The Maschine 4 (Speculative) Thread

basehead617 · September 2023

Personally I was very impressed by Matthew_NI’s Kontrol AMA. He is clearly someone that knows the products at an intimate level and is not some figurehead thrown into the mix by investors. If they had yearly AMAs about all 3 of their major product lines, I would be very happy. They need to get to a point where they can field an active staff on all 3 of those legs and not just have a strike team that moves from fire to fire, abandoning the other 2 in the meantime.

D-One · September 2023

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/96686#Comment_96686

Amen. I don't think most people realize how much of a big deal that AMA is, not specifically the concept of a Q&A itself but how he replied to things is unprecedented IMO, especially coming from someone pretty high in the hierarchy... I really hope it inspires the rest of the company to communicate like real people instead of a big corporate monster.

ozon · September 2023

I wrote

Fun fact everybody always forgets: You never buy software, you pay for a license to use it as long as the vendor sees fit.

@Kubrak answered

No, that is completely false. Licences are mostly time unlimited, or limited to certain period month, year, or so.

Which does in fact not contradict but support my statement. You even highlighted the important part.

However, you might want to check back on the exact wording for some of the licenses you paid for, because they might include disclaimers which allow the vendor to end the license prematurely for specific or no reasons.

ozon · September 2023

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/96584#Comment_96584

You can install almost all of Expansion contents as User Content but it is a huge PITA. You have to figure out the proper paths, and for Groups you have to load them on the desktop and save the with samples to make them work.

myalteredsoul · September 2023

Did yall see that new leak photo this morning?

Jiglo · September 2023

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/96582#Comment_96582

Was it not you who raised said points about not being able to use an M+ if the firm went bust? I argued that you can, so not sure what you're referring to?

I also said if the firm ceased to exist, that you could just sell the M+ with it's expansions on there. Why would you not want to sell a working Maschine+ with all it's expansions if you were selling it, if said company had gone bust?

I've been a NI customer on and off since Traktor Scratch Pro (or whatever it was called with hardware box and vinyl package), which was a pretty long time ago. I was a bit salty from that experience as it kept crashing within 30 minutes of use, so I returned to and stuck with Serato, which I was using for a few years before. I've owned 4 Maschines and a S49 MK2 and all but 1 Maschine bought new from a dealer. I have been NI's biggest critic in the old days after spending £500 on Traktor and it crashing and for having no customer support when I needed it, but that's swung around 180 degrees since I took a chance on a M+ and realised it was what my life was missing from a musical perspective.

So, from my own personal experiences, NI have gone from my least favourite to perhaps joint favourite Music Tech/software company, as I do also love Arturia and have long history with the firm.

basehead617 · September 2023

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/96793#Comment_96793

leak of what?

Kubrak · September 2023

@ozon

However, you might want to check back on the exact wording for some of the licenses you paid for, because they might include disclaimers which allow the vendor to end the license prematurely for specific or no reasons.

And do you think, those disclaimers are legal? 99.9% they are not. Licence cannot be terminated because company decides so....

And for example NI had in its older EULA written, that if they will stop authorising SW, they will provide universal unlock key.

Beside that, there are two things. On thing is that user has licence, the other thing is if he is able (can authorise) to use that licence.

But in case, he has licence and cannot authorise it. He might have right to protect his investment and may decompile the source and make changes in SW to make it usable. E.g. using cracked versions could be fully legal as user has licence and developer is not able to provide authorisation.

LostInFoundation · September 2023

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/96795#Comment_96795

What we were trying to say here is that we want to be able to use what we bought even if they are not there to authorize them. And…no…if they disappear and don’t provide universal unlock key, you can’t authorize it therefore use it, as soon as you have any sort of problem and need to reset it

And about “Why would you not want to sell a working Maschine+ with all it's expansions”…well… maybe I just don’t want to sell it and still use it. Or sell the M+ but keep the expansions to use in the computer software.

Do you think that now that Moog is in bad waters, if they will disappear, all Minimoog users would want to sell it? I think they will be quite happy to be able to keep it and still use it

D-One · September 2023

Also curious about this mysterious leak.

They just merged with iZotope and other companies. Why focus on this hypothetical worst case scenario where NI fully shuts down? That seems less likely to happen than the previous apocalyptic dooms day fear of NI forcing subscriptions-only that everyone was freaking out about 2/4 years ago.

Music Tech companies of this size dont tend to disappear, worst case it gets bought by some other big player.

By the time NI is dead you can probably just ask an AI to design the perfect SW/HW custom tailored for you, that is... if they dont kill us first. :D

Jiglo · September 2023

Good points, although asking AI to build the perfect sampler, sequencer, groovebox might just be the thing that could actually destroy it, as from reading the internet, nobody seems to know what that is.