Native Instruments stuff - hit or miss?

Stuntman_mike

@Tarekith said:
NI has done a ton of great stuff over the years, but lately it seems like they've slowed WAY down on product releases and updates. A huge portion of what they sell isn't even retina or HiDPI compatible still, which is a little worrying. Personally unless you were getting just a single instrument or partaking in one of their huge sales, I'd be cautious about going with a lot of NI stuff right now. They've historically ended support for products while still having a decent user base for them.

Every week I hope they don't drop Traktor iOS as that's something I use all the time and I'm getting more DJ gigs lately.

Yeah, they’ve been quiet since the acquisition awhile back. Perhaps new gear and/or new mobile app on the horizon…

krassmann

@Tarekith said:
NI has done a ton of great stuff over the years, but lately it seems like they've slowed WAY down on product releases and updates. A huge portion of what they sell isn't even retina or HiDPI compatible still, which is a little worrying. Personally unless you were getting just a single instrument or partaking in one of their huge sales, I'd be cautious about going with a lot of NI stuff right now. They've historically ended support for products while still having a decent user base for them.

That’s actually an opinion that I‘ve read several times. Seems to be something about it. It‘s sad if developers who released much loved gear suddenly seem to loose their Mojo.

Every week I hope they don't drop Traktor iOS as that's something I use all the time and I'm getting more DJ gigs lately.

Isn’t this actually wishful thinking? 😉

krassmann

@ervin said:
...oops, I forgot the commercial bit: NI's biggest sale is their annual Summer of Sound thing (in June, I think), followed by the Black Friday + end of year period. This is when it makes most sense to buy their stuff. New instruments and collections usually aren't discounted in the year they appear, with the exception of a smaller intro promo. Then they get a nice discount the next year. The expansions are probably best bought, also in batch, at the semi-regular "9 for 99" expansion-specific promo.

If you have one of their collections, they may offer you a customised, "non-public" upgrade to a larger collection, at very good prices, out of the blue, in email - but you can't plan on that.

@ervin I think you’re talking me into my next rabbit hole 😅

JohnnyGoodyear

@michael_m said:
Probably the most bloated suite of tools on the market, but at its core there are some great instruments.

Excellent single line summation of my unwritten autobigraphy.

ervin

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:
...oops, I forgot the commercial bit: NI's biggest sale is their annual Summer of Sound thing (in June, I think), followed by the Black Friday + end of year period. This is when it makes most sense to buy their stuff. New instruments and collections usually aren't discounted in the year they appear, with the exception of a smaller intro promo. Then they get a nice discount the next year. The expansions are probably best bought, also in batch, at the semi-regular "9 for 99" expansion-specific promo.

If you have one of their collections, they may offer you a customised, "non-public" upgrade to a larger collection, at very good prices, out of the blue, in email - but you can't plan on that.

@ervin I think you’re talking me into my next rabbit hole 😅

Wait until you discover the unmatched value proposition of Logic Pro, as opposed to some of the other... Bits on the market! 😉

Jokes aside though, I have told you all about the problems with NI, not just the fun part, so my conscience is clear. BTW I started with them because I bought a Maschine Mk3 a long time ago. Your thread made me think again - would I buy into NI today, knowing what I know? The answer is probably yes - not as strong a yes as it is with Arturia or AAS, but a yes nevertheless.

[Deleted User]

Kontakt is the only thing worth getting from that bloatware dinosaur.

And even that, only if you specifically want to use any of the thousands upon thousands of sample libraries that are available for it, from zero dollars to hundreds apiece.

That’s based on my experience and PoV, anyway. There are so many other great options for desktop plugins out there.

ervin

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:
...oops, I forgot the commercial bit: NI's biggest sale is their annual Summer of Sound thing (in June, I think), followed by the Black Friday + end of year period. This is when it makes most sense to buy their stuff. New instruments and collections usually aren't discounted in the year they appear, with the exception of a smaller intro promo. Then they get a nice discount the next year. The expansions are probably best bought, also in batch, at the semi-regular "9 for 99" expansion-specific promo.

If you have one of their collections, they may offer you a customised, "non-public" upgrade to a larger collection, at very good prices, out of the blue, in email - but you can't plan on that.

