Welcome Keir

Hi welcome. Noticed the sticky at the top but we can't discuss anything in that and unlike in the other Komplete forums you didn't start a thread here so I thought I'd start a welcome thread for you myself.

As you can no doubt see the Kore forum is one of the most active ones here and has a strong following and lots of people designing templates and sounds for it but there is also some anxiety about whether Kore is going to be sustained as a product considering not just the lack of development but also the lack of information. As this is your role we would hope that you can reassure us on a few things - at least let us know NI still care about Kore and Kore users.

We all think to stop development on it would be a huge mistake considering the amount of time, effort and cash the Kore community has dropped on this great piece of kit and we are hoping for a sign from NI that all is not lost. Just hiving its main innovations into Maschine is a non starter as that still effectively ditches all that work and not everyone even wants a drum machine (particularly one that is over twice as expensive and a lot bulkier than Kore). Kore's strength and specialism is as a sound design and organisation platform so it should complement Maschine and not be merged into it.

So how about some reassurances from NI please?

 

Excellent post! Fully agree. I sent a pm to Kier expressing some very similar (though less complete) sentiments.

Let's hope for a reply.

 

Keir, as our 'man on the inside', please let NI know that at minimum 64bit support is needed.

And if they want to discontinue it after that, maybe they could open the MIDI/controller protocol, so those of us who are DIY inclined can improve on the controller. I'd really love to be able to browse and select preset categories from the controller, not just presets.

Thanks!

 

I can only add my voice to the above sentiments.

Hopefully you can shed some light into the future of Kore.

Cheers.

 

Hi everyone - thanks for the welcome thread!

I know there hasn't been any info about Kore for quite a while and the recent focus on Maschine is quite obvious. But Kore maintenance is ongoing and 64bit plugin versions are also in the works. I can't give you a timeline yet but I promise to keep you posted!

 

Hi Keir,

I know you probably can't say too much but I noticed you used the word maintenance rather than development... without trying to read too much into that does NI consider Kore a fully-developed product?

 

Hi, yes, I used 'maintenance' because although development work is continuing on the updates mentioned, Kore is considered a fully developed product and I didn't want to be misleading.

The team want to make sure that we are supporting Kore 2 so it is compatible with current set-ups, but in the longer term we will be focussing on the development of Maschine.

 

Much appreciate your honest answer Keir.

From my perspective as long as Kore gets the 64bit and multi-core treatment and supports the audio engines from the next Komplete I would be content.

 

Keir,

Thanks for the info, it is much appriciated.

Can you say anything about multicore support in Kore in the Kore maintenance. To me Kore is a fully developed product and I don't need any more functions. But as powerful as Kore is, it's severly limited by only using 1 core of a multicore processor.

Either way, again thanks for the info.

 

Yes. Thanks for the info BUT if Kore and Komplete are to diverge (as was intimated elsewhere) then I guess it's the end of the line for me. The whole thing worked because of the integration. And musicians bought into the concept BECAUSE of the integration. If divergence occurs it'll be one hell of a letdown.

I know I'll have the system 'as is' but I'll feel no loyalty to a company that wants to concentrate on DJ toys. I'm VERY sad at this development.

 

Hi Keir
Thanks to NI for your presence an thank you to read and reply our questions.
Have questions :
NI thought to recycle user's kore controllers to be natively supported and add in instant controls into maschine ? Maschine can't controls a module and mix or pattern
at same time ; many manip are required.It will be better with more global control.
And like a1mixman and taoyoyo wonder , kore and even maschine will be multicore ?

 

+1 to this.

To hear that the only further work on Kore will be to support 'current' systems means that the clock's ticking to the day when systems change (Windows 8, Pro Tools 10 or whatever...) and Kore doesn't work properly any more, or doesn't work at all.

It seems a tremendous waste of the whole concept, as well as the great work that's gone into both the product and specific soundpacks like Sonic Fiction (and makes the standardised "Koresound" format seem rather silly, no?).

(As an aside, this is one reason why a Waves-style subscription model is good -- their plugins from the 1990s are still going strong and are compatible with current gear!)

Still, I appreciate Keir's honesty so far, and will look forward to any further clarification.

