Native Instruments is the worst(Again!)

[JDN]

after having none of my emails returned by NI tech support, I finally gave them a call. I would be so happy to never buy a NI product again. Here's how it went.

Now here's the real unethical business practice. I ask him if they are ever gonna fix Kontakt to work properly with the RTAS engine as both digi and NI and EVEN tech support guy acknowledges it never has. He says, yes we are fixing that, public beta will be out soon. I have Knotakt 2 so of course I first need to pay to update to kontakt 3. Are you F**king kidding me? I need to pay to upgrade a product that NEVER worked properly in my platform in the first place even though it was advertised to work properly in RTAS????

Guitar Rig 2 won't show up in PT Leopard. Very rude tech support guy says it's not supported and I would have to pay to upgrade to 3. When I pointed out that doesn't seem right he said "I don't have to justify it to you, and all music software companies are like that" First of all, you DO have to to justify this to me and second I have plenty of third party music software that is NOT like this. Then his solution was to stay on tiger and pt 7.3, that's what a lot of people do! what a joke

already replaced guitar rig with eleven, the only money NI will ever see from me again is only for battery as i will begrudginly continue to us it as I love it

[jikky]

sux to hear. it's always been unstable in PT. I think that DAW has alotta problems with outside rtas instruments from what i read. U should get structure as your sampler. I love Kontakt 3 and Battery 3, but they work perfectly in my Cubase setup. In the future, make sure you research the company and how good their plugs work in your daw. It sux to hear. Ebay the sh1t, take the loss, and keep it moving. Hopefully the new stuff will be stable for you and help you to be a producer and not a tech. I know I'd be mad so I feel ya. Keep ya head up tho homie.

[G-Spot]

Artist Drums from Native Instrument NEVER worked properly with me (ProTools LE). I've waited long for fixes, but they never were released... and then I bought Toontrack DFH .

Then I tried a demo version of Guitar Rig, but the bad experience I had before with NI kept me from buying it... I ended up with POD, Revalver and Amplitube...
Now I'm looking to the B-3, but I'm not sure if I'm going to buy it... because PT 8 comes with the DB-33, which is not so good as the B-3, but is enough for my needs.

It's a shame, because they are here in Berlin and I would love to support them, but that's the way it goes when compatibility sucks...

[Mdns]

I think I read somewhere that software pirating has forced companies like NI to produce unusable software to make it less desirable to pirate.

[seany]

thanks for making me laugh

thumbsup

[ORGANIK]

they do suck!
Im waiting now 2 weeks just for them to send me a box and label to return a randomly unresponsive maschine unit back for repair or replacement.

[psycho_monkey]

I'm far from a power user, but Battery and Pro 53 have always been well behaved for me under PT (7 and 8). Also got Kontakt although I rarely use it heavily - but that's not crashed as far as I can remember.

[miscend]

Originally Posted by JDN

after having none of my emails returned by NI tech support, I finally gave them a call. I would be so happy to never buy a NI product again. Here's how it went.

Now here's the real unethical business practice. I ask him if they are ever gonna fix Kontakt to work properly with the RTAS engine as both digi and NI and EVEN tech support guy acknowledges it never has. He says, yes we are fixing that, public beta will be out soon. I have Knotakt 2 so of course I first need to pay to update to kontakt 3. Are you F**king kidding me? I need to pay to upgrade a product that NEVER worked properly in my platform in the first place even though it was advertised to work properly in RTAS????

Guitar Rig 2 won't show up in PT Leopard. Very rude tech support guy says it's not supported and I would have to pay to upgrade to 3. When I pointed out that doesn't seem right he said "I don't have to justify it to you, and all music software companies are like that" First of all, you DO have to to justify this to me and second I have plenty of third party music software that is NOT like this. Then his solution was to stay on tiger and pt 7.3, that's what a lot of people do! what a joke

already replaced guitar rig with eleven, the only money NI will ever see from me again is only for battery as i will begrudginly continue to us it as I love it

Have you tried using a VST wrapper?

