Time to set Absynth 5 free

People were moving away from Absynth long before NI discontinued it. I think you are extremely overrating it "reputation" - which was not good.

I think you are confusing Legacy with reputation.

Most of the people who used Absynth - particularly in the Cinematic/Scoring market segment, where it was quite popular back in the day - had already replaced it with options like U-he Zebra.

It's almost like people have gaslit themselves into believing NI doesn't actually care to look at the market and see if a product they're discontinuing is actually seeing widespread use or not.

Massive X's reputation as a synth is good enough. Its issue has always been the User Experience and the disconnect between user expectation and what was delivered.

It also released into a very crowded/saturated market. No one really needed Massive X. It would have had to blow people away to get any major traction in the market. A VA/WT Synth is simply not a high value commodity anymore… which is why everything else is adding additional synth engines, sequencers, etc.

"If they think there's no more money in Absynth, then that means they got everything out of it that they think they'll get. In that case, they should release it so that somebody can work on it."

I would venture a very solid guess that there is at least one clause (or more) in the partnership agreement made by Brian Clevinger and NI - back in 2001 - that would prohibit the release of any compiled product, source code or any IP of any kind into the public domain.

Absynth was a unique collaboration - and it is clear (to me anyway) that the IP for this product is not 100% controlled by NI.

Look up Brian's official YouTube statement back in 2022 on this (2:41 into the video) and make your own assessment of this situation.

VP

Well - if I wrote the IP for a synth as cool as Absynth - I wouldn't let it just go free either.

This is business after all.

VP

"I'm just suggesting that NI please "paint or get off the ladder" with regards to Absynth"

If there are actually contractual legalities in play here - there is no ladder to get off of.

Fans of Absynth need to come to grips with this and stop assuming that just because the app has been discontinued - that it somehow can just be set "free".

That is like saying - "Hey Microsoft - Windows 7 was awesome - and it's now discontinued - how about releasing the entire code base for free?"

If the Absynth code is sitting where I think it sitting (most likely with Brian C) this is a non-starter kinda conversation.

VP

Well - never forget the pecking order.

It's business first - and everything else - a distant second.

VP

@Sunborn

"They take decisions without asking no one and then present this to the people as "law"

Unfortunately - last time I checked - if you own the company - you do not need to ask or check with anyone - about anything.

Is it desirable? No.

Is it fair? Of course not.

Does it make sense? For most - no.

But that is only because typical "users" remain locked into some weird 70's-80's-90's mindset where they think they should be consulted because they purchased something in the distance past or that all companies will/could/should "do right" by their customers.

The reality is much different. Best to know this than to get bent out of shape when it drops on you.

VP

"I've said this before, the original author of Absynth has said that he'd love to bring it up to date."

One question. If he was so keen on that, why didn't he just develop another Absynth, instead of that other synth he did?

You know, it's always easy to talk like that, when you don't have to think about the stuff which comes with it, like, the company behind you having to pay you for development, for support, and for future updates to the synth, when another operating system is being released, or when Apple decides that everyone needs to switch to another CPU architecture again and so on.

I also wonder why people always appear from their holes, and rant about their favorite synth which they use all the time, which got discontinued, when companies announce that the end is near. Allow me to speculate that there's quite a bit of hypocrisy going on there.

Actually, I think iNate is spot on with his assessment that most users of Absynth, which weren't really numerous in the first place, have moved on by now.

Almost certainly the code base is not sitting with Brian C. Companies contract developers to do work all the time, but that doesn't de facto mean the person contracted to do the work owns the code. The code is still owned and resides with Native Instruments. I'd be shocked if Brian C had access to any of that code, frankly.

If's typically pretty obvious when a product is developed and owned by a different/separate entity to be sold by NI (either standalone or as part of Komplete). Absynth is not one of those products. Nothing indicates this, at all.

There is a reason why he made the statement he made in the way that he made it. He doesn't have the code, nor does he have the permission from NI to get access to the code and do that work.

Beyond that, people are assuming that this guy would do all of this work for free - when, in reality, this was a massive publicity stunt to lobby for more paid work on for his benefit. This was not a selfless move on his behalf… That's why he has basically vanished from the discussion, outside of people here mentioning his name. All that passion, amirite?

—I do agree with the rest of your post. The the entitlement and assumptions people are jumping to seem juvenile, to me. It's like we're in a 6th grade classroom with kids behaving as if Native Instruments owes them something; and are obliged to deliver it to them.