June 2024 – a community update from our Chief Product Officer

PK The DJ

@Simon_NI Why is Traktor DJ 2 (the iPad app) still being shown on the main site alongside the PC/Mac versions, when it's been discontinued?

nanotable

I’m mostly interested in Massive X, Reaktor and (possibly new) Reaktor based instruments. Any news on that fronts, besides compatibility updates?

Ojustaboo

@Simon_NI

Hi Simon, when asked about Reactor and Massive X, you say “Yep, we have no plans to stop supporting comparability updates for these products”

That to me reads that while NI will make sure both will still run on future updated operating systems, that’s all that’s going to happen to them, and NI don’t intend to spend any time/resources doing anything else, which really means, in reality, NI has finished with them but to keep customers happy, NI will (for now) make sure they run on the next operating system upgrades from Apple and MS?

I hope I’m wrong, but can you please confirm either way, please give us a straight answer.

Maciej Repetowski

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/159368#Comment_159368

That's how I understood it, too. So you are certainly not alone in this.

For some time now, I've had this feeling that NI is becoming sample library company instead of being synth company (as they were in the past).

Would be nice to get straight answer from NI, please.

seandean

Thanks for the update.

Vagus

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/31981/june-2024-a-community-update-from-our-chief-product-officer

What would be amazing, is if Plugin Alliance products got either updated, or actual NKS support. The community has to build these themselves in the absence of official suppport, and I'm getting to the point where I don't know if I want to anymore, because NI doesn't create tools to allow users to do this, or have a big enough team to support NKS. Perhaps both of those are true.

Example: Battalion NKS - Completed by me in April. It took barely a few hours (bar the previews, which were a slog). No official NKS support.

Unless it's a Konakt instrument, NKS seems to be an afterthought, when it could be an industry standard. (Just being honest).

When the companies came together, I'm sure I speak for a lot of users when I thought "This should be cool for the NI ecosystem" but it hasn't really worked out that way (See unified Izotop/NI login that hasn't happened).

These updates do sound cool, though. Definately interested in Kompanion for idea generation and ease of use.

One suggestion would be this - start sharing information with the community on individual products at a more regular cadence, rather than a post every three months.

Apologies for complaining, but you have to give constructive criticism where you can, or products and brands don't improve. When your community is effectively your day-one (largest) market for most software sales, that feedback is really important to share and to hear.

There is so much untapped potential with NI and its brands. I'd love for the teams to make the most of that.

Simon_NI

@djnyce yeah, I'm excited about Kompanion — it's very early days and the output of the models can be pretty hit and miss — and the usability a lot of the prompt you give it — but it can generate some really cool and unusual sounds which when you load them into Kontakt can be used right in your tracks. And that sound will be something no-one else has heard before as it was generated just for you — which I think is really cool as producers are often looking for ways to sound different, distinctive and fresh.

fjam

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/159450#Comment_159450

so will kompanion be an extension of kontakt? It would be great if it would also be usable in the maschine software in a way that it also takes into account other samples that are already loaded. e.g. generate a synth melody which fits to another loop in harmony or rythm. udio and suno started uploading sound bits which is really phantastic as you can generate loops that fit to your existing material.

AdelV

Update for M+ was planned for april - what happend? It is planned now for december?

Kymeia

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/159383#Comment_159383

Yeah PA/Unfiltered seems to be another developer who did really well with NKS for a short while then stepped backwards from it. Many of the earlier Unfiltered plugins did support NKS and 2 of the PA synths even managed to pull off a NKS export function (something only u-he provide otherwise). Then they never bothered to update any of their NKS Unfiltered products after the switch to VST3 NKS so they migrated with broken params (something I ended up fixing myself) and nothing since has had NKS of any kind despite subsequently joining NI.

nanotable

@Simon_NI Kompanion does look exciting indeed. Is there any chance of Reaktor integration? I’d love to play around with this technique in a Blocks environment. I can also imagine wonderfully unique Reaktor ensembles based on that. Can we get our hopes up or is this completely out of the question? Thanks.

tetsuneko

I want to see Kompanion AI brought over to Reaktor.. madness! All in all, AI tools would be a great addition to the Reaktor environment.. perhaps in Reaktor 7, hmm? ;)

Also, speaking of Traktor DJ, I would really love to see a proper app return to iPadOS.. Remember those old Traktor startup graphics where the DJ was playing via touch controls? That used to be a thing.. but then you abandoned the (nearly perfect) v1 of the app, replaced it with v2, and now even that is gone.. As a former Traktor fan but a current convert to DenonDJ products, I am still looking to get back to Traktor when it catches up with the competition.. Least you could do would be to give me a reason to stop using Algoriddim DJay when I'm DJing with my M4 iPad Pro.. v1 of the app was almost perfect already, all it would have needed was Files integration so as to make crate curating and music transfers easy..

nightjar

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/159450#Comment_159450

I hope that Kompanion is being designed as an AI-assisted tool to create "playable instruments" and not just to create sounds.

For me, what would be of great interest is having Kompanion use prompt inputs to shape the articulations/dynamic parameters of the created sound and how they map to controls on Kontrol keyboards.

I want to make instruments I can PLAY.. not just "playback".

Tony_UK

I've purchased RX11, thanks :)

Will the new KK features work with my M32?

Will any new Maschine updates break my S25 MK1 as it's working perfectly when using Maschine as a plugin?

Also, is there any chance of random sample selectors like Ableton drum racks inside Maschine? That would be sick!

Simon_NI

@Ojustaboo @Maciej Repetowski @nanotable

I can't share more at this stage, but NI is not getting out of the synth game.