Thu 20 Mar 2008
Open Letter to Native Instruments RE:Kontakt 3
Posted by puffer under ...and everything , audio geeking , digitallofi creative , meta[8] Comments
- I’ve said before, I’m not inclined to fault companies for what they didn’t put in their product – I generally know what I’m getting into when I fork over for a license and trust that it will meet my expectations. I’ll even be pretty forgiving for “bugs” and what I see as over-sights/blunders in the execution – to a point of course. And, as I’ve also said, most of the companies we’re talking about in the independent audio software world are benign to very cool. But indulge me in climbing on my rackety and feeble pulpit and address my benefactors over at Native Instruments.
Greetings Native Instruments Co.,
Congratulations on all the great products you’ve been releasing lately. I hope you’ve been having a lot of success with them. However, I want to specifically address your upgrade policy on your Kontakt line of products.
I’ve been using Kontakt since literally the day it arrived at a local Mega Lo Guitar Mart and upgraded to version 2 because of all the fine work you put into improving and expanding the product. It’s been great. I even purchased the tutorial DVD to more fully utilize it’s deeper features; to what extent this is actually the case is sorta besides the point. Suffice to say, I’ve acquired (legally it should be said) a lot of soundware that does fully utilize Kontakt’s deeper features.
The latest version Kontakt 3 looks pretty swell also. Looks like you improved a lot of the features. Perhaps not a whole version upgrade. But, you know, it’s your product you can give it what number you want really; who am I to judge the work that went into it? I look forward to trying it out.
My problem is this: Why do I have to buy the whole library that comes with it? Honestly, I don’t really use the 2 NI Kontakt libraries I have as it is. And while I’m sure you’ve done some stunning work on improving the included library, and the reports seem pretty favorable, I don’t see this being a whole lot different. I’ve got a lot of these sounds well covered, and the last thing my sample drive needs is more redundancy.
I’m guessing it’s because you want to keep it a boxed product, no? That even with your very well implemented registration management, and your high profile, a boxed product is more like a “physical thing” – shelf space and all that – and thus somehow less prone to being ripped off or dismissed as not worth the investment. Okay, I may well be grasping, but, seriously, couldn’t you offer an “engine”-only download update for users? Well, I know you *could*, but for some reason you don’t. No offense to the many sound designers and editors who put together your library. But I just don’t need it. And it seems a waste for me to buy a whole lot of packaging and content for what probably comes to about 20MB of program and plugin files.
And, yes, I know it’s only around $130.00 street. It’s not really the price so much as it is the waste of it all. Offering it for under 90 bucks from you website seems a reasonable amount to pay considering what you’re charging for the boxed upgrade.
I’ll just give in and get it I suppose. I’ll get sick of manually exporting MIDI files, or trying to built multis will finally drive me batty and I’ll get the packaging then go ahead then download the latest build. Either that or you’ll release Kontakt 4 and just upgrade to that. Or, considering how I’ve wound up with a lot of your products, just before the next version is released you’ll blow out the remaining stock of 3 and I’ll just pay what it would theoretically cost me for a download now. And then start the cycle again…
Do you see the folly?
Cheers,
Your Customer,
Digital Lo-Fi
March 20th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Ableton, on the other hand, are great about this kind of thing.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Consider my name on the petition. Jeez, just reading this brings back all kinds of angst.
The commercial digital audio software business is tough. Most of the consumers are bedroom rockers using 2-5 year-old hardware, though (living within means). Our vendors need to innovate to stay competitive…and someone needs to pay for that innovation.
On the other hand, I’m tired of getting burned. When Sonic Foundry sold to Sony, I promptly got @#$í. When Fruityloops was “reintroduced” as FL Studio, I got @#$í.
Now I am inclined to steal because my creative productivity as a human being is worth more to me than my reputation as a citizen. I’m a bit subversive like that. It’s luck for vendors I make a decent salary these days. But I do know a lot of talented folks who are far more in need of a break than me.
But yes, thanks to Native for their work.
March 21st, 2008 at 5:42 am
Kontakt 3 was my first Kontakt, so I was quite happy with the included sample library.
It makes sense to have a plug-in upgrade only option though, especially for previous owners who don’t use the Kontakt library anyways.
You’re probably right that the box needs to be full. A plug-in only update/product will probably encourage new customers to try to get a better deal by asking for non-library versions…
March 21st, 2008 at 11:46 am
ronnie, how is the library? Are there a lot of instruments that utilize scripting? Because a folder full of bass sounds interests me very little; a folder full of scripted bass sounds might be more interesting.
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I dunno, Kontakt 3’s library is frankly quite large and very useful. It’s also an expansion to and improvement on the Kontakt 2 library.
I understand what you mean though — it isn’t like everyone who buys Kontakt is going to ever use the factory library. So a break on the upgrade price for the engine without the sounds would probably make a lot of sense for many customers.
I mean aside from the majority of their customers, who can’t be arsed to figure out how to do anything but load presets.
It’s to the point now where Reaktor is really the red-headed step child of the NI product line, because it requires people to actually know something and even worse learn something.
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I load presets, I just load other vendor’s presets.
Well, not really: there are a bunch of non-Kontakt libraries I’ve been in the process of converting for the last couple of years that have been forcing me to go under the hood. Perhaps there could be some sort of Kontakt-development package?
But I am glad to hear the library is good. Maybe I’ll just dump the v2 library altogether and use the space for version 3.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
It also occurs to me that you could level this same charge at fxpansion for the BFD2 update, but despite the price I’m really looking forward to getting that library upgrade.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
[...] is both version 2 and version 3 compatible, it’s perhaps another argument as to why NI should allow for other upgrade options. Tags: Kontakt, samples, soniccouture.com, [...]