Native Instruments becomes the lead brand, Soundwide is gone, Izotope, PA and Brainworx now part of NI
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Oh, that’s interesting. Unifying the license managers is a good thing, at least in principle…
Upsides: No more goofy PA-InstallationManager or Izotope Product Portal!
Downsides: Native Access, where you can install gigabytes upon gigabytes of sample libraries, but if you ever want that space back, you’re on your own. 
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I’ll tell you one thing, I do not envy the R&D department. They’ve got a pretty hefty name and game changing legacy products looming over them. I can only imagine the pressure that they must be feeling.
I’m just happy that Reaktor got VST3 support.
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Maschine plus mini or nothin
I’m intrigued. I think this is a smart move, but one that should have happened at the start. Whoever did the move (creating a new brand no-one had heard of and put other well-known ones under that umbrella) missed a trick. That brand should either be silent, or one people know.
Depending on what they’re going for, I can see a few moves, but the product line is a nightmare unless they either a) keep them apart (in which case this second brand move makes as little sense as the first) or b) start whittling down the products to the essentials, and rebrand them as NI under one badge over the next 10 years.
Key to this is NI regaining some credibility in the technical department, even if they find it by borrowing it from other companies.
From a branding perspecitve it’s a real mess to disentangle because some of it will be relevant to what NI wants to do and some of it would just be added complexity for the end buyer, given the amount of products NI has already. In that scenario, some NI and Izotope products will have to go, but PA is a whole thing to disentangle while also keeping it part of the group. This is all not least because NI as the lead brand should look to make any SW work with its HW (or at least that’s the theory.)
To me, I see a natural link between NI and Izotope. NI heps you start a song, Izotope helps you finish it. If they want Komplete to be “komplete” (sorry!) then the Izotope mix & master assistants are a natural and perfect addition to those bundles. They could probably do a version with fewer orchestral and more pop/dance/house type sounds (maybe Komplete Studio -making stuff up here), with Komplete Composer (or similar) for the composing audience which is still super important to NI. Personally, I think the simplest move would be to let PA be its own thing, maybe with the exception of Unfiltered Audio’s more recent plugins (Silo, Lofi, Bass Mint etc) which seem to fit well with what NI and Izotope do. Anything NI brings under their umbrella from PA would have to replace something NI/Izotope already does or has in the locker, and I don’t see too many tools in the PA group that wouldn’t need re-designing from a UI perspective to make it all work together.
It’s at least a decades worth of a job, so good luck to 'em.
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Woah! Wasn’t expecting that.
I’ve recently been using Izotope for pulling vocals drums, bass etc out of tracks to sample.
What can the other brands bring to Maschine?
Tangent but I found some of the online stem splitters (see other thread) much more impressive than Izotope when I last tried it
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Hopefully a full development team that can start evolving the Maschine soft- and firmware (for Plus) in a regular cadence.
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Interesting analysis!
Perhaps you should send them an invoice for ”consultant services” 
Did they ever update Maschine/Komplete screens UI after launch? Looks like it’s been like that forever. I like the idea of NKS and having all knobs mapped to the VST. But you have a small image of the VST. Would be nice to have something more visual and animated when you moved those knobs. Not easy to commit to a ecosystem and then not see core updates besides new instruments/packs.
I also considered selling my KK S49 and get a Maschine to keep the NKS integration while saving some space and get a midi keyboard from another brand. But with Maschine you can’t use Komplete Kontrol plug-in directly. You have to use Maschine plug-in if I understand it. And don’t like the idea of using a multi channel sequencer inside a sequencer (Maschine inside Live) just to load up some sounds with knobs assigned.
As a iZotope RX Post Production Suite 7 user I don’t see which products should be eliminated from iZotope. Can you give a example why?
Yeah, like I don’t doubt Izotope products are good and that they have a place in the mix. (I love Ozone added in K14 and am considering Neutron.) It’s a really good fit for what NI does.
They mention in the newsletter a unified approach so I’m basing my thought off of this. What I mean is that if (as part of this move) they brand all products from NI, Izotope and PA as Native Instruments, they will have an insane amount of products. And that’s taking into consideration what a large bundle Komplete already is.
