NI review

Former Pharaoh · Post by **Former Pharaoh** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 10:10 pm

This is not the first time i am hearing bad things abot native instruments.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1492746

conny · Post by **conny** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 10:18 pm

So far, I have gotten the replies I've asked for.
No big troubles when dealing direcgtely with them.

// C

rsagevik · Post by **rsagevik** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 10:19 pm

Can`t say NI has dissappointed me. Great products and (sofar) great support

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 10:32 pm

I've seen people mention NI on this forum probably half dozen times as examples of bad support. most of the people who mentioned their support said they never once got ahold of anyone at NI.

From my own experience I just think their plugs are way to cpu intensive. No other plugs I use suck up as much power as they do. although I keep using them cause they make kick ass stuff. it's just hard sometimes, for example I tried to use kompakt in a song the other day and it used up 50% of my cpu by itself alone. which is just plain rediculous. but it sounded good.

wildcon · Post by **wildcon** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 10:02 am

Hi,

A lot of the flack that NI are getting is from the Komplete packages (pretty much all of the plugins/VSTi's) and the Komplete Care package.

I own both of these. The care package is an up front payment that gets you every update of the various products during the year at a fraction of the single update costs.

It appeared to be an excellent deal, but it now appears that it would have been cheaper to have not bothered and just upgraded the Komplete 2 to Komplete 3.

NI have been pretty silent and unhelpful on this and it has pissed an awful lot of people off (myself included).

We were supposed to be the premium customers and we have basically been shafted.

There are other issues with the NI management.

I have to say I love their products. Reaktor 5 and Kontakt2 and Absyntyh are awsome instruments.

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 12:56 pm

[slightly toasted pointless rant]

er.....
reading that kvr thread. 4 unanswered complaints in 36 months.
I've not looked into the actual BBB "reeview", but it seems a little slap dash and hasty to me. I'm now a owner of Kontakt 2, have not had any of the bugs which peple are reporting. I'm also an owner of Reaktor 4 (which I dont really use much, it doesn't have the interface I'm after (bought it at R3, kept going till I had to pay for an update)). I have had pretty good experiences with NI.

Actually, scrap that.
The abyssmal "update" for kontakt, which we had to PAY FOR mind you, when Kontakt went to OS X (it was around 1.2 or something). Didn't work for me in AU/VST on a mac (I think it was 10.1 maybe? long time ago). AT ALL!!! Thats right, nothing. Not a single mouse click would produce any hint of action, anywhere on the screen. Yes, that was appalling. Making customers pay for what should be a free update to an OS which was becoming the supported OS at the time, and then not have it work, even in the slightest. Well, a lesser man would have packed up and shipped off, but I, ever steadfast in my naive trust in a company remained loyal. Silly me.

Or am I.......

I guess I'm a little more tolerant of bugs, as I'm a student of the computer sciences, and I have to deal with my own crappy coding "skills" on a daily basis. (I'm getting better!).

[/slightly toasted pointless rant]

marky · Post by **marky** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 2:18 pm

leonard wrote: I guess I'm a little more tolerant of bugs, as I'm a student of the computer sciences, and I have to deal with my own crappy coding "skills" on a daily basis. (I'm getting better!).

Sounds like you could get a job with NI with those coding skills.

rsarja · Post by **rsarja** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 3:56 pm

The thing I don't like about the concept of Komplete Care is; as the saying goes:
"You should never put all your eggs in the same basket." There are a lot of independent companies making great products that will bend over backwards for your business. They offer great support, free training videos, and free upgrades when possible. I don't like the idea of being locked in to one company for all my software needs. I feel it is a much wiser to invest in such companies' products. Also, it adds much more diversity to your arsenal of software.