@ervin I think you’re talking me into my next rabbit hole 😅

Okay, just so you won't tell me I'm painting you an overly rosy picture, @krassmann 🙂 - the NI company group is laying off 8% of its workforce across all brands. I have a feeling this will not help their customer focus, which you will recall is my main problem with them already. And the article talks specifically about problems at NI over recent years:

NI in particular has seen tumultuous recent years as far as its business, which has included major leadership changes (including the exit of co-founder and former CEO Daniel Haver and CIO and President Mate Galic) and deep cuts in teams through a series of restructurings.

Link: https://cdm.link/2023/01/soundwide-layoffs/

The sounds are still great though. But wait for the discounts. 👍

krassmann

@ervin said:

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:
...oops, I forgot the commercial bit: NI's biggest sale is their annual Summer of Sound thing (in June, I think), followed by the Black Friday + end of year period. This is when it makes most sense to buy their stuff. New instruments and collections usually aren't discounted in the year they appear, with the exception of a smaller intro promo. Then they get a nice discount the next year. The expansions are probably best bought, also in batch, at the semi-regular "9 for 99" expansion-specific promo.

If you have one of their collections, they may offer you a customised, "non-public" upgrade to a larger collection, at very good prices, out of the blue, in email - but you can't plan on that.

@ervin I think you’re talking me into my next rabbit hole 😅

Okay, just so you won't tell me I'm painting you an overly rosy picture, @krassmann 🙂 - the NI company group is laying off 8% of its workforce across all brands. I have a feeling this will not help their customer focus, which you will recall is my main problem with them already. And the article talks specifically about problems at NI over recent years:

NI in particular has seen tumultuous recent years as far as its business, which has included major leadership changes (including the exit of co-founder and former CEO Daniel Haver and CIO and President Mate Galic) and deep cuts in teams through a series of restructurings.

Link: https://cdm.link/2023/01/soundwide-layoffs/

The sounds are still great though. But wait for the discounts. 👍

No worries, I was joking. Your posts were well balanced. Meanwhile I checked out some NI stuff. I found out that I actually already have a license for Massive. I installed it and it comes with great sounding presets. The UI is rather ugly and looks very dated. But it sounds cool. I‘ll keep it. I also installed Kontakt player and some free libraries that work with Player. Well, nothing exciting so far. Free libraries often seem to be slimmed down demo versions. I also checked out Soundpaint which I find more attractive and the libraries are much cheaper. As a new customer I received a $15 coupon and bought the „soul guitar“ for just a fiver. Sounds really great.

So far I’m not really convinced of investing into Kontakt. I‘m more into electronic sounds, so I prefer synths. Probably I can cover my needs for sampled instruments with Soundpaint and save money.

enkaytee

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:
...oops, I forgot the commercial bit: NI's biggest sale is their annual Summer of Sound thing (in June, I think), followed by the Black Friday + end of year period. This is when it makes most sense to buy their stuff. New instruments and collections usually aren't discounted in the year they appear, with the exception of a smaller intro promo. Then they get a nice discount the next year. The expansions are probably best bought, also in batch, at the semi-regular "9 for 99" expansion-specific promo.

If you have one of their collections, they may offer you a customised, "non-public" upgrade to a larger collection, at very good prices, out of the blue, in email - but you can't plan on that.

@ervin I think you’re talking me into my next rabbit hole 😅

Okay, just so you won't tell me I'm painting you an overly rosy picture, @krassmann 🙂 - the NI company group is laying off 8% of its workforce across all brands. I have a feeling this will not help their customer focus, which you will recall is my main problem with them already. And the article talks specifically about problems at NI over recent years:

NI in particular has seen tumultuous recent years as far as its business, which has included major leadership changes (including the exit of co-founder and former CEO Daniel Haver and CIO and President Mate Galic) and deep cuts in teams through a series of restructurings.

Link: https://cdm.link/2023/01/soundwide-layoffs/

The sounds are still great though. But wait for the discounts. 👍

No worries, I was joking. Your posts were well balanced. Meanwhile I checked out some NI stuff. I found out that I actually already have a license for Massive. I installed it and it comes with great sounding presets. The UI is rather ugly and looks very dated. But it sounds cool. I‘ll keep it. I also installed Kontakt player and some free libraries that work with Player. Well, nothing exciting so far. Free libraries often seem to be slimmed down demo versions. I also checked out Soundpaint which I find more attractive and the libraries are much cheaper. As a new customer I received a $15 coupon and bought the „soul guitar“ for just a fiver. Sounds really great.

So far I’m not really convinced of investing into Kontakt. I‘m more into electronic sounds, so I prefer synths. Probably I can cover my needs for sampled instruments with Soundpaint and save money.

