What’s eating Native Instruments?

The Lounge General Discussion
#113

I think that it is an error the consumers thinking to expect constant updates to a product. In my opinion, companies should aim to release one, final version of a product and that is all. Name a single classic piece of hardware that received post release upgrades. There are not many. We are living in a strange time now of rapid consumption and our expectations are a little out of whack. Especially now that inflation is making it pretty unrealistic to expect consumers to keep buying the latest piece of hardware.

Native Instruments is pretty much only competing with Akai and in my opinion doing it much better. What do they have to prove by releasing anything other than sampler food and soft synths?

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#114

I wouldn’t have an issue with that if anyone actually released a final version worthy of being a final version. You can’t seriously think any recently released groovebox by any brand was complete. Thats why they all get updated. NI is just the worst at that. Recently that is. Imo.

Akai Force was a mess. Its been fixed. In fact akai stumbled quite a bit several times in their past but have made good and also remained vigilant of what their user base has requested. My experience with Roland, albeit short has been similar. SP404, MV1 both received major updates since i purchased. Several for SP and MV actually with key bugs or feature suggestiins from the community.

All that to say i kind of agree with you in premise but the reality is these companies rush release broken HW and SW so they know they created an environment where updating is a new agreement between manufacturers and early adopting users. Essentially paid beta testers. i reckon some of these greedy sombiches arent keeping their end of the bargain tho.lol

#115

@Raskal.X poses a great question. Probably worthy of its own thread.

Do these companies really aim to release final versions of products?

I agree they should but as I really think on it…I don’t think they give a rats ass about that. I don’t think that’s part of the new biz model at all. Not even with software.

Push 3 seems rushed. M+ rushed. Akai’s flagship MPCX and Force rushed.

Imagine any of these boxes left as is on launch?! There would be smoke in every city around the globe :fire:lol

How do we as users force them to release complete products?

Tbh I don’t think it’s possible. These companies aren’t really targeting musicians, pros and loyal users anymore. Arming new armies of Social influencers with as many new products and packs to sell is the new model for many of these brands.

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#116

we gotta pull together brethren

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#117

We need a favourite groovebox thread, sponsored by Elek4

#118
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#119

Without latency, too :smiley:

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#120

The bit about moving back to a 2500, because he’s worried that the M+ mght become a paperweight doesn’t make sense to me.

My 2500 has practically been a paperweight since I damaged the encoder, and a heavy one at that. I certainly wouldn’t jam with that on my lap for more than 5 minutes.

Just wish people would state the issues on these kind of NI bashing threads. What they think was promised, or what has fallen short, instead of just saying unfinished etc. NI can’t be expected to put unlimited funds into developing a product that probably isn’t selling as well as it should, because of all the negativity. Admittedly the early negativity was perhaps deserved as they rushed it out, but now it’s a stable working product and I guess the negativity is still there.

But, it’s good enough for Loopop’s own live rig. But still, everybody bashing it without giving reasons in the here and now.

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#121

I bought a Traktor S4 Mk1, at the time a flagship controller. I have to keep an old Macbook pro around, running an old OS, because they made the decision to stop developing drivers for it. I can’t afford a new DJ system (The equivalent Pioneer system is £1k +).
I will never buy NI hardware again. They dropped it to make people purchase their new DJ hardware. It was a huge F*ck you from NI, with NI and supporters saying “just drop £6-800 on something new!”.
I’m sorry, if i pay that much for something, I want it to work until it falls to pieces, not because the accountant says they cant be arsed to support it anymore.

#122

I feel for you. I paid £1050 for 2 Numark V7 motorised controllers decks. I got about 2 or 3 years from them before they were unsupported.

That’s DJ controllers for you., sadly. It’s a fast moving market and a lot of products from every brand get left behind quickly, especially when you buy a product that’s been out a good while. To me they’re all a bad investment.

Have had Scratch Pro 2 from NI too that kept crashing. Was a long term Serato user before (and after) then. It started my constant rants about NI support in the old days.

