NI Komplete Kontrol

[Syver]

The first part, not true at all. U-He is doing great with zero dedicated hardware, so is Alchemy, Omnisphere etc. [/quote]

Really, supporting facts ?

# of Spectrasonics employeess ? less than 50. The company has not released a new product since 2009 !

# of of U-He employees ? : I quote 'u-he used to be a one-man show – just Urs! But now we are a team... That's Urs Heckmann, Howard Scarr, Sascha Eversmeier, Rob Clifton-Harvey and Sebastian Greger' that's 5 !

# of NI employees: 400 !

NI, Roland, Arturia, Ableton ... the major player are all going down the hybrid route.

[TomViolenz]

NI, Roland, Arturia, Ableton ... the major player are all going down the hybrid route.

Absolutely, that way lies the future!
Love it or hate it, but to bundle your software to a hardware device, makes for a much more predictable income.

Do it well and all the crackers will pony up money after all, fail and go under.

Software sales alone can only support niche markets or small businesses, who are willing to self exploit anymore.

The consumer may even profit, I for one love my Push and think Maschine is a great product. Maybe this one will be too.

[sporkles]

The NI vs U-He and Alchemy (I assume that should be Camel Audio?) comparison is completely inappropriate. Making a dedicated controller for specialised softsynths is an asinine idea, as these products are just one piece in people's production arsenals. Consequently, measuring the success of these companies in number of employees makes no sense. U-He is a niche company with great success in its domain. NI is trying to do everything, and the hardware coupling makes sense, because they have such an immense collection of instruments that share the same platform. They've set the standard with their Komplete updates, and they need to keep making Komplete interesting to existing as well as new customers. So if they can create a piece of hardware that integrates perfectly with their own products (and 3rd party products that use their platform) and which is still perfectly usable as a regular MIDI controller, that's a great idea, and part of the philosophy of a "Komplete" package.

All that said, I'm not interested in their controllers myself. But I have a good mind to upgrade to Komplete Ultimate this time, and get it over with, so that I don't keep wasting money on single products from their KU lineup...

[Machinesworking]

Really, supporting facts ?

# of Spectrasonics employeess ? less than 50. The company has not released a new product since 2009 !

# of of U-He employees ? : I quote 'u-he used to be a one-man show – just Urs! But now we are a team... That's Urs Heckmann, Howard Scarr, Sascha Eversmeier, Rob Clifton-Harvey and Sebastian Greger' that's 5 !

# of NI employees: 400 !

NI, Roland, Arturia, Ableton ... the major player are all going down the hybrid route.

Yes the size of the company determines it's worth, that makes total sense.
You cannot say a company is doing great unless it's releasing products all the time and has over 100 employees!
Top soft synths in ANY recent polls are loaded with U-He products, period. Zebra, Diva and the modular line are top favorites every time.

The whole concept is pretty crazy really, a lot of soft synths are 200+ parameters.
It simple will not be total integration, to create a patch in Absynth for instance you will mouse around.
What NI and others have been doing for a while is to choose groups of 8 that are "performance oriented".
I'm not anti the concept of integrating your line, it's just that NI have done this before, twice or more, you people seem to forget that.
with 8-24 mapped parameters the only thing that sets this apart is the lights on the keys.
Any I look forward to reviews etc. when people buy this thing, as of now it's a sleeper to me.[/quote]

[TomViolenz]

n/m

[Syver]

Yes the size of the company determines it's worth, that makes total sense

Econ 101: Yes since the size is a direct consequence of how much people value the products (ie. are willing to buy them and at what price).

Sorry a company is not doing well because you say so ....

I bet these keyboards are going to do well simply because no other keyboard offers this level of of "Kontrol" over so many VSTs.

Many competing keyboards pretend to offer auto-mapping features which in the end rarely work "automagically".

NI really caught everyone by surprise with this release and like you I am impatient to find out more.

[stuartm]

And the 8 knobs above have clear displays showing what parameter they control in that moment and what the current value is. The knobs will be purposed differently instrument-by-instrument and they can be arranged in pages with an easy page forward/back button on the hardware. Well done NI!

Mmmh. Stuff that Novation had figured out with the RemoteSL / Automap years ago.

I bet these keyboards are going to do well simply because no other keyboard offers this level of of "Kontrol" over so many VSTs.

You can control just NI VSTs with it.

[login]

What the NI keyboard do is not far from what Push can already do, and Push supports third party stuff way better.

[login]

Someone at GS contact them about being able to print the arp/chord functions output to the daw, they confirmed they wont print.

What a bummer.

[sporkles]

Econ 101: Yes since the size is a direct consequence of how much people value the products (ie. are willing to buy them and at what price).

All right, at this point you're just trolling. That's like saying that Native Instruments can't be a successful company because they're smaller than Microsoft.

[Machinesworking]

Econ 101: Yes since the size is a direct consequence of how much people value the products (ie. are willing to buy them and at what price).

All right, at this point you're just trolling. That's like saying that Native Instruments can't be a successful company because they're smaller than Microsoft.

yeah that's where he loses the plot completely. Microsoft in no way is innovative or puting out cutting edge products because of their size, they blindly follow behind other companies that have carved out a niche and attempt to carve market share. Much like what NI is doing here.

Watch, in ten years U-He will be huge, I have no doubt about that. In the soft synth market they compete handily with NI and the like, period.

[Syver]

What the NI keyboard do is not far from what Push can already do, and Push supports third party stuff way better.

What makes you say that ?

I have got Push and I would say the control for third party plug-ins out of the box is no better then Maschine and requires you to buy third party presets most of the time.

[Syver]

All right, at this point you're just trolling. That's like saying that Native Instruments can't be a successful company because they're smaller than Microsoft. [/quote]

Who is trolling ?

Can you at least keep the discussion focused on music production and not bring Microsoft into this ?

[login]

What the NI keyboard do is not far from what Push can already do, and Push supports third party stuff way better.

What makes you say that ?

I have got Push and I would say the control for third party plug-ins out of the box is no better then Maschine and requires you to buy third party presets most of the time.

The kontrol s chord, arp and scales features wont work with third party plug ins or hardware.

Push needs some set up to integrate plug ins in to it's workflow (rack them or use a m4l device which sends MIDI program change). But it can be done, and then you can use all it's features (scales, sequencer) with them. You can sequence hardware too.

Kontrol S only works with NI instruments, the chord, arp and scale function don't print midi to daw, they don't browse third art instruments and only work with komplete (not with individual NI instruments).

[Syver]

The kontrol s chord, arp and scales features wont work with third party plug ins or hardware.

Push needs some set up to integrate plug ins in to it's workflow (rack them or use a m4l device which sends MIDI program change). But it can be done, and then you can use all it's features (scales, sequencer) with them. You can sequence hardware too.

Kontrol S only works with NI instruments, the chord, arp and scale function don't print midi to daw, they don't browse third art instruments and only work with komplete (not with individual NI instruments).

So now we're comparing Komplete Kontrol to Push+Live ?

A fairer comparison would be Komplete Kontrol + Live versus Push+Live.

In this setup you could use Komplete Kontrol with Live's Arpeggiator just the same.

Also you can map third party instruments controls and presets in Maschine and maschine's browser today so this will likely be possible with Komplete Kontrol too although not out of the box may be but that's also not the case with Push.