CharlesRandolph wrote:Native Instruments owns sounds.com, also their bread an butter has always been on the software side. It makes good sense to full integrate the company. Expect this across the board with other companies. This is what happens, when companies, treat artist/creators clients like normal consumers.
They should do what they're great at and hyper focus. They would've been better making one incredible keyboard and one incredible Maschine. Then fully integrate their software into those instruments. There's lots of room at the top, but at the bottom it's packed.
The irony is I'm waiting for "one great Maschine".
I'm not really sure which way I'd want them to really go *except NOT subscription*. I like the quality of their hardware, but they always make either dumb mistakes (why were the X1 and F1 different heights than the S2/S4/S8 requiring the purchase of a piece of plastic to be flush?) or don't play as well with others as they could, Komplete is jam packed with stuff, but even just navigating the VST can be difficult depending on your screen resolution (Massive X is too annoying to use on the laptop). The keyboard series - the S-Series look and feel great, but fall into the same freaking issue every controller falls into - they have transport controls and some "cool" functions, but never integrate the short-cuts that would actually make them a replacement for a mouse & keyboard, and if I have a mouse accessible, what do I need the fancy screens and controls for?
So I look at the Maschine MK3, and wonder how it would be better than a cheap MPD 218 that's been MIDI mapped. I've been told that even the audio interface in the MK3 is below average *told not experienced*.
So I'm not sure what I want. I looked at NI as the forward thinking company, Traktor felt so much more creative than Serato when I got it, the Remix decks had "fun" written all over them. Before Akai really hit the computer market, Maschine was already there for pad play. Komplete as a series is a great idea *though currently flawed*. And if they want to forge ahead - focused on the VST/plug-in side of things, the wake of Reason 11 will hurt that.
- Unreall