Something is going wrong for NI

It's more painful on dual cores. I have quad core and dual core so I can confirm. On 4 cores runs nice and same project produces issues.
But I can live with that – just change my workflow a bit and it's all fine.

 

its not just NI, Arturias the same... releasing Spark 2 with obvious bugs, but they ignore it and carry on releasing new synths

Ive been waiting on replacement knobs from them for over six months

Even hardware isnt free from it...Elektron Octatracks are wanting an OS update..DSI tempest users too (for a long time)...how long did it take the virus TI to become usuable/stable for most?? Arturia keybeds were awash with problems too

I have editors from soundtower and rekon that barely work (yet a soundiver editor last supported on XP is still running smoothly on my win 8 rig)

everyones scrambling for what little cash folks have to spend and it means quality controls going out the winbnow

 

arturia support has let me down lately. sometimes it takes them forever weeks to respond to emails.

so far roland has been good with their aira gear. all of the products have seen firmware updates and all have them have been stable. they have added a lot of functionality and new sounds. roland has also done a great job interacting and actually listening to its customers. some customer requests have already made it into the firmware updates. even some of the anti-roland people are starting to get on board.

 

btw roland recently added the 707 and 727 kits to the tr-8 and they sound very good. for them!

 

yeah not everyone...I bust a two year old auratone mixcube...they responded immediately, repaired it and shipped it back for free within a week..Elektron honoured a repair warranty even though I was away for a year.

cant imagine either NI or Arturia being even close to this kind of support

 

Arturia got back quickly in regards to a software question. Not sure about returning something though and that process. Had a bad maschine mk2 (last two years or so) and a Traktor Z2 mixer. Got brand new ones within 2 weeks from their texas repair facility. At the same time, I called their support and it made stuff go faster. Good experience on my end.

 

Vision
I see a lot of people are complaining about bugs. For me the most important thing is the vision. I don't believe quantity of plugins is an interesting direction for me. I also don't think this is a progressive direction. I only need a few (one or two) good synths, a drum computer, a mixer, some fx.... that is it. After Komplete 6 there was no big reason to buy complete 7, 8, 9 or 10

NI and Quality?
What about Quality. Do people really think NI is still that good with its vst's? Do we really need another EQ, Compressor, Delay, Reaktor ensemble? Is monark really 'the synth that rules them all'? Especially when you compare it to the real 'moog'? I don't believe in it. I understand the moog is much more expensive... I also don't think NI is worse than other brands... they are just average.

Just some ideas:
What about making a hardware box, with analog components, that can be played like a vst? Although NI says, the future is in digital... I think the future is only in digital control.... the analog sound (oscillators, but also filters) is so nice!!! Or what about putting a computer inside Maschine (like Akai is busy with, or like what Korg did, or what Elektron did, or what Roland did, or what Nord did?) In my opinion, we are not living in the era of possibility, I think we live in the era of usability, quality and hybrid systems.

Lean
I think all software companies suffer on bugs in their systems. I think it is important to keep your organisation 'Lean', not to have 1000 products that you have to update with every new operating system update. This will let an organisation fall apart. This, for example, happened to the wonderful Berlin based monitor speaker brand called 'Adam audio'. They created a lot of different speakers, lost overview, and couldn't compete with other brands. So they went bankrupt.... (and try to stand up again, right now).

 

I think the release stuff with bugs problem isn't just native /arturia...etc its everywere now just look at the unfinished videogames coming out.
it seems its now the standard with companys that were just paying beta testers.most games lately have been unplayable and with software it seems companys are in too much of a rush too support new pc specs then drop old specs too quickly.
in my case maschine 2.2 is unusable ive just bought a load of expansion packs and I cant use them properly because maschine 2.2 doesn't support dual core computers ..it loads but I can only get 1 or 2 groups going before maschine 2.2 stutters then finally dies but if I load up 1.8 then it runds just fine but I cant use any of the new expansion packs ive just bought.
I contacted tech support and they told me sorry your computers no good for 2.2 and my only choice is I have to go buy a new computer..but theres nothing wrong with the one I already have !!!! it runs Cubase 7.52 fine it runs ableton fine it runs maschine 1.82 fine but now native have killed off maschine 2 and now ive updated all my complete plugins they now use way more cpu power than they did before I updated them and when I asked about that they said oh were not supporting dual core or intel processors any longer ..so eventually they will all die too.

I was going too buy complete 10 ultimate but now I cant I will have to put that money away too buy a new computer too run plugins which they broke .

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and were the new tracktor controller is concerned is its priced too high for it too used by the masses that's why you don't see it out in the wild.its aimed at the david guettas off this world not aimed at the bedroom rave dj too me it seems native are slowly concentrating on higher priced items and cater for a higher profiled customer.

 

That's weird. I have dual core MBP 2011. Using only expansions (drum kits, drum synth, Massive) works fine. Problems starts when I load some Reaktor synth. Man, these are CPU hungry.
So using Reaktor i just create sound, sample to audio and bypass plugin (in case I want to change something later) – works like a charm.

