Native Instruments GmbH is in "preliminary insolvency"

[The Elf]

Kontakt is overly convoluted and it looks like a dog's dinner. The process to make even simple edits is obscure, to say the least, as is the woeful output allocation system. Some of the recent-ish changes to how the libraries are viewed are, at best, confusing and, at worst, simply get in the way. None of the users I know use the new library view - all go to the legacy view.

But... speaking as one who's spent some time under the hood, Kontakt is a mightily clever beast. I can't imagine being able to have created some of the instruments I have in there any other way. I don't know if any other sample player offerings have anything to compare with Kontakt's scripting facility.

Most of all, if I didn't have Kontakt I wouldn't have my custom-made, poly-aftertouch 'Mellotron', and that, for me, is a worry.

[Matt Houghton]

Yeah, I was never fond of the GUI. Way too fiddly and often the wrong things hidden IMHO!

I think its popularity is largely rooted in the fact that it initially shipped with a decent (for then) library — like a good Sound Canvas! — and then they made it really easy for third-party developers to create content, including for the free player that was the gateway drug. It became the host for so much that most people needed it, and once they had the full version it made little sense to buy another sampler plug-in unless it was to play specific libraries.

I don't know if any other sample player offerings have anything to compare with Kontakt's scripting facility.

I don't think most people use it for actual sampling. More as a sound library host. But I also remember finding significant obstacles in KSP scripting. Most things are possible, but often required lots of workarounds — eg for truly randomised, multi-velocity, multi-track drum hits the scripts were way more complex than they *should* have needed to be. This is 10+ years ago, though, so it may have improved since then?!

IIRC MOTU Mach Five supports/supported scripting of some sort. I don't know how that compares. Ditto HALion, which I think supports LUA scripting — not sure how extensive that is.

[R_A]

Look at all the major sample library vendors that have moved away from Kontakt in recent years.
There's been a stampede and these were selling protected/encoded libraries, so were paying a licensing fee on every sale.

It stagnated as a platform seems to be the opinion.
It appears to be a case of complacency, under investment and poor leadership.

What platform have these developers moved to?

All the large ones moved to their own in-house proprietary platform.
The smaller ones that moved away I'm not so up on and there are multiple options including HISE.

Interesting. Thank you. I was completely unaware of HISE.

DecentSampler also seems to becoming well supported.

[ajay_m]

The big problem with most of Native's UIs - not just Kontakt - is that they have never heard of modern high resolution displays and cannot be scaled. Along with this they use non-themable UIs that often come close to the control panel of Disaster Area's stunt ship, as parodied by Douglas Adams, i.e, black writing on a black background, or near enough, tiny weeny mouse targets (like changing the maximum voice count by clicking and holding a miniscule little triangle) and so on.

For added props, most if not all of their stuff has never heard of MIDI program control messages, making it impossible to change patches other than by tedious furtling with the mouse. (there's probably a way round this but do I have to tediously set it up on every VST?). I have tried on a couple of occasions to actually edit sample settings and hit a bewilderment of zones and modulation mappings and what have you that simply cause the will to live to evaporate with frightening speed.

But still, and all, some of their stuff SOUNDS pretty good. Razor is amazing (mainly due to its twisted and brilliant effects, admittedly - and I know they didn't create it themselves), as is the Steampipe instrument for Reaktor, along with FM8 and Absynth.

Most of their pianos never quite cross the uncanny valley although Alicia's Keys is a pretty good jazz piano, The Giant is... well, unique... but many of the others have an unnatural "plastic" quality in the high register. [but then I love Embertone's Walker Piano and others.... don't, so hey...]

I haven't got much time for guitars that strum themselves or weird and wonderful rotating sequencers or libraries with chopped-up little bits of brilliance courtesy of great players (George Duke for instance) but I accept others may love and cherish these.

I guess their drum libraries aren't too bad, and Guitar Rig is ok - but now I use the Guitarix stuff that's bundled with my Musiclabs guitars anyway, and their brilliant artist packs, which are free. But now I think about it, my primary piano didn't come from them (albeit its hosted in Kontakt), neither does my primary EP (use the Neosoul library), or solo strings (Embertone) - so it's probably their synths (Absynth, FM8) I use.

[S.Crow]

Once trust is impacted and people get nervous about a platform like Kontakt, that can create a snowball effect.