#123

My 1210’s that are 25 years old do need a service…
If I had the money I would get CDJ’s, but they are as prohibitively expensive as 1210’s seemed to be in 1993.
I’ve got loads of WAV’s to DJ with, I haven’t really bought vinyl for years, I suppose this is the issue with digital files!
I think waiting until the Pioneer/Serato thing shakes out might be a good idea…
I still cant help be angry after such planned obsolescence, but then again, they stopped making 1210’s because they were not breaking quickly enough…

#124

Luckily you can service almost everything on the 1210 yourself

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#125

Yes that is a interesting perspective and one that I haven’t put much thought on it really. I think if it came to that - shutting down the server, and now you have a paperweight- it would have to be because of something extreme. Something like NI going bankrupt. Other than that it could be something like creating a new amazing trend of programed obsolescence, where they decide when you should buy a new.product, because your old one is trash. But this would have to be something that a lot manufacturers would start to do, so that the consumer would have no option. I choose not believe that. Well, I bought the push 3, which is 2000 euros worth of server activated hardware.

I also think that the M+ is an amazing product and my personal experience with costumer service as been the best that I have had, in this industry. Very helpful people really. The main reason that I think that M+ is half baked is because it is not possible to assign cc of external instruments on the hardware - am I being picky? That is the single feature that I miss the most. Also you have a lot of instruments that you can tweak, but not fully design from scratch - pretty much all but the native maschine ones- which does limit the useability of it’s awesome library. The sound that it has, compressors, other dinâmica áudio fx pra are not i pair with abletons, or don’t work on the M+, or you would have to create chains that are to CPU intensive. It has its quirks for sure, but once you use it long enough - I have been using the M+ extensively since day one - you learn how to live with them.
The reason why I feel more confident with my purchase of push 3 is because I trust the Ableton brand much better. It has a infinitely smaller portfolio which makes the odds of updating it and making the push 3 the closest to the dream hardware workstation that I always wanted. As it is right now, it requires a lot of use of a computer, much more than the M+.
Interesting to see where NI is going. I don’t like where it is right now. The only thing that would make me improve drastically the image that I have from them is of they would present something like Maschine 3.0 that would address all the things that should be improved on the current version, add more stuff that I didn’t know I wanted , and make it compatible with my version of the M+. Unfortunately, i think they will instead focus more and more on the beatmakers, sample pack kind of stuff, because that is where the money is. And from time to time release something that I like it’s potential but it will never fulfill it.

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#126

Yes, i’ve also been using 1210’s since 1991. They were prohibitively expensive for me. Took about 3 months to save up for a pair with a Vestax mixer. I was seduced by the motorised decks of the v7’s though and the hot cues. Does sting about the updates, but there’s firmware, Serato and computer operating systems that all need to work together, and that’s why mine became obsolete. I’m sure they will still run if i had a laptop running old software with an early version of Serato though, but,… progress.

Really good fun to use while i used them, but the 1210s are still running. Got them serviced about 10 years ago mainly for the ground wire mod.

They’ll probably outlast me

#127

If NI shut down their server, how would the M+ become a paperweight?

It runs standalone

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#128

Has a paperweight, it does seem like a smart investment. It holds a lot of paper

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#129

Hahaha. That is true.

I’m sure i can still use it with a damaged encoder, but would be tough to resell i reckon.

#130

I guess he means that if you reset the M+ and need to start from scratch, you need to authorize it, and that requires the server. I like to think if it came down to shit down the server, it would de an easy fix to change the activation process.
Also isnt this server the same server that has all the activations two the billions of NI instruments, aka native access? Then they would have to kill all their products so that they could sell new ones? - it’s a serious question, don’t know anything about servers

#131

Well, IF you need to reset it is really the question then. Had mine nearly 12 months now and haven’t needed to reset it, so hopefully it’s a moot point.

I don’t know how common the resetting occurs in users tbh, so maybe that is something to consider for a user, but hopefully they have a ling term roadmap for this.

They need to sell more hardware to sell more expansions, so I think users will be alright. Im certainly not worried about it anyway.

#132

Not worried at all either :slight_smile: but it is a valid point, if the server when’s M.I.A. - I don’t know ven remember the last time I had to activate it , but if you sell it, for example, it would be necessary