Glad you like Soundpaint - I think it's amazingly powerful and versatile and the quality of some of the sampling is incredible. Don't forget you can also import your own samples and mix and match up to 4 parts of any instrument and apply loads of effects, arps and modulation to create new programs.

Don't know if this will work now that you've already signed up but this link might give you another $15 discount - http://soundpaint.refr.cc/nigelt

krassmann

@enkaytee said:

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:
...oops, I forgot the commercial bit: NI's biggest sale is their annual Summer of Sound thing (in June, I think), followed by the Black Friday + end of year period. This is when it makes most sense to buy their stuff. New instruments and collections usually aren't discounted in the year they appear, with the exception of a smaller intro promo. Then they get a nice discount the next year. The expansions are probably best bought, also in batch, at the semi-regular "9 for 99" expansion-specific promo.

If you have one of their collections, they may offer you a customised, "non-public" upgrade to a larger collection, at very good prices, out of the blue, in email - but you can't plan on that.

@ervin I think you’re talking me into my next rabbit hole 😅

Okay, just so you won't tell me I'm painting you an overly rosy picture, @krassmann 🙂 - the NI company group is laying off 8% of its workforce across all brands. I have a feeling this will not help their customer focus, which you will recall is my main problem with them already. And the article talks specifically about problems at NI over recent years:

NI in particular has seen tumultuous recent years as far as its business, which has included major leadership changes (including the exit of co-founder and former CEO Daniel Haver and CIO and President Mate Galic) and deep cuts in teams through a series of restructurings.

Link: https://cdm.link/2023/01/soundwide-layoffs/

The sounds are still great though. But wait for the discounts. 👍

No worries, I was joking. Your posts were well balanced. Meanwhile I checked out some NI stuff. I found out that I actually already have a license for Massive. I installed it and it comes with great sounding presets. The UI is rather ugly and looks very dated. But it sounds cool. I‘ll keep it. I also installed Kontakt player and some free libraries that work with Player. Well, nothing exciting so far. Free libraries often seem to be slimmed down demo versions. I also checked out Soundpaint which I find more attractive and the libraries are much cheaper. As a new customer I received a $15 coupon and bought the „soul guitar“ for just a fiver. Sounds really great.

So far I’m not really convinced of investing into Kontakt. I‘m more into electronic sounds, so I prefer synths. Probably I can cover my needs for sampled instruments with Soundpaint and save money.

Glad you like Soundpaint - I think it's amazingly powerful and versatile and the quality of some of the sampling is incredible. Don't forget you can also import your own samples and mix and match up to 4 parts of any instrument and apply loads of effects, arps and modulation to create new programs.

Don't know if this will work now that you've already signed up but this link might give you another $15 discount - http://soundpaint.refr.cc/nigelt

Yes, since I have no investment in libraries, I just look at the software itself and its features. For me Soundpaint is clearly the winner. It’s a more modern take on sampling. As you say it’s packed full of interesting features like morphing. I also joined their discord and users already have begun to create and share their own programs and samples. That seems to be an important difference to Kontakt. Soundpaint‘s terms allow to distribute content for Soundpaint as long as it is non-profit. Thanks for the coupon but doesn’t work anymore for me. I already bought another library and this is where my problems begin. I guess that’s because I’m inexperienced with flagship samplers.

So far I downloaded the free libraries and I bought the Soul Guitar and vocal library Terrie. While the instrument libraries are pretty much clear to me, I totally struggle with how to use the vocal libraries for a track. There are so many variations of the same phrase in one program (preset) but how do I know which key a phrase is in? How do I match it to the key and scale of my track? How to utilize the time stretching? Given that there are different phrases in one program. I guess experienced samplists do know how to use such a library but I don't. Could you point me to learning resources for such a workflow? Moreover, I cannot find a manual for Soundpaint.

Ailerom

I've been a Komplete user for way over 10 years. Just this year I decided to skip the whole Komplete thing as its really only Kontakt and Guitar Rig I use. So that's all I have installed and all I'll upgrade from now one. Everything else they have (that I use) is covered better elsewhere IMHO.

enkaytee

@krassmann said:

@enkaytee said:

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:

@krassmann said:

@ervin said:
...oops, I forgot the commercial bit: NI's biggest sale is their annual Summer of Sound thing (in June, I think), followed by the Black Friday + end of year period. This is when it makes most sense to buy their stuff. New instruments and collections usually aren't discounted in the year they appear, with the exception of a smaller intro promo. Then they get a nice discount the next year. The expansions are probably best bought, also in batch, at the semi-regular "9 for 99" expansion-specific promo.

