did NI make the right decision to release r4 now?

r4 is somewhat buggy ... there's no denying it.

it's also terribly cool, sexy, great-sounding.

so my question for all of you is:

did NI make the right decision to release r4 now? or should they have kept debugging/improving and released it a couple of months from now?

my vote is: yes, they made the right decision. but my yes is less than 100% enthusiastic ...

it seems to me that NI had two major forces to reconcile:

1. the desire to release a "perfect" (relatively bug-free) product.

2. the desire to keep all of us loyal r3 users from rebelling, storming the ramparts, declaring bloody revolution! two years is a long time to wait for a major upgrade. (is r4 a major upgrade?)

that's a tough task, to balance 1 against 2, and i think NI did okay -- not great, but okay -- with it.

being on the beta team, i know that the NI engineers take their jobs very seriously and are dedicated to doing excellent work. i also know that they are overwhelmed ... reaktor is an extremely complex program.

i'm okay with the fact that NI chose to release r4 now instead of waiting yet another month or two ... they had already delayed the release date several times, and, like i said, we users were ready to revolt.

i just wish NI would publicly "own up to" the bugginess of r4 and, perhaps, explain their side to us users so that we could empathize. without such an explanation, it's all too easy for us to assume that they're just being incompetent ... which is, in my opinion, not true.

thoughts?

rick

 

I'm with you on this one. This board has been very busy with not really constructive criticisms and rants.

I'm glad that R4 is released, in spite of its various glitches and bugs, and i'm quite confident that this program will be stable and running nicely soon.

 

Everything NI releases these days is full of bugs. Why should Reaktor be any different ?

And who cares how hard the programmers work ? Their job is to deliver a solid product - they have clearly failed. And as for the beta tester... maybe next time they should hire two.

Sick of rants about NI ? Well, wake up, users are sick of bugs. Do you think users want to post on these forums about all their problems ? Of course not. Everyone wants to feel that the money they have spent has been a good and productive investment. I'm angry at the money I've blown away on NI products which have failed to deliver on their advertised promises.

I think NI are in a very perilous corporate situation. They had enormous customer goodwill and loyalty built up from the early days and they are very carelessly throwing that away with one buggy release after another.

Good looks and good functionality will get you only so far. Already NI are notorious for never hitting a release date. Their new reputation for buggy software is a huge worry for them and us.

Remember Caesar, thou art mortal.

 

perhaps ... but does reaktor have a true (software-based) competitor? a reasonably priced sound-synthesis program that lets you do (nearly) as much and has as large/active a user base?

if so, i wanna know!

rick

 

I think it was good that they released it - and with all the improvements it is certainly good. However, some of the bugs are so visible - I mean even non-experienced users like myself keep finding them.

Maybe a wider beta programme would have helped, because in the end software which crashes a lot can only effect their reputation negatively.

Anyway - hopefully the bug list on the forum is useful to the developers, and hopefully we'll get an update again soon fixing some of the most obvious problems.

 

Release: fine, good, O.K. with me.
Although i can't keep my Mbox connected when using R4, it seems to work just fine....

Waited a little longer with release ?
fine, good, O.K. with me... BUT:

TELL your custumers what you are up to !!!
INFORM them what's going on !!
Don't leave everybody guessing.

So thumbs up for the programmers,
thumbs DOWN on public relations!

 

dont think ni really had much of a choice left of the release date after delaying it that much the forums were looking pretty angry. but never really looked so angry as they do right now. its no surprise that 4 is buggy. they werent ready to release it. so theres not so much that can be done about that. i doubt that the code writers are taking extra cigarette and coffee breaks right now while the users are pulling thier hair out. it doesnt surprise me that ni is overwhelmed. but they have been growing substantially in the last two years and they havent handled it gracefully really. they do need to communicate better. They are not going to be able to cover up any problems they are running into so why try? alot more people would be okay with this if we just got word from ni telling us what they are doing to remedy things. any news is always better than being in the dark. another problem (and i could be wrong about this cause i havent done my homework) is the entire user library has been converted to 4 right? So we are left with less of a choice to continue using 3 if we want to while 4 gets worked on. Either way, we dont have much of a choice either but to stay loyal, cause no other companies are doing what native instruments is doing. Easy for me to say though cause all my software works pretty much.

 

yes

I'm glad to have R4,even though it needs allot of cleaning up..Overall though I find it more stable than V3 and with some time it could be very strong..In the riht direction..Let's just hope they work on fixing out the bugs..Look at Cubase SX..alloy of bugs too..Only music software I find stable and solid these days is Logic 6 and Props Reason..

 

I totally agree. I don't mind waiting, if you explain that it's just not ready and lay out a plan for when it will be, or perhaps explain that you're really sorry, but you're going to have to release it with less features, or whatever. Just say something!

This totally ties in to the whole "no manual" thing. Yeah, after working with it for 20 or 30 hours, I've figured out a lot of the new tricks and quirks on my own (and got help online from people who bought the full version), but how much work/time would it have taken to just put together a 2 or 3 page PDF, or online help, or text file(!) outlining the new features and UI changes for those doing the download upgrade? And how much happier would I be right now as a customer? Hell, I write more directions for the ensembles I upload to the user lib. than I got for r4! (OK, I admit I don't have much of a life lately - he he!)

It's the lack of communication that's the biggest problem. If your releases are going to have such a "small company" feel, then don't be putting out 4 new products this year.

