What does the future hold for Reaktor?

"and only borrow ideas from user projects posted in the public domain for their commercial products?"

ooh, did they do that? which product was it?

"This is just a hypothesis, but with open access to so many realized unique ideas placed in a user's library, the temptation is great...."

Not really, there are very few truly original ideas in the user library, mostly just quirky unusual takes on existing concepts with odd GUIs that are inspiring, but could never be a successful product - which is why the UL is so great. its full of weird stuff that doesn't need to 'sell'.

98% of the work is in interface design, polishing up the details, and promotion. I would guess that between them the devs at NI have orders of magnitude more original ideas than we'll ever see. The idea that they would spend hours trawling through the dross and bad clones in the UL as part of product development is absurd!

The small part of the work that is actually DSP is something they are even further ahead with compared with the vast majority of UL entries!

"However, I have come across information about NI's ability to compile Reaktor ensembles into full VSTs......."

Interesting, where did you come accross that 'information'? was it a plausible trustworthy source within NI, or was it 'some dude on the internet'?

"After all, such an ancient SynthEdit has always had that capability. And I'd like to see such a feature appear for Reaktor users as well."

Just use SynthEdit - seems like it has what you crave!

The reality is that there are various different visual DSP environments, each has strengths and weaknesses, and often there are compromises - some features are weaker or missing in order to allow other features to exist. Personally, I like the balance Reaktor has, but it also makes sense that some other folk would prefer SynthEdit or Pure Data, or MAX Msp… It's good to have choices.

I think it's misguided to abandon something because development has stalled, as long as that thing is in a good useable state. Reaktor fits this description.

My prediction: Reaktor will receive no updates for a while (we know this for certain) but it has not been abandoned. The Apple Silicon update confirms that at worst NI plan to keep it around along with the synths they have built for it. This means even if there is never significant development, it will remain as usable as it currently is for many years to come.

Leaving it for something else means leaving behind Reaktor Blocks (replaceable by Voltage Modular, I suppose) and the various synths I own built for Reaktor (replaceable by???).

I'm skeptical there is anything out there that is a complete replacement for Reaktor as it is now, that will also receive the updated features Reaktor lacks.

But if you've found something, go for it. Whatever keeps you making music.

Fully agree!

"Leaving it for something else means leaving behind Reaktor Blocks (replaceable by Voltage Modular, I suppose)"

It's not really replacable by voltage modular, Blocks in Reaktor always has that killer feature that you can modify or build your own… Even if you're not ready to build complete blocks, you can use blocks in ensemble mode, and hack together any extra functionality you need using vanilla Primary level Reaktor.

When you are creating a Blocks patch and you just need one extra thing that isn't there, you can often just cobble the basic functionality together in 20 minutes…!

The downside of this is you get sucked into a void of perfecting that 20 minute sketch into months of work and lose track of the original project… but that's creative work for you :-D

It would be unwise for NI to comment on future development when they don't know the future ;)

My understanding is that requested features are not ignored, but it is a shame that the policy for decades has been not to engage with the user base in that respect.

If a requested feature is sensible and useful, then there is probably a good reason why it hasn't been implemented, most likely relating to technical or resource related restrictions.

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I'm not sure that entropy really applies at such a small time time scale as the lifespan of an audio application :). To the extent that it does, Reaktor has reakted! The recent huge ARM update, being the most obvious example.

Currently the thing that looks most likely to kill off Reaktor will have the same existential impact on most 'traditional' music software tools, and that is AI. If AI does get to the point where 'propmters' can generate music without actually doing the kind of work that requires tools like Reaktor, then all the virtual instruments and DAWs will be dead in the water. There will be a cultural reaction away from over processed digital blandness, and an even stronger move towards traditional musical performance, the 'traditional' music software industry suffer as it gets washed away in the cleansing process. The next 'punk' reset is a live one with no AI and no autotune. Folk playing guitars and singing out of tune, and folk rocking techno on hardware setups - like this:

Autotune is terrible, but AI will be worse and will be the tipping point… at least I hope so :)