 

I get major problems when I try and load lazer dice or resonant blaze those two just kick the crap out of maschine.with reactor its razor that's a no go for me it just kills my cpu..monark is ok and others are ok too.kontakt glitches if I load studio drummer or giant,the vsl are ok.massive /fm8 use way more cpu than before ive noticed this when I load old projects .

 

i don't think you can really compare analog to digital at all, nor expect a digital solution to replace analog gear, but a digital solution is certainly easier to carry around and if you have digital sounds that are reasonably close to the analog ones, you can swap them out for the analog sources in the studio in the mixing stages. a sample of an analog device though, well recorded, will sound identical to the exact same sound being produced on the original analog gear.

there is no digital substitute for tubes or germanium triodes. you can get very close in decay algorithms to an analog delay to the point you cannot tell the difference. software synths can crunch the numbers and create a close virtual simulation of what is occurring on an analog synth, but it cannot add the same exact tone that physical circuity has. this is neither better nor worse as it depends on one's preference, as an analog synth cannot create the same tone a digital one can either, nor can tubes or triodes have the same uniform consistency. i see them as two different type of instruments rather than one an imitation of the other.

i think NI produces some of the best audio software and hardware: maschine in right environment is an amazing tool, which brings me to wonder if not part of the complaint i and others have is not entirely from the software, but from the limitations of using a laptop, that is now designed to be disposable like a phone, and expecting desktop workstation performance. is it the OS, the i series processors, or the software.. or all of the above. i get great performance on my main workstation with m2 and am full of happy, on my laptop i get disappointment and feel like i wasted my money and like wednesdays child i am full of woe. kontakt an excellent soft sampler as well, it turns a computer into a hardware sampling workstation.

i am a bit annoyed with lack of even unofficial legacy support and backwards compatibility, i feel a bit controlled and manipulated here. support is important and the prime interest should be enabling one to produce music in the moment. i used to when i first got into computers religiously update and upgrade the OS. then after years of doing so i found it was often simply counter productive to the focus, my work. i did not want to spend a month re-installing or waiting for fixes anymore. when there is no logical need to, locking installers, locking files to exact sub sub versions, and creating 64bit only plug-ins is as i mentioned, controlling and manipulative. we set our preferences to our preference. given the limitations of the current trend in mobile computers and the expense of a solid high end high performance audio work station, it is not unreasonable to expect this. it is unreasonable to expect a user to have to install a new OS or give up using 32bit effects/synths just over a big fix or a couple new features.

 

arturia responded to my first email within 24 hours. it was the follow up emails that took several weeks to get a response. eventually everything got resolved. maybe it was just a busy time for them.

 

Yeah, like djwaxxy said this is happening everywhere with software nowadays but the trend needs to stop. Right now some people have to download a 40GB patch for Assasin's Creed: Unity. That't not a ******* patch, that's the whole game for Pete's sake. That will kill your bandwidth quota right there. Companies don't care anymore. They save the costs involved on QA and use customers as guinea pigs. The problem is that just like gamers we put up with it. We keep giving them our money and so they keep doing it.

Software is never perfect, there are always going to be issues that is understandable but there is a way where you can get early adopters to test for you willingly while not marring your reputation. It's called a public beta. Apple recently did a huge public beta for Yosemtie and the result is probably one of the most stable OSX releases ever put out by Apple. By the time I jumped in on my production machine with 10.10.1 there were very few issues and none that would break or bring down your system.

NI used to have public betas, I understand that they have a competitor now and that they need to keep features close to the vest but it's not working imo.

As for vision. NI hasn't had vision since they brought up all of their shares way back when (maybe a year after Maschine was introduced) at the time we thought well now NI doesn't have to answer to some unknown investor who doesn't really give a **** about the products, and instead what happened is that NI started to play it safe, started to look at any way to monetize their products at the expense of actual innovation and to follow trends as opposed to setting them. They consolidated under 3 banners, Maschine, Komplete and Traktor. All synth development moved to Reaktor, all effects at some point were done in Guitar Rig (until they realized people weren't going to pay for that) as NI was trying to position Guitar Rig as Reaktor for effects. They ramped up kontakt library development. They added VST support to Maschine to be able integrate Komplete and tie it in to Maschine. They dropped Kore that very year and restructured the forums to reflect the new direction they were heading.

The product that saw the most development within that time is Traktor as NI started to push into that market as they saw what was coming

NI is not the same company that came out with Massive, Reaktor, FM8, Kontakt, etc. They are not the same company that came out with Kore or Maschine. They are the company that focuses almost all of their energy on traktor, dj controllers, and remix packs because the DJ market is hot at the moment. They are the company that hasn't released an updated version of their Komplete Audio series in years.

That being said Ni is not all bad, I see glimpses of the former company peek through now an then. When they do interesting Reaktor ensembles, the Christmas gifts are always interesting. NI isn't stingy with the updates. Their excellent hardware design and aesthetics. There are still things to like there but those are things that aren't likely to keep customers long-term imo.