If you have one of their collections, they may offer you a customised, "non-public" upgrade to a larger collection, at very good prices, out of the blue, in email - but you can't plan on that.

@ervin I think you’re talking me into my next rabbit hole 😅

Okay, just so you won't tell me I'm painting you an overly rosy picture, @krassmann 🙂 - the NI company group is laying off 8% of its workforce across all brands. I have a feeling this will not help their customer focus, which you will recall is my main problem with them already. And the article talks specifically about problems at NI over recent years:

NI in particular has seen tumultuous recent years as far as its business, which has included major leadership changes (including the exit of co-founder and former CEO Daniel Haver and CIO and President Mate Galic) and deep cuts in teams through a series of restructurings.

Link: https://cdm.link/2023/01/soundwide-layoffs/

The sounds are still great though. But wait for the discounts. 👍

No worries, I was joking. Your posts were well balanced. Meanwhile I checked out some NI stuff. I found out that I actually already have a license for Massive. I installed it and it comes with great sounding presets. The UI is rather ugly and looks very dated. But it sounds cool. I‘ll keep it. I also installed Kontakt player and some free libraries that work with Player. Well, nothing exciting so far. Free libraries often seem to be slimmed down demo versions. I also checked out Soundpaint which I find more attractive and the libraries are much cheaper. As a new customer I received a $15 coupon and bought the „soul guitar“ for just a fiver. Sounds really great.

So far I’m not really convinced of investing into Kontakt. I‘m more into electronic sounds, so I prefer synths. Probably I can cover my needs for sampled instruments with Soundpaint and save money.

Glad you like Soundpaint - I think it's amazingly powerful and versatile and the quality of some of the sampling is incredible. Don't forget you can also import your own samples and mix and match up to 4 parts of any instrument and apply loads of effects, arps and modulation to create new programs.

Don't know if this will work now that you've already signed up but this link might give you another $15 discount - http://soundpaint.refr.cc/nigelt

Yes, since I have no investment in libraries, I just look at the software itself and its features. For me Soundpaint is clearly the winner. It’s a more modern take on sampling. As you say it’s packed full of interesting features like morphing. I also joined their discord and users already have begun to create and share their own programs and samples. That seems to be an important difference to Kontakt. Soundpaint‘s terms allow to distribute content for Soundpaint as long as it is non-profit. Thanks for the coupon but doesn’t work anymore for me. I already bought another library and this is where my problems begin. I guess that’s because I’m inexperienced with flagship samplers.

So far I downloaded the free libraries and I bought the Soul Guitar and vocal library Terrie. While the instrument libraries are pretty much clear to me, I totally struggle with how to use the vocal libraries for a track. There are so many variations of the same phrase in one program (preset) but how do I know which key a phrase is in? How do I match it to the key and scale of my track? How to utilize the time stretching? Given that there are different phrases in one program. I guess experienced samplists do know how to use such a library but I don't. Could you point me to learning resources for such a workflow? Moreover, I cannot find a manual for Soundpaint.

It's not always easy to key / scale match a phrase like you get in the vocals library - there is the option to 'one note stretch' which assigns a phrase which is triggered from one key to all the keys on the keyboard, but that affects the speed of the phrase so isn't ideal.

The Soundpaint youtube channel has excellent content covering each library and the main features of the engine - https://www.youtube.com/@Soundpaint

The one that covers Terrie is here:

There's also a decent set of articles here - https://soundpaint.zendesk.com/hc/en-us - and I've always found the support to be very helpful and knowledgeable.

whiteout

Reaktor deserves a mention, imho. Yes, it can be clunky at times, but I think synths like Form or Kontour are fascinating and hugely inspiring. You won’t get anything similar anywhere else. Blocks are also fun and sound excellent, and some 3rd party packs (i.e. Toybox and EuroReakt) make it even better.

Guitar Rig is a fantastic multi fx processor, you don’t have to play guitar to get stellar stuff out of it. And Massive X is one of the best sounding synths out there.

NI definitely has some downsides as a company, and we’ll see how the recent layoffs will affect them. But for me it’s a net positive and worth the occasional hassle. And as others have said, don’t pay full price, wait for their summer sale. The bang for the buck is incredible, imho.