A rambly question/thought/post for anyone who ever crossed paths with Nature Instruments - I know we have a few Maschine-heads on here.
Back when I first started getting interested in electronic music (early 2010s) NI was literally everywhere. Just as there are “must have” softwares today, it seemed like I couldn’t bump into someone without them banging on about Massive like it was some kind of illicit substance. So I was surprised to see that when I came back to look into things post-pandemic that many NI users seem to actively dislike the company. On a personal note I was literally about to buy a Maschine when I spotted that M1 was a problem and I’d be paying a lot of money for what would essentially be a paperweight. While pretty much every other company came out with an M1 compatible product within months - NI seemed stuck for way, way longer than anyone else getting back on terms with the new tech.
From what I’ve seen so far, it sounds like they are in a bit of financial trouble with mergers and layoffs with cost-cutting seemingly the order of that day (including some as recently as this week). I also hear constant rumbles on forums about them being stuck in the past as a company, slow to react (not just to M1) and not particularly helpful when it comes to customer support. From a noob perspective, I get some of the criticism but I also wonder why it seems almost unanimous.
Since I’m not buying any of their hardware I messed around with their Komplete Start bundle & Komplete Now to get a sense of what’s what. The software itself is a bit convoluted and does look dated, especially when you compare it to software from the likes of Arturia or Output. It also feels like they are hurt a bit by the bundle approach. I can see why this model worked 15 years ago when people didn’t have access to the candyshop of Splice & Loopcloud and easy access to unbundled one-off plugins. Back then loading all this stuff onto your computer for access at some point made sense. But in the current context, where you can get individual vst synths for very little money, or samples that stream to a player (rather than hogging your hard-drive space), I can see why folks resent being asked to fork out huge sums of money for a bundle of content they will only use selectively. And their individual app pricing is a bit mad. Playbox is really cool, but it feels somewhat odd that it is priced at the same level that you could (for example) buy an entire DAW or instrument/FX bundle for. It’s also pretty nuts that you can’t even get a free trial of any of their stuff. The NI approach reminds me a bit of how a lot of people see Adobe and their semi-monopoly on design software.
On the flipside, I have to say they are far from the only offender when it comes to poor interfaces. And although it seems like they are leaving their synths to launguish (and to be honest I’m more interested in that sample libraries anyway) I do hear a few tiny voices saying that despite the clunk and feeling a bit forgotten, the sounds are still pretty good. Despite the cost thing, it seems like Playbox should be in there alongside XO, Arcade and other semi-generative random softwares as being a genuinely useful idea generator. And the bundles of cinematic sounds (admittedly these are not always made by NI themselves) can be really nice - although they have stiff competition from companies (eg: Spitfire) who have nicer interfaces and a much more generous free tier of products. And as I mentioned, on trying their software I found a lot of stuff I liked and that sounded high quality - and that includes the stuff they give away.
What do you reckon? Is it really that bad, or is it just a classic case of internet hate with a larger number of people perfectly happy with the product?
Is NI a love/hate thing for you - or is it just hate at this point?
I think they still have some good stuff. They are slow to move on things like M1 which I guess reflects maybe how old some of their codebases are, plus maybe organisational issues (e.g. the only person who knows x works left), but I think sonically their stuff is still pretty great. Agreed that the UIs feel a little dated.
Re: the layoffs, I think that’s probably more to do with them being absorbed into part of this Soundwide collective along with Izotope and PA, which means that suddenly they’ve probably got a lot of redundancy in the company (e.g. three separate support organisations) and the general climate in tech - with Soundwide being heavily VC funded (I think?) they may be getting pressure from investors to lay people off because everyone else is doing it.
Edit: but overall I think you’re right, they look a bit outdated compared to the completion. Will be interesting to see what they do next.
I haven’t looked at NI products since Massive was all over dubstep many years back. I did have a fondness for Absynth back in the day too. I heard (or at least I think) they’ve discontinued that tho
Ah gotcha. Yeah that (sadly) makes sense if they’re pooling resources.