- CList

 

First of all ,Rachmiel,thanks for your contribution to the excellent reaktor library.
I'm a great reaktor fan , this amazing program opened new fields in synthesis for me ,so i'm very grateful to NI team ,really.
However i must admit tha R4 is not working as well as R3 did.My PC had several crashes in a setup (cubase sx) where R3 had no problems at all.
Should it have been released ? We've been waiting nearly a year for this upgrade,we've been anxious to get it, but , no , i think NI made a mistake here.Some customers are not as forgiving as others and this release maybe bad for Native's reputation,it made a bad impression,at least to me.We are not beta testers and REAKTOR4 has MANY bugs at the moment.
I'll be waiting for things to get fixed and i won't use R4 for any major project.

 

It is a bit quirky but it is like a new re-coded software..Give them a few weeks and an update should arise ..will hopefully clean up the mess..I agree though Reaktor is their Flasgship product. and should be top of the knotch for performance...(at least the one that when people say NI..they say Reaktor..) So it should be valued as very important..This seems to be not the best start (again)..

 

yes, it does - max/msp. a much more solid piece of code than reaktor 4, in its current state. however, it doesn't currently run on windows, and probably won't for a little while....

 

Personally, I don't care if they release now - as they have - or if they had waited --- it adds up to the same. I pre-ordered the update and got it 4-5 days after public release. Tried it out for a couple of days, drooled over the new ensembles...and then put it aside, decided to wait for a more stable version. It is just too shaky for a production environment, crashed on me more than 20 times (both standalone and as vsti in Cubase SX) over 2-3 days and has a few obvious functional flaws. In comparison, both Cubase SX and all my other vstis (around 15 commercial products) are otherwise rock steady. But maybe around version 4.1 - in 4-6 months time or something - it will be usable in production. I have been in commercial sw development for 15 years, so - believe me - I know about the strange factors that tends to push premature products to the market. However, relasing sw as buggy as this cannot IMO be excused by internal marketing dept pressure. If NI's QA people did not know the true state of R4 and sounded an alert, they did a poor job --- if they did know and told the PM people, then the PM people did a poor job, deciding to release it anyway. So, all in all - for their own reputation - NI should probably not have released R4. Short term cost-benefit decision, I guess.

 

When is ver.0 ever not buggy??

In my experience no matter what software or system you buy version .0 is always buggy. Its just a fact !!! If you hate disappointment ,then save yourself the pain of inevitible crashes and wait for version .1 (at least) .Its generally an uncurable curiousity that makes me want to try a .0 rather than wait.

Reaktor 4 will quite obviously "ROCK" .The sounds are awesome and the interface is much better especially using Audio Units.Stay POSITIVE people... its early days.

dT

 

1. can you work in "real time" in max/msp? i was thinking of learning csound (i'm a pc user), but i can't bear to wait until something compiles before i can hear it.

2. is your name terekita because of the indian tabla vocable "terakita" as in:

ghi terakita ghi terakita ghi
tara(ah)na dha dhin
dha terakitataka dha terakitataka
takaterakita ghi
tara(ah)na dha dhin

?

rachMiel

 

I'm still waiting for my copy of R4 to arrive, so I'm not in a position to comment, yet, on it's realtive readiness for public sale.. but from what I've read online so far, and based on how poorly tested the DFD update for Kontakt has obviously been, I think it's clear that:

NI is attempting to launch more products per unit of time than they have staff to properly test. Sure, the first version of new software may be buggy... but not ALL software companies are this bad.. MOTU in my experience ships products that are very solid first time out. That's why touring pros rely on MOTU's software. NI, OTOH, seems to ship products that are half baked... which sucks. It DOES NOT have to be this way. Shipping solid software is the hall mark of a mature company that has it's act together. Paying customers should not have to endure obvious bugs and defects in code. That's what the beta cycle is for.

NI had best get their act together. Great concepts for products, but they are much more buggy than they should be. After time, customer base will erode, as other companies can and do ship less buggy software that is compeitive.

Either NI should design and run a competant beta program, or cut back on the agressive launch schedule... obviously, they can't do it all and deliver properly tested products. Either they will do this, or customers will give 'em a proper kick in the ass and move on to software that is professional enough to be used in realworld production environements.

Buggy Software Simply Sucks And There's No Reason To Put Up With It !!

 

an insight after reading your message:

perhaps NI's quasi-flakiness with respect to release dates/bugginess is one of the things that makes us users regard reaktor as more of an absolutely fascinating and wonderful AUDIO TOY than a rock-solid professional AUDIO ENGINE. the whole thing feels just a bit like a mad audio scientist's laboratory ... frankenstein synthesis.

rick

 

I dont understand why they didnt just release a public beta to all registered R3 users. (isnt that what max/msp os X version is right now?) Essentially that is what it is right now, calling it as such would have caused less hostility.

 

Salutations N.I. thankyou for Reaktor 4 OS X
I am having a lot of fun. Pregnant stuff.
Better R with a bug now than no R at all.
If it was Nuclear there might be a problem,
But its not, its safe. So have fun. And thanks for the ens.

Heres to the sun coming up tomorrow. . .
xxxxxxx

 

The REAL, BIG questions now are :

-Do they plan to make it work "reliably enough" for pros to use it as it's ment to be used...

-When will they provide the next update..

-At what point of development (bug fixin) will THEY consider they've gone far enough.. and leave it there untill they focuss on V5..

-Are they decently gonna tell us anything about the three issues above..


PS. Support at NI is a bit of a joke isn't it?

PS2: To people who rely on cracked versions : BUY THE FRIGIN PROGRAM... maybe it's a good idea.. : )