[PhonoquO]

protools le is crippled

[beingmf]

i have nothing but good experiences with NI: one problem with my Kontakt registration was solved within minutes, and when I called because I couldn't figure out a certain setting, the guy on the phone was very helpful, patient and knew his stuff. So nothing to complain about.

Originally Posted by JDN

...Guitar Rig 2 won't show up in PT Leopard...

That's why I moved to PC. "DAW X is only working with 10.4 upwards, plugin Y only maximum 10.3.9, this and that is unstable after system upgrade..." and you were forced to buy upgrades for almost EVERY single plugin and app on your studio computer. No thanks!

[ebulb]

this is why i started this thread..

Buggy Software

to greater and lesser degrees this happens on lots of software and its a curious point to me where is it a rip off and where can you say its done its job ?

It seems to some companies if it installs then its worked and beyond that they can start blaming other things on your computer.. Im not sure all of them set out to intentionally produce garbage but under the pressures of eta's, kpi's, marketing and competition and the need to make money the integrity gets eroded away and you are often left with untested beta rubbish.

If the program has never worked at all and youve gotten such bad responses, the only way to try and do anything is get in touch with someone as far up in the company that will speak to you and tell them.. Hopefully they care enough to take it onboard and do something..

Aside from that just broadcast your experience and explain the details to as many people as you can and let them know how you feel, and tell the people you speak to in the company you intend to do this.. Im sure the management fear the bad word of mouth online, especially if it gets enough circulation and has other supporters.

Beyond just being screwed by NI in this instance theres broader principle in this.. Currently i dont see much stopping any software company with a bit of a rogue attitude from making half assed crap, taking your money and telling you bad luck.. Or realising halfway into a products life cycle its costing too much to keep patching it and its easier to start again etc... There needs to be more accountability.

[Levon]

I have had good experiences with NI's customer service, fast, helpful efficient, but then, I dealt with them here in Germany. Maybe it's their US service that suxx and maybe someone should tell Headquarters????

[beingmf]

Originally Posted by Levon

I have had good experiences with NI's customer service, fast, helpful efficient, but then, I dealt with them here in Germany. Maybe it's their US service that suxx and maybe someone should tell Headquarters????

Right, just write them an email about your experiences. I'm pretty sure, it won't take a backseat.

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by PhonoquO

protools le is crippled

How exactly? I mean, how is this relevant?

[engmix]

dfegadNI

[PhonoquO]

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

How exactly? I mean, how is this relevant?

from what i've been reading, protools always seems to be the last to get things straightened out in terms of working properly with OS upgrades.

[chrisso]

Kontakt 3 is working fine on my Intel iMac with PTLE.

I didn't have a great experience of NI customer service, registering software or the user forum though I have to say.

[ekwipt]

This keeps coming up when trying to log into Service centre

I rang up NI support in Germany and they said it's because my Internet is too slow.

I said "But I have ADSL 2+" it's pretty fast (i think it's about 1.5 MB sec)

and he said that the message comes up because my internet is too slow.

I'm like

Umm ok cool, I guess I can download my updates through the website, but it really doesn't add up for me, if anyone has a fix please chime in

I've used service centre on the same computer for the last year

[thehuman]

I will put in a vote for the "NI sucks" crowd too, and I'm not even a PT user.

I have had to contact them numerous times over the past few years for issues with Komplete 5 (specifically FM8, Absynth, and Massive crashing), Maschine, and Kore. I can safely say that they have never once provided satisfactory answers or even response-times. They just ALWAYS tell me to reinstall or wait for the next beta--meanwhile, nothing works properly and they couldn't give less of a damn. I was a sucker, and I kept buying their crappy crap, but no more.

I have had issues with their junk on multiple PC's and multiple OS's (XP, Vista, W7, AND OSX 10.5.8). There are better alternatives, and trying to deal with NI is more trouble than it's worth. Kontakt is about the only thing that is irreplaceable, but even that is only true if you use its advanced features, which, let's be honest, most people don't.

