Hello,
following the announcement of Native Instruments going into bankruptcy,
I was right to invest in Arturia, like the miniFuse4.
When will Kontakt be available at Arturia?
Best regards
Every cloud has a silver lining.
The recent acquisition of Reasonstudios by LANDR seemed like the end of Reason to me. I have used it since the beginning and still like many of its synths but the DAW aspects didnt ‘gel’ for me so I made the transition to Logic, first using REWIRE and then the Reason Rack Plugin - which is excellent. I had the synths of Reason with the more understandable DAW features in Logic - the best of both worlds. I had been stuck on Reason V11, not wanting to pay the upgrade price and so the Reason Rack was not scalable and difficult to use on a 4K monitor. The first action by LANDR was to split the Rack from the DAW and allow its purchase separately - no doubt they realised many like me just wanted that. Now, for a fraction of the upgrade price to Reason 13, I have the fully scalable Rack with all the additional synths and FX which are part of R13. It’s a big win for me. Already I have started using the Reason rack as both an Instrument and FX plugin and it compliments Arturias products nicely. So, what I thought would be the end of Reason turned out to be its saviour for me at least.
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I see NI as occupying a different niche than Arturia. I bought the well made world music banks (Middle East, Asian, Cuban, African music). And the Session Horns Pro.
I never liked the Kontakt design.
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I have Kontakt installed but rarely use it. Or, to put it another way, only a couple of instruments interest me. Playbox is pretty wild.
Personally a world without NI would be no great loss to me but I can appreciate it may be to others.
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The problem for me, or for others, is the libraries for orchestral or cinematic music, like those from Sonuscore, ProjectSam, Spitfire Studio Orchestra, Heavyocity, … which may pose a problem since they are used with Kontakt.
Although the Augmented Instruments are exceptional in color and sound texture, they cannot replace certain libraries and instruments offered by Native, such as guitars and various instruments.
For me, Native and Arturia are complementary.
Even though one is much more affordable and knows how to reward their loyal customers, while the other is too scattered.
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New to the forum; first post.
I think that NI’s issue is just a symptom of a bigger issue. I have Arturia’s V11, Pigments, and their FX Collection 5. I have purchased other instruments and effects from other sources, and BPB sends me constant offers of great stuff that’s often free. I have more instruments/patches/effects/toys to last many lifetimes, and more items show up in my inbox daily.
The field is saturated, and it is complicated by the fact that many musicians are not very wealthy. This leads to giveaways and promotions in hopes that the takers of freebies will invest in their other products. And no one works for free.
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We don’t know how this will end or how it will effect NI users yet. Let’s see how it turn out.
Arturia made a good decision to develop scalable applications and preset browsers in all applications years ago. Unfortunately this probably killed Spark 2, but was needed if it could not be made scalable and perhaps had other problems for further development. Products like Kontakt and Reaktor i assume have the same issues as Arturias Spark 2.
I think perhaps the NI situation show it’s time to bet on the midi 2.0 industry standard development.
It perhaps also tell something about how to and not to make bundles, hardware, systems, and designs …
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Theres a lot of uninformed nonsense being spoken about whats going on with NI. Theyre not closing or be disappearing any time soon. They’re not bankrupt.
Its ‘preliminary insolvency’ and how that sounds is that they have to carry out some ‘restructuring’ with an appointed third party before it even gets to closing anything down.
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When Spark 2 is mentioned, I get triggered… 
Yes - It was certainly a shame development of Spark 2 apparently had to be stopped. It still work though. Not sure about all MAC OS.
I wish you many lifetimes, dockahn!
Still working on Tahoe :))
Hello @chriszanf
I think more about the employees who, as usual, will pay dearly for being fired due to poor business management, driven by the constant desire for more and for things to be bigger.
I experienced this myself after 7 years of good and loyal service, and it was I who had to ask what they wanted to do with me, with a family relying on me.
Luckily, I had a trade as a shoe repairer, which allowed me to bounce back, but in this field, who will find a stable job?
Companies like this have a moral duty to their employees;
money is nice, but at what cost.
Amitié Musicale.
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The situation they find themselves in was definitely brought on by management’s own actions, beginning with being taken over in 2021 and making some hefty acquisitions.
It’s the typical cycle when a new VC buys in: make acquisitions, saddle company with debt, extract profit, refactor/asset strip to pay debts & liabilities, rinse, repeat.
Of course, those who shoulder the fallout are never the ones causing the turbulence and profiting.
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Zanf!!! Chris…wow we haven’t been in touch for probably 20 years. Back to em411 days.
We met at STFU05 in Manchester and in London when my daughter was rowing. I think on another occasion too.
I have a soft spot for NI. It was my introduction to MIDI in the early 2000s. I still think the Photone is one of the craziest soft synths ever. Hard to get used to but some serious timbres couod be found on that thing! Would be sad to see them disappear.
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