Yeah for sure. I mean I loaded up one of their free sampler instruments (vintage synths) and I thought “man this sounds really good.” Like you say - sonically I felt there was a lot going on even in the free bundle and I think my expectations were that it really wouldn’t be great if they were giving it away. I think they should do more of that - just give away a bundle with 10 presets per instrument. I’ve been trying Arcade, which is loads of fun to be fair, and I like a lot of what that brings to the party in terms of quick inspiriation, but on the orchestral/atmospheric side (which Arcade sortof covers) the NI stuff is just on a different level.
While the UI’s are clunky, I’ve demoed a lot of stuff recently, and I’ve seen a heck of a lot worse. For example; I know they get a bit of heat for these newer Kontakt Play instruments being overly simplified, but I feel like that is actually where they could (and should) make back some ground. With the Play series, there’s a little menu at the top UI where you can page through all the included instruments and then a 2nd menu for all the presets. This makes the whole experience 10 times less clunky. Either way, I thought it was all pretty well put together, and sounded really good. Not sure I’m gonna stump for a bundle but I could see myself picking up one off cinematic/ambient titles and I’d keep the Now sub for the Play series and Playbox to see what they come out with. Feels like they need to hone in on one of these things and kinda own it.
I’m guessing now I’ve written this I’m going to instantly run into one of the famous technical issues…
Yeah… I wouldn’t write them off. The whole Soundwide thing presumably injected a decent amount of cash, and the fact that e.g. they are employing the creator of the JUCE framework (with which most plugins/audio software are built) to build a new programming language for audio development, which is not a small undertaking, suggests they could have interesting plans for the future. It might just be a bit of a fallow period right now.
That sounds promising. If they are bringing good people in to build on the sound library from a UI perspective then I think you’re right. It won’t be easy by any stretch, but they could incrementally pull it back leaning on the heritage they have built up with a more modern interface.
I feel like Playbox could be their Massive of today.
I like their products, but I dunno. I frequently use Komplete Standard, but it’s basically some effects (from newer packs), Massive, Absynth and a couple of Kontakt libs.
Raum and Replika XT are excellent.
They release a lot of sound packs and new instruments which are not much of use to me. This happens like weekly or several times per week! I don’t know, if many people are using all of this and if the world needs more Kontakt packs and one or two-trick textural synths.
Recently the offers started to include Ozon Standard. All of this does not sound as innovation and the overall package is verry huge and not very consistent
(Why there could not be more traditional and convolutional reverbs and mastering plugins…)
…once they were extremely innovative, totally outstanding and all over and beyond all the new digital sonic frontier…
but like with everything else in modern daily life cooperatism, once venture capitol got heavily involved, had a seat and a saying at the table, it was all going south…
today, their hardware stuff is a bunch of cheap consumerism products, their software synthesis concepts are still based on their very first product, reactor, their sound palletes are endless preset overdosing and their universal kontakt sampler format is only here to stay because it’s still that most common format for all others, 3rd party “developers” who want to produce and sell libs/sample pax…while their most “pro” device, maschine, is a blunt mpc rip off…
their last real innovation was traktor, but at the same time, that was exactly the moment of shifting from innovative concepts for nerds and pros to next “shiny” products aiming more at dj’s and overall consumerism…which was also that moment when music production gear grew out of a niche business into a real market and became a hobby for the masses…
i can tell after 30 seconds if somebody is on sonic puzzeling with ni’s komplete…
until 2004 i was using quite a lot of their software, even praised their stuff on sales shows around century break…but since 2007 no computer of mine ever saw a ni product again…
the last and only good thing i can say about this company is, they were always berlin based and 3 of my friends still got well paid jobs there…oh, and one of the guys who was an essential brain part of their very first core creation, reaktor, then started ableton with robert aka monolake…
I have been using their Maschine software with various Maschine controllers for 10+ years. The software hasn’t changed much, they added just a few features. The thing is, it just works. It is like you buy a ‘static’ piece of hardware with some expandable processor power. Nothing more and not much ambition to be more, they just maintain. And I love it for what it is.