 

Seems like this thread has served a useful purpose anyway - we have had more straightforward official information from NI than we have had for months. Thanks Keir. Now I think it's clear that our concerns were justified, Kore will be 64 bit but further development is at a standstill apart from some limited "maintenance" (which can only take us so far without further development as Kore is ultimately dependent on it's internal engines, and compatibility with hosts and operating systems). The premise seems to be that Maschine is where the interest lies but that is a consequence of NI's neglect of Kore as much as Maschine's success. It would be a huge waste of time, effort and money to just abandon Kore; both on the part of NI and Kore's highly active and loyal user base.

 

as soon as the maschine 1.6 announcement i write this : http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showpost.php?p=755198&postcount=16
and it was clear that both product were face to face.
Kore is a finished product as Keir said, all real enhancement will require a new hardware product, that will not make us happy to be forced to buy it.
I will be very happy to see soon a 64 bit update, the only thing i hope is that NI will not close the Kore topic because with people like Kymeia or Losan, i'm sure Kore can live a long life (Thanks again to you).
I'm very sorry for my poor english.

 

Thanks for the honest answer Keir. So Kore will be given 64 bit+ bug fixes and latest Komplete 7 engines. I assume K8 will not be compatible.

As a Kore and Maschine owner I am fine with this to a point. My only issue is like stated in another thread, all the work that went into these Kore sounds. If NI are going to go all out for Maschine, they need to give it most all the Kore functionality. I hope they are able to make it read Kore sounds or at least Kore packs. A good, upgrade price for Kore users is a must. Maschine still needs some of the more advanced browser features like column sorting page renaming etc. Maybe even an improved Maschine hardware for v2.

 

WTF ?

Am I the only one who's seriously pissed off ?
a fully developed product ?
WHY didn't NI told us this 3 years ago ?
Ah, sure, better don't say nothing, lets bring out a player version,
and sell shitloads of soundpacks, lets make money.
No need for further development...
Who cares about those who'd like to see the full Kore version evolve - we don't.

Since Release of v2 (2007) there has been one major new features - the MIDI mode (in 2008 !). Development... nada...

You discontinued several products in the past , saying this will free up resources for the other
products - but sure not for Kore,
now again the same Bla Bla...
All the feature requests - just a waste of time and ideas.
Very dissappointing.

What's next ?
Discontinue FM8 ? Battery ?
Machine in 4 years after NI has released the next big thing ?
Sorry, I was thinking about buying machine one day,
but I won't, not because I am angry now, but because I really can't
trust NI about further development to it !
Not this way...
Not that NI would give a damn about it.

Signing off

 

Indeed.

Keir, I can understand the discontinuation of products with an old code base that can fairly easily be replaced with samples or other synths (B4, Pro-53); ditto relatively niche-interest effects (Voktator; Spektral Delay).

But I think that many of us understood Kore to be -- as its name suggests -- a cornerstone of NI development for years to come. So the announcement seems very strange and frustrating.

 

Financial reasons may have much to do with it. Maschine is the money maker hit due to how awesome it is. Much of what Kore does is something folks have wanted integrated into a production product like Maschine for a long time. Past the 64 bit and maybe multiprocessor support, Kore really needed new hardware that was more like Maschines to grow further. It may not have seemed worth the investment to keep going with it. At least the 64 bit update will make it able to be used for quite a while as is. Just trying to give another perspective.

 

For Maschine to be even worth jumping on board it would need:

Full Kore soundlibrary compatibility
A morphing variations pad
Librarian features like Kore
Reasonable crossgrade path for Kore users

but even then as Losan states NI are in danger of losing trust with a significant number of their followers - what's to say Maschine won't get dropped too at the next twist and turn of marketing strategies?

 

Nope, you are not. I'm mainly using Kore as a live host and I'm tired of waiting for some features, which have been requested for a long time. These are not even 64bit or multicore support. First should have been self-evident since the beginning.

- User Page recall with Performance Presets

Second should be selfevident as well, when seeing Kore as a live host.

- More than 127 Performance Presets via bank select

I've always waited to see this features added, but it seems as if this won't be the case. Beside this there are still bugs to fix. If I've properly understood Keir, this things will not be changed, if not please correct me.

With the decision to declare Kore as "fully-developed" (which is just a other name for discontinued), NI has definitely lost me as a customer.
I'll be looking for alternatives.