July 2025 – a community update from our Chief Product & Technology Officer

I get the impression that's been written by A.I.

It's true of forums in general though. People post when they have problems, so at first glance it looks like just a sea of negativity - so the company must be really bad.

No, because what you don't see is the larger percentage (the majority) who don't have problems. I'm sure NI will have figures of how many registered users there are, vs how many forum complaints. I'd be willing to bet the percentage of complaints is microscopic in comparison to user base.

Some serious questions.

1. Should I continue to invest my time in creating NKS solutions, when NI's support for Komplete Kontrol is an afterthought?

Please consider, I run a successful software as a service company, and we create updates at a regular cadence with a team of two developers. We even respond to user feedback, and turn those around in a day or a week. Sure, it's not an app, which is harder, but I wouldn't ignore a customer for years.

It's been nearly two years since the launch of Kontrol MK3, and we're still waiting on features and bug fixes from Komplte Kontrol 2.x, while MPC, Arturia, all these new brands are added in as partners, midi templates are added, lots more cool things - but you continue to ignore the community in not just fixing these issues, but you're not adding the features they request, all while hardly communicating.

If someone asked me if NI understands it's audience, I would suggest the company is data-driven, but not data-led, because it feels like a lot of us are not being listened to.

There is not a single mention of Komplete Kontrol in your July update, and I know you saw the feedback from the February update. Your community are your evangelists, and if someone like me, who has invested £10,000s in your ecosytem is at the end of their tether, how do you think the average user feels?

Maybe they just want a Kontakt instrument and don't care about the detail. Perhaps that's why you're not addressing these issues? I wouldn't know, because nobody communicates, and when they do, Komplete Kontrol is an afterthought.

I am, at most, one community update away from selling all my Native Instruments software and hardware.

2. Can you explain your internal reference for what a modern plugin framework is?
Your Izotope catalyst series is great - but your modern framework is broken - if it's built on the same framework, it displays differently for each plugin in Komplte Kontrol. Some testing would have been good enough to spot this. I posted about this in the forum dedicated to Izotope, but no response from NI in about two months.

3. Can you please focus some community energy on the forum, or is a support forum what NI wants?

Honestly, I look at the NKS User Library thread and these updates now, and that's it.

I completely undertand that Simon's role is Chief Product Officer- but your community buys the products - it would be good to get a response from Simon.

Honestly, I love what NI does, and the products it has, but constantly ignoring user feedback means I only have a couple of staws left before the last one. Sorry to be so negative, but truth is important.