Take something like reverb as an example. So if the other companies come in under the NI banner, it might get confusing for buyers if they have Raum, Neoverb, and the several flavours of PB reverbs on offer. At that point NI will need to decide what products should be in standard bundles like Komplete (a bit like how Ozone is in there now). That may lead to (say) an NI, Izotope, Brainworx or PQ plugin being de-prioritised and serviced as a legacy thing and then depreciated (like Absynth, Trash 2 etc). Then all the focus will go on selling a slimmed down package taking the best that each of them brings to the table.
As we’ve been chatting about, NI need to sort their own technical issues out before adding products from other companies into the mix. I suspect that for a long time what we’ll see is NI endorse the Izotope/PA bundles, before slowly folding them in and rebranding the hits as NI - I wouldn’t expect any wholesale overnight changes (although this particular change didn’t last that long, so you never know!)
Edit: I was too late, that’s already happened over at PA…
The way this works is you go 1. Plugin Alliance by Native Instruments. 2. Native Instruments Plugin Alliance. Then 3. It’s just part of Native Instruments and not its own thing anymore.
To be fair, I’m just wildly speculating here.
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I don’t know NI quite well, as long as they don’t go for just a subscription model like Waves did recently and ensure good focus on the product line it’s fine by me.
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My take on subscription is that I don’t mind them in theory if (and it’s a massive if) unsubscribing doesn’t end your use of the plugin on historic projects. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s always good to see when any digital product allows you to access the thing you paid for. But it’s absolutely essential when talking about software for music.
For example, I use Arcade by Output sometimes. If I unsubscribe and load a track, the audio is still there exactly as I made it. I think given the amount of time and oney that goes into making VST’s subs are a little questionable. I think subscribe/rent to own is a good model though.
I hope most music companies learn from how the Waves story went down in flames! I don’t use their stuff but it sounded like their pricing practices weren’t well liked anyway, so going to subscription just angered people who were already somewhat unhappy.
They’re experimenting with subscriptions right now.
But I doubt they’re going to switch to subscription model only. More likely it’ll be hybrid model like many other companies offer these days.
I’d be happy if everyone just went the Bitwig route, where you subscribe to updates. Your subscription runs out, you stay on the last version from when you were paying.
I think it’s the fairest model out there: it provides a steady and predictable stream of income for developers, while still incentivizing innovation because developers can’t just coast along from customers having no choice but to keep paying to access their work.
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Yep, I’d agree with that. I think the cut & run approach to subs is the thing people object to, and this is a neat way around it.
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Actually, here’s an idea (albeit slightly stolen) for a potential controller range for NI.
One thing that’s notable is how all the big manufacturers (Novation, AKAI & Arturia especially) have a mini controller with pads and keys. NI famously doesn’t do this, in part I imagine because they want you to buy more hardware, but also in part because they make a distinction between Maschine and Komplete Kontrol.
In fairness to NI, the M32 has gotten a lot of praise for its quality compared to other mini controllers, and perhaps there is something to be said for less is more leading to higher quality. It can’t be an accident that people rave about the quality of the keys on the M32, because presumably they haven’t had to compromise as much by trying to squeeze as many components onto the board as possible. However, I think the other way of looking at it, is there is an opportunity for NI to offer a new controller that fills in the blanks in the market.
- The Novation Launchkey Mini has the best Live integration, due to their tie-in with Ableton. The LK Mini is great for chucking around, althoguh the quality isn’t the best (even compared to the big LK’s which are perfectly good) and I also find their integration is heavily weighted to session view - to the extent that there are no controls for arrangement view.
- Arturia is known for quality keybeds, and their their DAW control is improving with the ability to switch between DAW control and Arturia software control, however their latest Minilab controller runs 25 keys (plus DAW control) or you can have 32 or 437 keys with the Keystep, but that has no DAW control at all.
- AKAI has recently released the MPK Mini Plus, which has amazing pads due to them directly lifted from the MPC. Their issue is the DAW control is considerably more basic than the other two.
I’d like to see NI create a killer all-in-one controller that covers Maschine and Komplete Kontrol. It would have 2 modes like Arturia to allow control of both the DAW and the NI software. It would have 8 macros for KK control and 8 quality pads for playing Battery/Maschine kits. And if they could run that in a 32 or ideally a 37 key board to the same standard as the M32, I think that could be so useful it’d become my main controller.
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Can’t even remember the last time I used any of my NI plugins, I’ve got my Maschine up for sale on Craigslist and Traktor which I usually DJ with seems all but forgotten besides the terrible subscription FX idea… the company has lost direction since the acquisition, I fear it’s spiraling out of business unless they bring out some major updates or a new product.