Feedback - Komplete Kontrol 3.0

We're all human - some of what's been said in this forum thread has been explicitly vitriolic at the expense of either myself (fine) or my team (not fine). I appreciate the clarification though! It also allows me to clarify that I'm a user myself, even of some of the features not yet brought forward, and can directly empathize with the frustration. I/we all wanted more sooner.

Which leads to your question: why did we release KK so "unfinished"? I use quotes only as that's a somewhat subjective term, even if I understand where you're coming from. If NI has not been forthcoming about why, or what next (or worse, what next with no follow through), it's this I'm trying to rectify. That's what I'm attempting to do here: explain things so that they may be understood, even if unpopular. I don't expect my presence to smooth anything over, particularly not until some of the features are advanced.

We knew some of the initial changes would be controversial, even if temporary, during our beta process. When undergoing a tech transition, finding the right balance of what to bring forward as the first, second, third priority and so on, involves hard decisions across a regularly active user base that's multiple six to seven figures in size. We could debate what former glory means, but certainly, I hope the investments we've made in the last 1.5 years since I joined the team will begin to pay off. VST3, Apple Silicon are one thing, but now we've new frameworks on which to build and expand resizing, other few features, and so on etc etc.

I'm glad our support of that community fosters a shared sense of pride.

I get your point, but I do think some might read this as an attack, however unintentional.

Two things:

1. It's about equitable, not equal treatment. Where one community faces more barriers than another, extra prioritization may be given to ensure equitable access where equal access isn't enough.
2. We've thousands upon thousands of users using accessibility mode(s) each month. So even if bullet #1 wasn't philosophically applicable, bullet #2 means that very literally, some of the power user type features are used less by all, then other features are by the visually impaired.

Since this all gets into a very confusing prioritization dance full of interdependencies, let me also just say this:

• We wanted to launch Accessibility support for the new Kontrol S MK3 keyboards at launch. But once a decision was taken to deliver Accessibility support via the new NI Accessibility Helper App that Maschine uses, it became clear it would finish in time. So unfortunately, KK3 may support the pre-existing Accessibility settings, but the new keyboard won't until early next year. We're being very forthcoming about this.
• We are well aware that the preset tagging regressions (you'll have read about it on this thread) impede the ability of some folk like Freelance Sound Labs to continue to create user presets used, in many cases by Accessibility users. So they're stuck with using KK 2.9 until we fix that. This is also a priority for these reasons. It would be great if we can land both simultaneously.

Wow! There's a name I haven't talked to in a while. I just checked... my last email to John was in 2014 (when I worked for iZotope). Sure, it doesn't hurt to reach out and say hello again, which I'll do.