I hope NI treats Reaktor like they treat Guitar Rigs

I don't know Pd, but Reaktor implements polyphony in a way that removes a lot of complexity from the main target demographic making it quick and easy to get useful results without existing programming knowledge.

It also does it in a way that allowed NI to leverage some very useful optimisations that are still useful now, but were extremely important 20+ years ago when PCs were way less powerful.

"But, you can see that the final signal of the Reaktor Instrument needs to be output in monophony, which is why Blocks can only be monophony"

you're at it again ;)

Reaktor outputs in multi channel audio, as many as your sound card can process. But just like any virtual instrument, individual polyphonic voices are mixed down. I can't imagine it making sense any other way. If you need individual voices at the output and you have an audio interface that can handle it, you can get up to 16 (I think?) different output channels, and I'm sure you could hack something together for those to be poly voices, so its doable in the very unlikely instance that you would need that functionality.

The reason Blocks are monophonic is because they were designed to simulate a monophonic modular synthesiser. Eurorack was starting to get popular around that time, VCVRack didn't exist, and the hardware was almost entirely monophonic, even stereo was rare. so it made a lot of sense to make Blocks monophonic and to use the extra leftover cpu to really push the audio quality (you get nothing for nothing).

It would have been relatively simple to create Blocks as macros instead of instruments, in which case they could have been poly enabled, but this would likely have required a little extra work to update the Reaktor GUI so macros could be auto tiled. But since the concept was conceived as a monophonic modular synthesis rig, why would they waste resources on that?

Generally folk that come asking about poly modular are those who don't have much experience using modular. It's really not as good an idea as it sounds.

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Go watch Colin Benders' You Tube streams of him creating amazing music with a massive hardware modular rig. He bought/installed a bunch of the quite recently released Doepfer hardware poly modules, and did a few things, but he rarely seems to use them any more. Polyphonic and cable patched modular just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If you want polyphony, it's much better to use a monolithic polyphonic synth. It should have enough flexibility so that you can still patch in modulation from a modular setup, but the general setup of a traditional keyboard monolithic synth just makes so much more sense for polyphonic use. Similarly poly virtual modular means compromising on audio quality - just can't push the bits quick enough to have 16 channels of that amazing analogue sounding filter that is quite happy running on a single channel or maybe in stereo. And you really don't need the same quality for poly sounds anyway, particularly in a mix.

I don't think there IS a problem here. As I explained, Reaktor has powerful polyphonic voice handling. Blocks is monophonic by design, not because of a limitation in Reaktor. If you want polyphony, don't use Blocks, that's not what they are for. There a lots of superb polyphonic instruments in the factory library, all built using the underlying tech of Reaktor's polyphonic modular synthesis environment. None of them use Blocks.

Think right back to the origin or Reaktor… some guys who love the idea of modular synthesis. But the hardware is expensive, and the interface is limited by physical restrictions… but what if there was a software modular synthesizer, with modules that can be dragged around on the screen, and connected via virtual wires… and we could build in polyphony… and MIDI… and we don't have to have the connections cluttering up the front panel, they can be separate, which is way more flexible and powerful (thank you software!)… so there is no 'rack format' limitation, just great powerful modular synthesis with polyphony, vst compatibility, and great sounds…

That is what Reaktor was 20+ years ago. It has always been a polyphonic modular synthesizer. The recent fad for making software versions of Eurorack, and incorporating the limitations of Eurorack is somewhat perverse, and really more of a marketing thing. The idea that there is some magical unachieved goal of a polyphonic version of that is absurd, particularly in the context of Reaktor, which has always been a powerful polyphonic modular synthesizer.

I'm not meaning to have a go at you or anyone else, but it is all a bit silly.

The Blocks format was a way to update the look - which succeeded, they look great, and to try and provide an easier way in to modular synthesis, which wasn't as successful IMO. Modular synthesis is inherently difficult, and adding yet another layer to an application that already had too many layers and formats, seemed like an obviously bad idea to me. It does help a little from a technical POV, folk can build stuff using Blocks and they don't have to worry about I/O ranges being compatible, or about event vs audio signals, so it does simplify things somewhat particularly when using Blocks from different builders together. But then you have problems like beginners wanting to jump right in and start making their own Blocks - much more difficult than constructing a regular synth in Reaktor… and folk wanting polyphony from Blocks…. So is a 'swings and roundabouts' situation.

I really don't care about the pd clone object I have no intention to learn pd, and Reaktor's polyphony works just great for me. Each different development environment will have strengths and weakness. Pd will have it's strengths and so does Reaktor. For me the balance struck by the Reaktor designers is pretty good. I did try pd many years ago, but it kept crashing while I was trying to work through an introduction tutorial. That's not my thing tyvm ;)