When will Reaktor7 come?

@Simon A. Billington

It's not about new features, it's about the mindset. No new features means they're not investing in the future. Not investing in the future is the sign that product is nearing its end of life. They're all related.

Once a product has entered this kind of maintenance phase, its only got around 5 years left before being dropped. Unless the developers have a change of heart. If what you do relies heavily on future proofing yourself as much as possible, this is not a desirable thing, its the thing try to avoid.

I guess your reasoning is wrong. Program may be in maintenance mode for decades. Program may end up in such a equilibrum state that program has all/most features that are needed. And to add something real new would cost a lot and it is not clear if it would ever pay back. And beside. Any bigger change to code brings risk of bugs and problems….

Beside that, if you fear about the future you may keep one or more computers that are able to run old projects.

And even if plugin gets care and is maintained…. There is still risk that new version will have different sound. I think something like that has happened to GuitarRig when changing from 5 to 6…. Some plugin developers like Eventive keep old sound and add new. One may switch plugin between vintage and new sound….

Are you really so shortsighted that you can't see how these features will improve the usability of algorithms that contain latency?
Personally, I'm really looking forward to this feature as I have some high quality algorithms prepared, but it's very inconvenient to use them now because of the significant delay!
To summarize! Having delay compensation will give a big boost to developing and running better algorithms than ever before.

Yeah, fft latency is pretty long. I wish we could entire a latency period that would be reported to the daw. For the time being I use a track marker at the end of the plugin chain. The I use the marker to shift the track left. That only works after a mix down to an audio track. I can see the problem with latency reporting as each ensemble is different. That's no excuse for not reporting latency. It would be pretty easy to enter the latency manually in the ensemble somewhere that could be used by Reaktor to report the latency when it loads up. I don't use fft and have never had a problem but with the track marker I can verify the start of the audio is track is in position. It's not uncommon to export an audio track and reload it only to find out it has shifted a few milliseconds. The marker is 1 ms long and it's a 5k click. The better one is a solid square wave that lasts for 1 ms. It's 20db down and you can't hear it because the square wave is one sample per level change. It's probably not exactly 1ms but it starts with a level 20db down and switches to the negative side that is also 20 db down on the next sample. So at 48k for 1ms there's a 48k tone.

The only time I see programming in maintenance mode for decades is BIG business which can be inherently very slow to adopt change. Sometimes for a very good reason.

What I'm referring to is where it maters to us, the commercial digital audio world. I have yet to see a plugin that had entered years long maintenance mode not get axed. The two are distinctly related.

Sure there are things you can do like hold on to an older system, yet the problem is the same. You may be able to open the old project, but you'll never be able to work with that extinct plugin again on a new system.

There is something else you can do though. Recognise what the patterns are, notice when the writing is on the wall, begin to make that transition and move on. Nothing is inherently foolproof, but you'd be a fool if you ignored the early warning signs and make issues for yourself down the track.

The writing has been on the wall for Intel based Macs since the M1 was released and Apple saying that they will be transitioning all their products to their own SoC. By about a year ow two there will be no Rosetta in their newer OS and moving forward all the software will become Apple SoC exclusive.

Not recognising this will be the way of things and not taking advantage of the 5 years from when Apple's plans was first announced is only setting yourself up for problems down the track too. It was the same thing going from VST2 to VST3 or 32-bit to 64bit. The signs were all there, its only the fools who chose to ignore them and do nothing about it.

Well the signs with Reaktor seem to be here too. It's not too late, they might still turn around and say they've got new plans for it, but until then its just too risky.

No indeed software will come and go. What I am saying is anyone would be a fool to rely on something that is showing all the early signs of being axed. It's time to figure out a new direction and move on. Well personally anyway.

If they turn around and say we have some more future plans for it than I'm in, until then I can't afford the risk

As I said in the other post, it doesn't matter if you had aback up system, you'd never be able to compose something new with it again on the new system. Thats where the problem lies.

You just don't do deep dsp programming or create advanced algorithms... Primary level will be enough for you... I'm missing a number of features, and the key one is delay compensation... And what you are using as a workaround for delay compensation is a "cripple crutch".

You have already demonstrated your shortsightedness.

Even all existing quality dynamic vst plugins (limiters, compressors, etc) cannot be created without delay (lookhead). But they have delay compensation in them, and there is no problem using them. And I'm not talking about more advanced devices.
In Reaktor without delay compensation, the end user is forced to use silly "crutches" to compensate for the delay... This is one of the reasons why regular, not advanced users are dissuaded from Reaktor, and such users are the majority, because to use something that has a delay, you have to think how and what to compensate it with...So in Reaktor there is no possibility to create a full-fledged complete product (in the algorithm of which there is a delay), which can be easily used by the end user.

Absynth is third party. And it has not jumped VST3 and Apple Silicon…. The same Super8 plugin. NI has decided that instead making it VST3 and native AS it is better to revert it back to Reaktor ensemble.

NI has several of its products based on Reaktor, so it needs keep Reaktor running, if they want run those instruments… Form, Kontour, Molekular, Monark, Polyplex, Prism, Razor, Rounds, Spark, Super 8, Finger, Mouth, ….

If NI ditches Reaktor, it ditches those products as well.