards or how they deploy change, or both. As they say, 'don't start build untill you know how you'll get out of test'. The fact that a community member needed to step up to support a test case after a failed change tells me that test scope isn't nearly as sufficient as it should be. Or, the DevOps/ Testing pipeline needs work.

i know it sounds like I'm just having a go. I love Native Instruments, and have been using their products for something like 15 years. I'm fully married to the NI ecosystem and I'm not going anywhere soon. So i say this, to the company whose products that i genuinely love, please get your ****** together. You are better, and you can do better.

oobe79

NI has lately enjoyed sharing user statistics on this Forum as justification for the numerous and extremely unpopular decisions they have made with regards to MK1, Komplete Kontrol UI, operating system deprecations, failures to include routine features at launch of new hardware, as well as deciding to make most of their instrument platforms abandonware. I wonder if they would release the user statistics on the average amount of money an NI customer has spent on their software and hardware. I bet you that it is over $1000 (possibly well over $1000). Which, compared to other companies in this industry, would be far, far above average. One would expect that with this amount of per-customer expenditure, that customers would get world-class service. Instead, we have Native Access. Think about that.

clearscreen

Just attempted to contact support but after going through the useless chatbot it informed me human support chat is currently down. Not a good NI… Even if they swapped out the dodgy 3.10 and 3.11.1 update for 3.8.0 as an update and at least kept people working it'd help wouldn't it?

Scott Kissel

Thanks for all of your comments and support. It is telling that no one from Native Instruments has said anything in this thread. How could they? What is there that they could say?

I too have worked in IT for over 30 years. I worked for Microsoft two different times, once in their data center and another supporting a developer who was optimizing MS Proxy code. I understand that modern software is complex and that, despite best efforts, bugs can and will slip through any testing regimen. I wouldn't have written what I said above but for the abhorrently bad support following multiple reports of bugs. There is a lack of transparency about the situation that compounds the impact of the bug, and that undermines customer confidence. Plus, the amount of wasted time! I am not exaggerating when I say that, over the last 4 - 6 months (I didn't keep a log) I have wasted at least 12 - 15 hours uninstalling and reinstalling, searching forums for answers, just trying to get Native Access to work properly. This doesn't include the countless times that I attempted to use Kontakt and waited minutes for the program to open. Or the impact on my creative workflow. I bought into this ecosystem to enhance my creative workflow, not stymie it with poor performance software. Well really, non-performance software.

With regards to financial investment, I have easily spent more than $1000 on this software environment, especially if I include third party applications (Sonic Couture, Sample Logic, Wave Alchemy, Output, being some of the third party companies that have bought Kontakt products from). If added it all up, my guess is it's closer to $3000 than $1000. But I can't bring myself to do the math, so I'm just guessing.

Not everyone complains, so I guess that the newest version of Native Access works for some. I'd like to know what the cause of the problem is. If it's something in my Windows environment that clashes (other than VPN and anti-virus, which does not impact the problem in my environment), then why not be transparent? Or, is it simply that NI doesn't know what the problem is? I'm not sure what's worse - lack of transparency or not actually knowing what the problem is. In either case, the impact amounts to lots of money and time spent on a product that doesn't work as it should.

All this being said, downgrading to Native Access 1 has allowed me to reinstall my Komplete applications, including Kontakt 7. Kontakt 7 is now recognized by Gig Performer. So I'm going to do my best to get back to making music, which is why I bought these products in the first place.

@poorfellow - Is there a way for me to get information on your fix that will prevent Native Access from automatically upgrading?