The KODA Sampler was at NAMM 2026:
Still in private beta I think and seemingly aimed more at commercial developers.
A modern GUI that offers a lot of major functionality via the GUI without using the scripting facility.
There are libraries by these vendors in the walkthrough, which is a decent range for something in beta:
SoundIron, Realitone, Soniccouture, Bunker Samples, BotDog etc

Teaser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToX2YhJ270s
NAMM 2026 presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LX1bfxfc3c&t=1s

[Matt Houghton]

I guess their drum libraries aren't too bad

The Abbey Road ones sounds great. The ’70s kit in particular. Though I find it annoying that each kit comes with different grooves — you have to manually copy and paste the grooves from one folder to another to use, say, a '60s Motown-style beat with a '70s kit. Like I say 'fiddly'. Can't fault the sound on those kits, though.

[Drew Stephenson]

I have one of the Abbey Road drum libraries and yes, the sound is great. But again, shame about the implementation...

[Forum Admin]

The KODA Sampler was at NAMM 2026:
Still in private beta I think and seemingly aimed more at commercial developers.
A modern GUI that offers a lot of major functionality via the GUI without using the scripting facility.
There are libraries by these vendors in the walkthrough, which is a decent range for something in beta:
SoundIron, Realitone, Soniccouture, Bunker Samples, BotDog etc

NAMM 2026 presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LX1bfxfc3c&t=1s

Liking the look of it, immediately.

I've always hated fixed theme dark coloured 80% grey text on 100% black GUIs and avoid them like the plague. That was one major bonus feature I like in Studio One Pro (now Fender Studio Pro). I typically have earthy browns and greens on channels and the objects in the Arrange window.

We live in interesting times!

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Very economically sophisticated views here I think, very realistic. Will it help Native Instruments I wonder?

Just to add what I have learned:

1. Under German law, preliminary insolvency is a reorganization and rescue process, not a precursor to bankruptcy.

2. The financial issues stem from debt accumulated through massive expansion and high-cost acquisitions (including iZotope and Plugin Alliance), not from product failures.

Now to speculate on my own fears... might it be time to invest in Chicken Systems Translator to port the library over to something else! I have 22 years of personal Kontakt library, including everything I had in my ESI-4000 and Yamaha TX16W, plus all the Akai, Fairlight and Emulator I+II stuff I've collected, going back to nineties CD-ROMs I had. It's all finessed to be nice and playable in Kontakt, I will never have time to do that all over again!

I don't know if any other sample player offerings have anything to compare with Kontakt's scripting facility.

UVI Falcon has comparable scripting power, although maybe not as mature and as a result possibly less robust. It is built on Lua Script so it's arguably easier to learn, compared to the proprietary KSP.

I have a few things from acousticsamples.net that use the free UVI player and there are zero restrictions unlike some Kontakt libraries. They are very deep sampled, I prefer their fretless bass and the Sunbird acoustic guitar to any of the Kontakt offerings. Or at least I did until Kontakt released that studio acoustic guitar a couple of years ago.

[OneWorld]

When I upgraded from one version of kontakt to another, all my settings were lost. And trying to get the outputs setup again was like pulling teeth, conversely in Halion, it was the easiest thing imaginable, so when I upgraded my PC, the choice was easy, several £100s worth of Komplete/Kontakt products stayed in the bottom drawer, uninstalled, NI made the simplest of things so perplexing. I guess those products are worthless now.

[awjoe]

"Buying a plugin is basically paying upfront for a developer's motivation."

Or existence.

White Sea Studio talks about the Native Instruments situation on YT here:

https://youtu.be/lwDik5_9IC8?si=RFxdm_9PkInx9cs0

I think this is the first time that plugins I use have headed toward oblivion.

How often does this happen? Is it happening more frequently?

[this new topic has been merged with the existing conversation in order to avoid confusion. Andy ]

[Sam Spoons]

I've been thinking about this and concluded that, unfortunately, that's how consumerism works, you buy something, use it for a while and then you stop because it either stops working (cars, TV's software)* or is 'consumed' (food, fuel).

* Simplified, you might just want a better car or TV and sell the old one before it stops working.

[ef37a]

I have never used Kontakt and, AFAIK neither has my son although we got a "free go" when I bought my KA6 and ref that interface, something happened about middle of last year?

The KA6 Mll was on offer at a very reasonable discount. Thing were a bit tight at the time and I didn't need another AI but I wish now I had jumped! Within a few weeks all the products were gone.

On the subscription thing? I have bought a year's use of Samplitude 2025 for son. £100ish but there is an option for a one off forever purchase. I did not want to spend about 3 times as much because he is actually moving more into Reaper he tells me although Samplitude is still the best DAW for editing. Oh and MP3 and other encoders are a doddle.