Anyway, it looks like they're done with new products from here on out. Just release a non-stop stream of uninspired preset packs for Kore/Kontakt, and re-release a bunch of crap that has already been sold elsewhere (Maschine Drums, Scarbee Keyboards, Acoustic Pianos, etc.). Pretty easy to avoid buying all of that bullsh*t.

[4damind]

Yes, that's NI.. Their products are full of bugs. I had also much trouble with the Kontakt Sampler and Absynth in the past.

I don't buy new products from NI because I don't like the company and the quality of their products.

[alkor]

go with the bug report system

dont know about kontakt, but i reported a bug within battery 2, they reproduced it and sent me a free update to battery 3, their level 1 support (germany) seemed a bit stoned (yes my call was early, but hey)...everything worked out fine !


otherwise; the update from any komplete to komplete 6 costs about 150 €, so....def a no brainer (if youre on an intel machine)..thumbsup i miss the vokator and the spectzral delay btw...

[The Beatsmith]

you're using pretty old software, in software timescales.

guitar rig 2 wasn't built for snow leopard. you're the one that upgraded.

sounds like you want software to be hardware. just go and buy hardware if that's the case.

yes, sometimes NI force you to upgrade. that's life

[ekwipt]

^ Dumb me forgot I had Glimmerblocker installed for safari

turned off Service Centre works no problem

Marius from Native Instruments answered my question in the user support forums. He did apologize for the wrong info given to me my tech support over the phone.

So Native Instruments is back to thumbsup for me

I'm as usual

[valis]

Originally Posted by ekwipt

^ Dumb me forgot I had Glimmerblocker installed for safari

turned off Service Centre works no problem

Marius from Native Instruments answered my question in the user support forums. He did apologize for the wrong info given to me my tech support over the phone.

So Native Instruments is back to thumbsup for me

I'm as usual

I meant to post this earlier but forgot and I see you've solved the problem. This is a nice example however of something that is out of a company's control and difficult to troubleshoot with basic info so for future reference this is what I wrote earlier:

The only thing that message says is that the port in question isn't "valid" in some way (which I would guess it means that it's being blocked from using it, perhaps something else is?) I would agree that it isn't very descriptive. Normally when a connection times out you'll get something that actually states timeout, so perhaps there's something else blocking it. Ie, this could be anything from a local firewall, to a NAT/firewall issue with a home router or the isp and the only way to find it is to start on the computer and trace upstream until you find out where stops.

To observe what ports are open or used on your machine:

$ netstat -nf inet

this will show all current connections, TCP and UDP. netstat -anf inet will add listening ports to this (a LISTEN port is used by a server/daemon process that is waiting for a connection.) If you can identify the port it tries to use on your local machine you can then use lsof to probe that port and see if something else exists:

$ sudo lsof -i :XXXXX

(where XXXXX is the port # in question)

If the NI tech can tell you what port is commonly used by security center then you can also just probe it to see if there's something already on it (listen or otherwise.)

[engmix]

I'm sorry, but i have to flame on these guys for being totally and utterly the biggest idiots on the face of the earth.

They have owed me money for 2 day shipping for 2 months now, for charging me twice for items received via ground shipping that i already excepted.

Today i get an email from these stupid f%*cks that they're overnighting me the same package of software i ALREADY received.

Can someone please explain to me how a company that can't even take care of the most basic transaction can exist in the world as a legitimate business. This is the 4th mistake regarding my order.

dfegadNI

[ignatius]

that sucks all around. sounds very frustrating.

i think digi/avid/maudio (or whatever they are called this week) should drop rtas and get w/the rest of the universe and just support VST (or even AU!). i mean.. RTAS... is there a more useless format?

anyway - sorry your experience w/NI hasn't been positive. good luck.

[ekwipt]

thanks mate, hopefully if someone else comes up with this issue they can work it out from the post

[fantomen]

This one is dedicated to all the Kontact lovers out there... I am sure when you look at this new "bargain" powered by Kontact you will laugh as much as I have. Really worth taking a look

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-p...y-kontakt.html