What's up with Reaktor being buried into obscurity on the NI website?

Moonbot7000

There's actually products I've never known about that I'm interested in that I've stumbled on from other sources, like Molekular, Finger, Razor, etc... and I literally cannot find them through the website, I have to google and get in through a back door (please, no puns with "The Finger" on that one, be mature :/ ). It's also like, the perfect partner for deep sound design in maschine, can a NI employee give any type of update to the status or Reaktor, the 1st post to this forum was "no updates" and that was 6 months ago. Can we get anything from you all?

Edit: Maybe you guys could Parse out what's been done for commercial reaktor products in the past and sell a bundle to try to pull some revenue out of the old but still relevant ones, like molekular, I would love to have those blocks, but tbh, not paying $150 for something that old. Or...maybe put it on the community to convert them to Racks as a bonus for our loyalty ;)

Paule

Type in the search bar: The Finger

Prompt comes this result

colB

I hope that the reason for this is that Reaktor is very well known and NI feel that other products need more exposure - they do have a lot of products - so Reaktor takes a backs seat in terms of their marketing approach?

NI will probably have stats about product awareness/recognition etc. to drive their marketing strategy.

I does seem a shame though - A lot of folk are aware of Reaktor, but way fewer are aware of how good Blocks are, and the quality of the sounds possible with modern Reaktor ensembles/racks/blocks - too many see Reaktor as old and therefore not particularly good, when the reality is that so much modern Reaktor content is cutting edge tech, super high quality, and sounds amazing!

Moonbot7000

I just want to know what steps there are in the future. Im still heavily invested, building and playing almost daily for the last few years and a relaunch could breathe some fresh life into the community and yea, blocks sound and potential is so underrated, I hear a lot about vcv rack from content creatora and to me, reaktor is the superior product and because you don't need to know c or whatever its written in has a lower bar for entry for builders. Oh well....im rambling..from a commercial perspective I feel there is so much that can be done for integration into maschine which seems to be the big cash cow atm.

Nico_NI

Reaktor is definitely still relevant and powerful today, and we'd love to see new updates.

However, we don't have information to share at the moment as long as the compatibility updates are not sorted out.

Jonathan Tremblay

Yeah compatibility is a huge game of catchup since Apple loves their updates and breaking things. 2 steps back, 1 step forward kind of deal, can't have new content if it won't work at a software level.

KoaN

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/21396#Comment_21396

It's been like that for 20 years...we never hear about the plan or steps coming then once each 5 years there's an update nobody knew was coming which also doesn't seem related to what people are asking for.

This lack of communication is a shame i think,the community here is very nice and we have very important builders who know how to improve the software,colB is one of them...but a few lost hope on being heard and have a useful update for building...Herw,Salamander.

After the patching cable update for Blocks there was a conversation where the programmers chimed in but since then...crickets. And now the Apple stuff probably postponed the unknown plan for a few years now...

I got used to it,i still have a flicker of hope somewhere for some change but i kind of accept Reaktor as it is.

Paule

Here is a remote control to an old Florian Erdle but by Loowps freshed up with core:

Fresh in U/L:

RÖNTGEN REMOTE CONTROL

Dedicated to David Page Coffin R.I.P.

https://www.native-instruments.com/de/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/14597/

Is miss David again for his wonderful queer snapshots.

colB

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/21689#Comment_21689

the community here is very nice and we have very important builders who know how to improve the software,colB is one of them...but a few lost hope on being heard and have a useful update for building...Herw,Salamander.

Kind words thanks, but I really don't think we are particularly important in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure NI have a good idea about their customer base, and I would imagine that the regulars here are outliers. Most folk maybe want quite different things from Reaktor.

The UL and community are good for marketing, in terms of differentiating Reaktor in the marketplace. But I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of Reaktor users just use their full licence so they can fully access NI and 3rd party commercial content. I know from experience that trying to get the most out of content using a 'Player' version can be quite frustrating... at least that was my experience of Kontakt Player with one of the drummer packs I bought a few years ago.

I like Reaktor, I wish it was better, but the changes I want are not things that will directly bring in more users, at least not in the short term. It's a shame Herwig and Don moved on, but really I don't think it matters much from NIs point of view, I doubt the majority of users even consider visiting the forum.

Maybe more significant is the fracturing of the community between the Forum, facebook, and Discord. It's much quieter here than it used to be. Personally, I don't think Discord works well for in depth technical discussion that would ideally remain in an easily browsable form for the future, and facebook is... facebook... I'd rather answer a question once, rather than once a week for each new user that has the same problem.... but that's another topic :)

KoaN

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/21795#Comment_21795

Reaktor's main identity is about building,modifying ensembles...i just hope the identity hasn't shifted to just selling the most commercial ensembles possible.

What you say is true if all is seen through the lens of "how can we sell more,get bigger and bigger" but then there's a danger of becoming very generic and not having an identity.

And i think people who can push the envelope,think differently are the ones opening up new possibilities,innovations...or at least they can help.You guys created patch cables before NI actually did it as a feature,maybe they noticed and it played a role?

Razor was/is very successful and it comes from a musician/user at first who liked building stuff.

I think everyone would benefit from the community having better communication/feedbacks with the team,but yah easier to just focus on the market and try to bring the most buyers possible.

A lot of companies/devs have very good communication with the users when it comes to the software direction/updates,i think it's a shame we are left in the dark for the most part but every company has a different approach i guess.

colB

What I'm pretty sure of is that software costs plenty of money to maintain - particularly in the context of Apple's update schedule. If Reaktor can't attract new users to bring in money, then it will cease to be a viable product. That makes prioritising the majority usecase somewhat important IMO!

It's not really an us and them thing, just simple economic reality. It would be nice to see Reaktor get some spotlight from time to time though

Quietschboy

ColB: "What I'm pretty sure of is that software costs plenty of money to maintain - particularly in the context of Apple's update schedule."

Yeah, that´s so sadly true. In 2018 or so, when High Sierra came out, it was some kind of a slight show stopper. But what is happening today is a catastrophy. The M1 compatibility issue seems to cost 100% of the Reaktor team´s time (seemingly officially confirmed). At least since one year now! Precious time that had could be spent for true Reaktor development.

In 2015 or 16, the Reaktor team made personal Video Interviews with beta testers / advanced builders (including me). This was so promising! Later, let it be 2018 or 2019, i don´t remember exactly, they made a promising survey about the future plans of Reaktor. I felt always an enthusiastic, motivated team behind Reaktor and i have no doubt it is true!

I don´t now what happened in the meantime. NI was sold to a hard profit optimized company in USA as far as i know. No clue what that meant to the Reaktor team´s size or Reaktor´s provision. The silence in the Beta Forum from Reaktor dev team is a bit disturbing. Of course it might be just because of the M1 thing, or that all big Reaktor issues has been reported yet (but not solved).

So, honestly, from my personal view, from a Windows user´s view, i am not amused about the incompatibility stones that Apple lays around, although i absolutely understand the new Apple CPU design must be adressed by NI to be competitive.

In the end, my post is senseless, just a bit emotional and can be skipped ;-)