*
Dave.

[w oxo cube]

Time to get printing stems folks if mix recall is something you may be concerned about down the line.

[OneWorld]

I've been thinking about this and concluded that, unfortunately, that's how consumerism works, you buy something, use it for a while and then you stop because it either stops working (cars, TV's software)* or is 'consumed' (food, fuel).

* Simplified, you might just want a better car or TV and sell the old one before it stops working.

But you might be happy wit the software you have bought, it isn't 'broken' it keeps working, it isn't a 'given' that you'll want to ditch it.

I had the case where I had bought into TASCAM's Gigastudio, it was just what I needed and was really impressed with it.

I'd come from a Yamaha A5000, which became lamentably slow, after that I had previously used a much loved AKAI Z8. But AKAI refused to update the AK.SYS USB driver, to work with 64bit Windows, even though there were coders that were confident they could produce 64 bit alternative if given the source code, Akai refused, so the Z8 became a brick from my perspective as I had used it exclusively with the DAW.

So I bought into the softsampler alternative, Gigastudio being the much vaunted product. Then TASCAM stopped supporting it and simply turned off the Activation Server. And I had put a lot of work in the product.

Oh well, I read that Kontakt was a far superior product, developing apace and becoming about the only viable softsampler. And now? that's going in the bin.

I have now bought into Halion, I am guessing that will endure given its pedigree.

Surely, NI should release a permanent serial number that all validated owners can be given then they can continue to use the product when they buy a new computer? Like a puppy, a sampler isn't just for Xmas.

[Matt Houghton]

NI's CEO has released a statement.

[Forum Admin]

White Sea Studio talks about the Native Instruments situation on YT here:

https://youtu.be/lwDik5_9IC8?si=RFxdm_9PkInx9cs0

This is also a decent serious explainer YT video on the Native Instruments "preliminary insolvency". Worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwVB82k7H5Q

[Forum Admin]

NI's CEO has released a statement.

I'm sure Nick Williams, CEO, won't mind if I paste his statement into this Forum post for convenience, to help assure confidence.

"I want to personally take a moment to address the recent news about Native Instruments.

Please rest assured that business continues as usual at Native Instruments, iZotope, Plugin Alliance and Brainworx. Our hardware and software products remain on sale and available for download and activation. Our passionate and dedicated teams are here and supporting customers as normal. In product and engineering, we are continuing to develop and launch new products and features. Our NKS Partnerships team continues to process Kontakt Player licences and NKS Partner submissions.

We are working diligently and responsibly to secure a healthy, financially sustainable future for Native Instruments. As you may have seen, Native Instruments GmbH has entered a restructuring process in Germany, as have 3 of our German non-operating holding companies. In legal terms, we have filed applications to open pre-insolvency proceedings for those companies.

We are focused on providing continuity for creators, customers, and partners. We’ll continue to share updates as we have them.

I’m a lifelong musician myself, and have been a passionate fan of Native Instruments for 25 years. Our mission to inspire and enable creators to express themselves through sound continues." NICK WILLIAMS, CEO

[RichardT]

I have to agree about Kontakt. Ironically, earlier versions were much easier to use, the current UI is absolutely dreadful. It looks like it was done by a graduate trainee!

But I have a large number of Kontakt libraries so I'm hoping we end up with a good resolution, and investment from a good company, not an asset-stripper.

I remember when Avid made the decision to get rid of the Sibelius team and outsource development to Ukraine to increase profits. That led to Steinberg taking on the entire team and developing Dorico. Hopefully there is a lesson there. Dorico is much better than Sibelius, IMO.

I wonder if Yamaha are considering their options here?

[Forum Admin]

I wonder if Yamaha are considering their options here?

Yes, another possible purchaser as they have Steinberg software expertise (inc HALion) and Yamaha and Line6 make hardware. Imagine what they could do expanding the controller keyboard market into electronic pianos with those groovy NI lights above the keys.

[OneWorld]

I have to agree about Kontakt. Ironically, earlier versions were much easier to use, the current UI is absolutely dreadful. It looks like it was done by a graduate trainee!......................

Same here, I just gave up with it, I was trying to stay loyal but in the end I couldn't tolerate it any more. OK I don't want a Kiddie Level UI, but just something one can drop on, one that is intuitive. I have this long held belief, when designing such a thing, haul a few people in and say "Can you find your way around this?"