I use a Maschine plus & Mikro mk3 with a MacBook Air m1. I have no problems. I also bought Reaktor last Black Friday.
One of the common complaints seems to be that they focus on soundware (sample libraries and expansion etc) over new instruments and FX. I think there is some truth in that, although the soft synth market is now very crowded compared to their heyday 10 or 15 years ago.
A lot of their own Reaktor instruments that are quite old are still great and are quite creative and different .g. Form, Prism, Rounds, etc and you can typically pick up old version of Komplete cheaply on the used market. If you buy an old version you get a ton of stuff quite cheaply.
I think I agree that they’ve slowed down but I think the evidence would support the fact that many users just want to buy genre-specific expansions and sample packs etc. the fact that so many companies are doing it just proves the point. They’re everywhere!
To be honest they probably aren’t innovating much but they’re just giving the mass market what they want.
For the record, my Maschine MK3 works fine on my M1 Mac Mini
I have Komplete ultimate but there is such a range of instruments and expansions that it’s hard to find the products that really suit me
I’ve been most happy making music with digitakt, digitone and some other hardware recently, so I think the NI stuff will probably be used as a sketch pad to sample into digitakt and add extra layers from now on. Not sure I’d buy another iteration of komplete
my audio 8 dj is bricked because of them, also wasn’t a fan of the experience of buying maschine in the secondhand market and the hoops you needed to go through to get the right software. reaktor, absynth, and massive are all great vsts even the old ones which i prefer using. will not support them any longer unfortunately
Am I crazy, or didn’t ROLI hire the same guy (Julian Storer) to do the same thing (SOUL)? It didn’t work out so well for them :’(
The only NI product I own is FM8. I love it. And on one hand, I just got the update to the native version for my non-intel mac. And that’s amazing support for a product I bought almost 20 years ago.
On the other hand, I got it 20 years ago. I am at this point, desperate to pay them money for an FM9. But I don’t see it ever happening. Heck, I remember telling myself I’d finally jump into Absynth “on the next version” and that was decades ago. It never came.
I ditched NI after Francisco Partners bought them out. If you research the shenanigans that FP has been involved in, in the past - I can’t post links here (too political) - you would have major reservations about supporting them if you value your privacy and data. Their products jumped the shark a long time ago. There’s tons of other alternatives out there if you want to make the switch.
A bummer they own Plugin Alliance and Izotope as well…
Reaktor ist still GOAT and Massive X is a great Synth as well…as a company, I don’t know, I m not a business person, I m a sounddesigner/musician and they provided me some of the greatest tools to do my job! but they fucked up battery…version 2 was the killer and then they “streamlined” it and threw out several functions (loop points etc) that I really liked. but that was 20 years ago…lol…I see myself out
NI is awesome.
People say they stopped doing great synths sleep on massive x, there were other great sounding synths as well in recent years.
Komplete is everything you‘d ever need and more, Maschine is one of the best groovebox environments. The hardware feels great, be it maschine or the komplete kontrol keyboards.
I admit they should step up on their UIs. And they make strange omissions and inconsistencies between maschine and komplete kontrol. But so do Roland or elektron with their products
Haha yeah ROLI bought JUCE and he went onto build SOUL. I’d guess ROLI didn’t really know what to do with it whereas I imagine Soundwide have some pretty concrete use cases for it internally. We’ll see I guess
Having come back to electronic music from many years away NI seem to have gone from the ultimate innovation company to a crufty incumbent with a dodgy reputation.
As a result I’ve stayed away even when there are some good deals.
I’ve also known a few people to have installation or upgrade problems which puts me off.
