Dear Native Instruments – we need some “Ordnung” from you!

Native Instruments as a company has been around for a while. As a result, the total portfolio includes both legacy and new stuff. This is like maintaining an old ruin (like Klosterruine Boitzenburg): you need to get rid of some stuff, keep alive some stuff, rebuild some stuff and create new stuff. All fine, but while doing that you MUST provide clarity to end users. I am not German myself, but I understand that the German word “Ordnung” has a big history and covers many more things than non-Germans realize, both positive and negative. Let’s focus on one of the more neutral meanings of “Ordnung” in German:

„Sammlung von zusammenhängenden, untereinander widerspruchsfreien, eindeutige Sachen.“

Google Translate: “Collection of coherent, consistent, unambiguous things”

Recently I had to say goodbye to my old PC, after holding on to it for too long. I assembled a new one myself and I specifically went for a fresh installation of everything, to keep it as clean as possible. Among many other things, I own Komplete 15 Standard. And on this one I want to give some constructive feedback. In fact, it turns out it concerns the whole of Native Instruments software offerings, and maybe its future.
With this in mind, I will sum up my points here:

Legacy or not?
Sometimes it is hard to let things go. Some plugins are really old now, but so is all music from The Beatles. Perhaps that is a bit of an unfair comparison but people have made some great music with older plugins. So, what to do with them? Take Absynth. I knew it was living on Death Row. But to my surprise Absynth 5 is listed as instrument in Native Access. But not available as VST plugin? What gives? This is what can only be called a very slow and painful death.

My advice: either give us an end-of-life date and kill it, or let it live forever in some sort of form, like a Kontakt or Reaktor instrument or whatever. But don’t let it bleed like this. Same with FM8. I cannot make it bigger on my 4K display, so to me FM8 is useless. Just tell me that it will disappear. Or make it readable, but please do not keep it in no-man’s land.

What else could be legacy? Battery? Reaktor? Who knows. Reaktor is still ok but it is an odd mix of some really old-fashioned, small printed, clumsy menu items and a modernish look on some of the synths (like Rounds and Polyplex), but not all (does anybody really love Spark?). The new Crosstalk Modular is about modules and layering. Just like Blocks in Reaktor. But Crosstalk Modular is running in…Kontakt. And uses Kontakt filters and effects. Ouch. Very painful for Reaktor.

Is Reaktor already in no man’s land? Please let us know! Just give us Razor, Monark (I love it!) and the others as separate, individual plugins and we will be fine.
My advice: create a public roadmap. Put some dates on it. Don’t put products in purgatory or no-man’s-land. Don’t be afraid to kill your darlings. I know that you have been through some management changes, SoundWise. Oops, I mean Native Instruments. Forget about the past, or enhance it. Don’t just let it sit there.

Category Confusion
It is helpful to put products that naturally belong together in a category. It is even more helpful if a category is unambiguous. This is where Native Instruments goes wrong sometimes. One of my habits is to put every plugin, every sound set and presets collection that I purchased in a spreadsheet. It is an easy way for me to keep track of everything that I own. I also put my personal notes next to it, works great. This is where categories and labels come in handy. But to be honest, I have lost the plot with you.

So far, I have found the following categories: Expansions, Leap Expansions, Play Series, Scene Series, Electric Keys Series, Sessions Bassist Series, Session Guitarist Series, Session [fill in] series, Scarbee Series, Abbey Road Collection and a few others. And then there is the Spotlight Collection. Turns out to be the same as the Discovery Series. If I open “Middle East” in Kontakt, I can see both series names! Confusing, to say the least. It gets worse if I want to link all of these to the plugins that can open these. For example, Expansions link to multiple plugins, but which ones?

In Native Access I can click on Library on the left, which gets me the following sub-labels on top: All, Applications, Instruments, Effects, Expansions, Kontakt, Reaktor, Brands. These categories are certainly not unambiguous. I can see Kontakt in Applications, Instruments and Kontakt. The irony is that it is neither of those, according to your own classification. Kontakt is not even a plugin. According to you, it is a “platform”. So is Reaktor. Nothing wrong with that, but in Native Access you should only list the series, instruments or sounds that run exclusively on these platforms. Don’t include the plugins themselves. Under “Applications” you list stuff that can run without a DAW. But what would be more useful is a tab with all plugins that actually run in my DAW, with only the versions that matter to me. Now I see Kontakt 5, Kontakt, Kontakt 7 and Kontakt 8. Never understood why Kontakt 6 is not listed as…..Kontakt 6. Also, I should be able to uncheck versions that I don’t need in Native Access.

More blurriness was introduced by the inclusion of what I call third-party offerings. You have thrown them into Instruments. Does not increase clarity. Just mention them under “Third Party” or something. Oh yes, you call this “Brands”. Which includes Scarbee but not Abbey Road?

I can see "Middle East" listed in Instruments. But even then, I don’t know which plugin I should use. Only if I click on it, it tells me it is Kontakt, which is also included in Instruments. It would help if you just mention the “platform” that I need to use right there together with the instrument name.

My advice: create pure and unambiguous categories in Native Access: Plugins (with a check next to them if they are installed as VST and/or Standalone, Instruments (with the name of the plugin to be used next to it), Effects, Expansions (with a list of all plugins that can be used) and Third-Party only. Keep it as pure as possible.

Finally, I can see a similar trend on your very own website. I know you will have to include stuff from Izotope and Brainworx. It will be hard to include Plugin Alliance, which offers dozens of brands. However, if you take the time now to bring some clarity and purity to your own portfolio first, you could turn into an attractive platform that could easily support more brands, IF you RIGOROUSLY stick to a strict categorization discipline. In other words: it is time to create some Ordnung now!

Does the Community agree with me? Let me know!