I'd come to Kontakt after Gigastudio, which was an object lesson in simplicity. I can't understand why Gigastudio floundered and people flocked to Kontakt.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

I went to Kontakt 2 so I could keep my Emu sampler library (Kontakt could import that format quiate accurately*) and the UI and functionality made more sense to my brain than Gigasampler did. Kontakt back then was more like a virtual version of exisiting hardware samplers, with more synthesis features than Giga.

That CEO statement is not much. But I am hopeful.

*I think they were using ChickenSystems Translator code at the time, and stopped licensing it after Kontakt 5.

[Sam Spoons]

I've been thinking about this and concluded that, unfortunately, that's how consumerism works, you buy something, use it for a while and then you stop because it either stops working (cars, TV's software)* or is 'consumed' (food, fuel).

* Simplified, you might just want a better car or TV and sell the old one before it stops working.

But you might be happy wit the software you have bought, it isn't 'broken' it keeps working, it isn't a 'given' that you'll want to ditch it.

Exactly this ^^^ I'm the same with cars TBH (unlike most people IME), if I still enjoy driving it and it fulfils it's function I'm likely to keep it going for as long as possible. My current newest vehicle is a 2017 campervan which I'll keep as long as I'm fit enough to use its 'special features'.

I treat software in much the same way, if it ain't broke I don't try to fix it but sometimes the hardware becomes unreliable or unfixable and the replacement can't run older software. It is unreasonable to expect a SW dev to continue supporting old apps for free long after the computer hardware that can run them is past its use by date. Even if it's a subscription model they need to keep pace with the latest OS so a time comes when keeping an old app running is just not viable.

[Rockrooms]

I think this is the first time that plugins I use have headed toward oblivion.

How often does this happen? Is it happening more frequently?

For me at least, quite a lot over the years, especially on Windows. Activation servers go offline, Windows stops running VST's completely or the GUI breaks. I forget the name (synthmaker?), but there was a development platform used to develop a lot of freeware plugins and many were quite fun, but when multi CPU hardware became common place, a lot of plugins broke and needed a recompile with a newer version, which didn't happen for a lot of things because people had moved on, stopped working on them.

If you're a Waves user then that $29.99 deal will soon turn into a support package costing significantly more. You might get lucky and have a few years, but you're only ever one Windows update away from being shafted, although that's true of anything running on Windows.

For various reasons we have to use a very old version of the Audio Precision test software, so constantly have to uninstall a Windows .NET update that breaks it. The cost of updating to a newer version is near 10K, just for us, let alone the cost of updating the production lines (air gapped running Win 10)

I was an EMU - X2/ X3 user years ago, I had a lot of sample CDs. When it came time to move to a new laptop, that was the end of that. I did eventually find a cracked version that does install, but obviously that was a risk tried in a sandbox before letting it near my main one. Most of the CDs still read, but some fail the piracy check.

I had a piano library that can no longer be activated. There was a way of importing the samples into Kontakt, but it never quite worked.

Maintaining software and servers is expensive and when the OS decides to deprecate APIs or features (no 16 bit code on Windows, security lock downs, .NET updates and so on) then developers are often left with a large rewrite, huge test matrix, which users, understandably, are not happy about paying for.

I've had to suffer the single Native account login migration when they bought Izotope and others, that required tech support intervention, if the companies get spun off, then that could all revert again.

I have a friend who joined NI only a couple of months ago, it didn't sound great before this recent event. There seems to be a lot of "we've always done it this way" inertia to overcome.

I have quite a lot of NI, Izotope and Plugin Alliance software, but I'm well aware that any of it could stop working at any point and old projects may no longer load. I've still not moved off Windows 10 because I've got an ongoing project and there is no benefit but plenty of risk to moving to Windows 11.

At some point the laptop will die and I've already maxed out the RAM, which is starting to be a limitation. I don't have a lot of faith that everything would install, activate and run on a new one. iLOK will help with some plugins, but others have their own methods and a limited number of activations - just thinking about reinstalling IK plugins gives bad flashbacks.

I find I'm much more forgiving of hardware when it breaks, it's usually been long lived, given good service, sometimes can be repaired and pressed to give a few more years service and generally doesn't care who owns the company today. Sudden software death feels a much more personal slap in the face, perhaps I've just been burned too many times.

Joe

[Forum Admin]

I have my Plug-ins live on each track/channel but I try my best to always record my Plug-ins "baked in" on a stereo track, as well, and saved as a new Song in Studio One Pro (now v8 Fender Studio Pro) exactly for this reason.