 

a public beta is a workaround to keeping on schedule when something is not quite ready..lol.. though it is better to have a public beta where one is warned to expect issues and an interaction with the product development than to have a release with no warning full of issues that can break your work.

i can see guitar rig being dropped or simply being considered finished and let be and available (why do they have to discontinue products, pulling them from sale, when they are finished and nothing else is needed); it does not really work as a "guitar rig", like pedals would, there is too much latency often to be practical, it still requires preamp and amp, and the tone feels like it is missing the point. as an effects in a DAW or m2, guitar rig is interesting and latency is not an issue, though i would rather have the direct effects in vst form. kore was great... the morphing of layered macros incredible - one could even automate that in cubase. i did discover you can do much of what kore did in maschine with reaktor loaded with the same ensembles that were being used in kore... just the morphing power is not there..

anyway, back on the topic... i do notice that the tech support is no longer warm and nice like they used to be back pre maschine when kore was in full swing...

i think the change in the browser and the unifying komplete is giving it a toy like feel, added with the disco lights over features does not help as it starts to resemble the toy of yesteryear that had coloured lights that you would try to remember the sequence to... mk1 looked much more serious... as far as tractor... the dj controllers do look like toys in the pictures, and it is not just the ones that NI makes.. ... the only ones that do not look like toys, and i think denon looks the most like hardware, are the top of the line denon and pioneers ones.. both of whom have been making dj controllers and gear much longer than NI,

 

companys like ubisoft though have shot themselves in the foot now though gamers all know there releasing shoddy unfinished gaes then charging premium prices for it looks at the crew its only been out a few weeks and now its going for about £24 that's half of what it was 2 weeks ago when it came out..ac unity is another game that's still not fixed and now ubisoft are giving away a free game too gamers who go suckered into buying the season pass but all this crap has now tarnished the brand ubisoft most gamers now will expect a crappy product and wont pay premium prices for there games ..I know I wont..i may buy them when there about £10 but I still think £25 is way over priced for those games because a lot of the game is still fenced off behind a paywall which they expect you too pay more real money too get content which is on the dvd and should be free.

a lot of it falls at the feet of xbox gamers who kissd bill gates ass and started the whole pay too go online,pay for season content rubbish if those gamers woke up at the time and saw it for what it was a scam and refused to buy them then we wouldn't be in the state we are today concerning game companys ripping people off.

and now music software is slowly going the same way avid charge for tech support (which should be free),Steinberg charge for mid upgrades (they should be free),.....etc ..and all the while this is going on software is less stable now than it ever has been..i get more crashes now and slow down than I ever did on win xp.....I just hope this is a blip and everything gets back to normal but in the back of my mind I think it will get much worse especially once the governments take full control of the internet and start rationing off how much you can download...im on unlimited downloads currentlly but one day that will come to an end and when that does large kontak libarys will be a thing of the past.some of my friends get 10gb a month download allowance from there internet provider that's so poor they cant even watch Netflix sometimes because they've downloaded a patch which has taken them way over there limit and there gonna get charged extra for each gb there over there limit...its a ripoff.

 

just hush your mouth…. hush … hush up right now… Maschine is the future, everything else is irrelevant.

 

steinberg lowered it's upgrade price per pervious version, of wave lab, cubase, and halion, to new version to $49 - $99, it used to be $199 - $249, but they cut their phone support off to a don't call use we will call you request form. they unofficially have good legacy support, just don't ask, but usually will run on 3 - 5 release versions of OS's, files are backwards and forwards compatible, and you get access to all version previous. .. though the lack of backup to the dongle is not good and the software does tend to crash at times... you get good about backing it up as you work...

 

about vision and about lean management, connected to the bug-thing people want to talk about:
Immagine you make 100+ products... all for different kinds of computers with different OS types & versions.... it is impossible to get good results after a while.

I bought a macbook pro quad core, and almost never had any problem with NI stuff and bugs. Why.... at NI you see these computers too. If the products are tested on these...... there is a big change they will work. But the amount of types of computers (touch, non-touch, tablet style laptop, windows vista,7,8, 8.1, 8.2, etc) is that big.... you cannot make so many software tools that work well.

Imagine how nice it is for all these brands that created their own computer inside their box. Akai will run on Windows, but others have their own OS (like korg, nord, elektron, roland).... it is 100x easier to create a tool that simply works.

I am not a software developer, (but I have been working a lot with software development, and unfortunately I have been testing way too many telecom software), NI will step in a trap if they keep on creating endless amounts of tools, for a lot of different systems.

 

same here, everything in maschine 2.12 runs fine if i don't use reaktor too much, some kontakt multis, or try to do too much. i attribute it more to the limitations of the 2014 disposable phone top-esque design of the mbp than to maschine. though it is just the cat's meow if i want to use safari, provided i don't try to flash to much.. lol.. i think NI software and hardware is great and i am mostly content with it... bad versions happen.. things get missed.. ..just don't lock down the files to versions so soon..... you know that thing about burning your bridges..

niOS, that would solve it for reaktor. giga studio used to run at the kernel level so you could get it all out of your computer and have nothing in the background running not needed for the application. looks like those k49 and 61 controllers have plenty of space in them to put in a brain for it..... i think i like nOS better.. lol...

 

Were have you seen the update is that price?im on cubase 7.5 and its £82 for me to upgrade too cubase 8