Ron

rsarja · Post by **rsarja** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 4:08 pm

I own Kontakt 2. I purchased it when it first came out. I still havn't been able to use it to this day in a song because of the severe CPU/DVD overload issues it causes with my system. Its not just me. Check on the NI forums. It doesn't matter whether you have 1 GB of ram or 8 GB. Same issues. No doubt that it could be the greatest sampler on the market; if it worked. I really feel that I purchased a beta product. I spent more nights troubleshooting this product than creating music. I finally gave up on it. I just use all my other plug ins now. They work great.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 6:09 pm

I've used kontakt 2 in a couple of songs. but what you have to do is use another soft synth to start the song and then when the song is done you drop in kontakt 2 and render the track then delete kontakt 2. it's not for song writing at all cause of it's seriously fucked up cpu usage. but you can finish a track with it.

glitchrock-buddha · Post by **glitchrock-buddha** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:11 pm

yes, no doubt they have a tendency to release buggy versions, and not fix them for some time. i used to own reaktor session, but was always afraid to actually use it, for fear of crashes or freezing logic. some with kontakt.
they have also screwed my orders before. at one point i was trying to decide between upgrading to komplete, or just upgrading kontakt form 1.5 to 2. well i ordered komplete. they sent me a confirmation of the order for komplete, and then proceeded to charge me for the kontakt upgrade and send me kontakt instead of komplete. i sent emails about the mix up with no response or fix, so i basically thought 'oh well, i'll save my money'. It didn't bother me too much since i was on the fence about maybe just upgrading kontakt anyways, but that could have been very irritating. and yes, sometimes they are impossible to get ahold of.

the thing is, aside from these problems, i love my N.I. software. and when it is stable, it's the best out there i think. Now that i have reaktor 5, and it is very stable. i use it all the time. heavy patches use lots of cpu, but some things can also be quite light. fm7 and pro-53 are amazing sounding and aren't bad on cpu, even lighter than alot of other synths (like my ES2 and albino). battery is still my choice of drum sampler, and i like kontakt for simple stuff (don't trust it right now for heavy sample patches). I've playing with the absynth demo, and i think that is the coolest sounding synth i've ever heard, i love it and have got to get it. so once again, i'm looking at getting komplete, now including guitar rig 2, which also looks amazing.

so basically i wish i didn't love their products so much, because i'd rather support other smaller companies, but i also don't think they're the devil some people do,
so i'll keep using their stuff because it sounds damn good. komplete care? never.

but if you have not yet gotten hooked: run, save yourself while you can!

grb

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 9:53 pm

I recently bought Kontakt 2 and I have run into authorizing problems. I installed on my powerbook and then I installed on my new pc. Then something went wrong with the XP system while I was still setting that machine up for audio work which forced me to swap the drive and reinstall everything. Took me two days, but I will make a Ghost Image of it for future safety. Anyway, when I was going to unlock Kontakt 2 online NI's system refused. I immeiately sent them a mail. That was three days ago and no answer recieved yet. I think that is unaccaptable! From now on I'm advicing anyone not to buy their procucts if you do depend on your tools in any other way than to have some fun now and then out of hobbyist interest.

I also boughte a sample library from them... two actually! It makes no sense to convert everything with CDXtract to EXS24 and use it with Logic because one of the main reasons I bought Kontakt 2 is because I'm doing surround stuff for DVD movies (need K2 as a complement to Logic's lousy surround effect support). If I had only known about NI's bad support I could have looked into other solutions for 5.1 effect mixing.

djadonis206 · Post by **djadonis206** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 11:37 pm

right now - they suck

Ordered Reaktor 5 upgrade from a sales rep to be delivered overnight, asked for a tracking # and receipt

never got neither one and the product never showed up

Emailed them and asked for a refund on the shipping - it's a holiday so I guess I'll wait for monday to get a response if I even get one

however - the products sound amazing

Their sales / cs kinda blows ass

a

Gygaxian · Post by **Gygaxian** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 2:33 am

NI is a tool of the devil and they completely suck.
Yes, their products are great, especially Spektral Delay, but their support IS THE FRICKING WORST EVER.
THEIR AUTHORIZATION PROCESS IS THE WORST EVER.

I have to sell my NI Komplete 2. I must. Anyone want it?

Seriously, out of every company I've had to deal with, NI is a bottom feeder.

They need to go piss up a rope.

vandeloow · Post by **vandeloow** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 11:22 am

glitchrock-buddha wrote:yes, no doubt they have a tendency to release buggy versions, and not fix them for some time.

thats my reason for not upgrading reaktor 4 to 5. i always upgrade reaktor in the hope, that it became stable. now, i don't spend money for the upgrade, because i think, if a company release a new payable upgrade, at least the last version of the old version must be stable...