Now, what NI thinks about me

As the "original" poster of this thread, I can truly say that I wish I had could of come up with a better way than you have of expressing the problem. Very eloquent!
For the folks here that are not having a problem, I say, "that's fantastic!" When I use(d) Kontakt or Kontakt 2 with Cubase, it worked ok. I made a decision to migrate to Pro Tool because of my client base. If one reads the literature and NI's website, Kontakt and EVERY other NI "flagship" product has the same functionality; whether an RTAS, VST, or DXi, plugin. It;s simply not true.
I received an email day before yesterday from Mr. Wilhelmi, the head of Customer Support in Germany confirming there ARE problems in regards to issues. Have you seen an announcement from NI in this UG or anywhere on their website in regards to this? No? Exactly.
Everyone must remember, after repeatedly sending support forms and getting FIVE different answers on how to resolve my problems, I decided to CALL "customer support" here in the USA. what I got was a defensive attitude, obfuscation, interruptions, and implied insults. Somewhere in between I was told my problems would all be fixed if I upgraded ($$) to the latest version of Pro Tools. Though I didn't feel good about it, I did the upgrade. Guess what? I still had the same problems. This is not a rant for you folks that are blaming the other poster for that. These are REAL, GENUINE, problems that NI has finally admitted to me exist. Perhaps $500 is not a lot for some folk, but for me, it's a significant investment. And I don't own only Kontakt. I own SEVEN of their products and at least THREE of them DO NOT work as specified on the plaform that I now use. I'm not talking bugs here folks, I talking about major functionality issues. So, in my case I am talking about quite a bit more than $500! How did their QA people miss these things?
Something else I read here that is so very true. If NI was more involved with this UG, there would not be the sort of venom I have read here. Go to the Digidesign UG. Go On, take a look! Do you know that there's over 1500 views of my thread there and 60+ responses? You know what? It isn't a flame war, it's a group of people with a genuine interest in an existing problem.
The ONLY flame I received there was from NI. What's up with that? Now they they realize that they have stuck their collective feet in their mouths. Has anyone from NI "chimed in" there since? Of course not.
FWIW, if stating problems with functionality that hampers the creative spirit cannot be voiced, then what's the point of having a forum? Now, bring it on; if this is a "crusade" then so be it. One thing you can be sure of, I didn't start it, but I'm not going to cower in a corner and just meader away just because now it's acceptable to "make nice" because someones tells you that you are a malcontent or a troublemaker. If that was the benchmark, well, I won't say it; just fill in you own idea of a situation where a small group of people dictate how satisfied or dissatisfied one is with anything in general...

Rant complete.

Michael McCoy
Yorktown, VA USA

 

rsarja2005 and virtual_mike
i support all of what you`ve said so far.
Great.

 

Thanks, Yasan!

Well, for you folks that wonder, and use NI stuff with Pro Tools at least, Digidesign came through today with a reply on their UG in reply to the huge post there. It is well known that Digi monitors it's UG constantly (unlike ...) and here's the results:
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Hi all,

I'm Ed Gray, Director of Partnering Programs at Digidesign. I'm responding to this thread as my last gesture of work before I take off for the holidays! I want urge some calm here and let you know that the need-to-know folks at both Digidesign and Native Instruments have read and analyzed this thread and exchanged detailed information about the problems observed here. We're working together to parse out the specific issues called out here, and we're in the process of looking back at our own customer support call logs and internal testing records (e.g., bug reports) to see what we already know about these problems.

I want you to know that we're taking these issues seriously and I will personally see that there's satisfactory data posted back to this thread as soon as possible. I also want to ask your understanding as both of our companies, as you can imagine, have limited engineering and testing staff-days to address this in the remainder of 2005. Digidesign is actually closted until Tuesday, 27 December. In the meantime, I'll monitor this thread and I'm happy to hear from folks who have specific questions. I'm at ed_gray@digidesign.com.

The cast of characters on this thread are a good cast - musicians who really want to make some music, and employees who are passionate about our respective products. What do we really think of each other? We have great friends among our respective companies, and we're here to work, company-to-company to make our musical products work robustly together.

Thanks for bearing with us as we look into this in earnest, and I hope all of you have a great holiday,

Ed

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Now, wouldn't it be nice to see something like that posted here from the other side of this equation?

Cheers

Michael McCoy
Yorktown, VA USA

 

Kevin may be one of the best contributors, but frankly, nothing has (yet) made NI give a damn about their users and fix the (well documented) problems with the software that occurs even when running on very fast computers with very fast disks. I commend the guy who started this post for trying to get NIs attention. And yes, I am a registered user, and I love the sounds I can get in Kontakt2 - I just want it to work consistently and reliably.

 

Gee, I missed this little bit of character assassination, sqye, but you know it rolls off the back when you consider the source.

If you're really in such bad straits, pick up the dang phone. The folks that I consult at NI/Southern California are a darned helpful bunch, indeed.

The more I use K2, the more I like it!

[go pick a fight elsewhere, why dontcha!?]

P.S. I'm not a Moderator -- just an ordinary Joe User like many of the other positive-minded folks around here!

KevinKauai

 

LOL! Look how old that post is! Character assassination?! Get a life!

 

I'd be really interested to know the name(s) of the support folks at NI who you found helpful. Every time I have spoken to someone it's the same guy who does stuff like tells you to upgrade the computer when you have performance problems (he didn't even suggest the self-mask script) and then when you tell him the spec of the computer you have (dedicated dual G5 2.5Ghz with 10k rpm internal raptor) he puts you on 'hold' for more than 50 minutes - ie he basically just disappeared. This is something that has regularly happened to me.

 

As this thread seems to be a bunch of people crying in their beer over problems that I’m just not having, I’ve not followed it all that closely. However, a couple of days ago, I got a notification that a new post had been added and in the process of re-acquainting myself with the “issue” I came across SQYE’s comment. (How can his assessment be considered other than an insult since he obviously doesn’t know me. Others have pointed out the contributions that I have made to this Forum and to the K2 community in general, so I won’t toot my own horn on that.

I believe that I have chatted with NI Southern California folks about 5 times. While I do make notes at the time about the person handling my issue, once the situation is resolved, I no longer have that history. I would honestly rank NI’s SC support troops at #2 (in considering M-Audio, Steinberg and Sibelius – which would be #1, #4 and #3, respectively).

As for Chest …

As you know, Chest, I have lobbied for your being permanently bounced from this Forum based on the sheer level of incivility that you bring to most discussions that your ‘participate’ in. Your comments in this case do nothing to change that assessment.

Cooler heads get things DONE, as opposed to seeming to improve their own egos with the casual put-down and snide comment. However, when attacked in that fashion, I will respond (most politely) in kind. I will not be responding to any personal attacks or character assassination in this thread or others. Frankly, I’ve got too much else in the way of PRODUCTIVE things to get DONE!

KevinKauai

 

Yeah, I can tell. Later, Tarzan.

 

TOOT!! You did more tooting in that post to last a life time. TOOT!!
TOOT!! I would toot my horn too, but you used all the toots up! TOOT!!

TOOT!! Later TOOT!! Tarzan.................. TOOT!!