Native Instruments USA

Native INSTRUMENTS customer service doesn’t exist
Emailed theme twice on an issue after 1 week no response. Another buyer beware company.

Literally the worst customer service i have ever experienced in my LIFE! Every customer service rep was disrespectful and the 4^th representative to help me was so rude and hung up the phone when i asked to talk to a supervisor, i was never given a name by ANY rep and now i can see why… I am a DJ and i am so disappointed in the service they give, needing to record tracks and needing help with traktor should be a given but apparently they have no idea what «CUSTOMER SERVICE» means. If only i knew this before i bought this traktor s4. HIGHLY do not recommend!!!

I have been trying to get a help from them over 2 months. But nothing going on. Bullshit costumer service. Never buy anything from them.

Omg… what the hell is wrong with their customer support team?! I get hung up on, kicked back in the que so they can pass on the «burden“to somebody else. It’s not my fault Native instruments doesn’t spend the extra time to make upgrades a lot more customer friendly. You think I like to have to call you guys and wait. This is sad and I will definitely go back to AKAI this is ridiculous.

I have not been able to use this product since I have purchased it 4 months ago due to a NI software issue. My request to join their user forum 2 months ago was denied. I was contacted a few weeks later by the community support manager on 20NOV14 who explained my request was denied due to an overactive spam filter. I was told the issue would be fixed but I have not heard back since. I did my research before purchasing the MK2 and was really looking forward to using it.
Ultimately, several exhausting months later and countless attempts to solve the problem by submitting support tickets (waiting several days for a response for each one), I am out of patience and thoroughly frustrated with this product. The excitement is gone.
NI does not have a support structure in place in order to serve its customers. This will be TOP on my list before I purchase from the next company. Customer support and response times have been absolutely atrocious and they will not assist you personally with tech support for their product. Sadly, the MK2 is probably a great console when it works properly but, based on this exasperating experience, I would not recommend their products.
I have spent additional money on software techs to try to determine the issue with NI’s interface and countless hours of my own time, to no avail. Both told me the software is buggy. No one at NI seems interested in my problem and it has been too long for me to return the product to the place from which I bought it.
I would have rather written a positive review explaining in detail all the great features represented on this device but unfortunately, I’ve had to explain the pitfalls of dealing with a complete lack of service at NI.

These guys pricing schemes and proprietary pricing show poor treatment and disrespect for their customers.
It’s ridiculous that they charge $ 99 for the upgrade to previous MK2 owners and only give it for free to new owners– I don’t think it’s good business sense to penalize those loyal to a product and charge them for an UPGRADE. I’m an economist so it seems obvious they’re strong-​arming they’re current customers because they’ve already had a sunk cost of $ 600 from purchasing this. In addition to this, if you upgraded to v2.0 and received $ 25, you can only use it on FULL-​PRICE items. I called NI and complained to them that they don’t have ANY information on their page explaining this technicality, they told me
’We don’t need to inform customers of what they can spend their voucher until AFTER they’ve made their purchase.‘
That’s a bait and switch. After having to upgrade and intending to use the $ 25 on their ‘Thanksgiving Special’ I’m no longer allowed to use the $ 25 on their 50%-off $ 24.50 expansion but HAVE to wait for it to go up $ 25, so then I can spend that money on a $ 50 item– that’s ridiculous, I might as well have never gotten that money in the first place. The customer service guy just kept idiotically repeating that sound-​byte not trying to meet me half-​way so I just had to say good-​by and hang-​up.
I’m happy that Unilocal is here to call them out on their customer service. Their products aren’t the problem, it’s how they treat their customers. I’m going with Ableton.

Will never buy their plugs again. The support is terrible and upgrade plan is not at all fair.

I’ve been using NI stuff since the first Reaktor. Soon after I got Absynth 2, then used Komplete with the Electronic Sounds add-​on pack.
I stayed pretty current with all releases through about Komplete 4. But after that my powerbook was stolen and couldn’t make music again for a couple of years. I sold my licenses but bought current versions of everything a couple years later when I finally saved up for a new computer.
That’s when I realized how flaky NI is to their customers. When I tried to open my tracks I’d made (thankfully were backed up and not lost with the computer) I just got alerts that the plugins used weren’t the right ones (i.e. Absynth 2 needed when now I had Absynth 4). I was especially interested in finishing a track I’d started a few years earlier that was the best thing I’d ever done – many months invested in it. Four of the plugins wouldn’t open because now I had the newer versions.
I wrote to NI several times but got no response. I called and finally talked to somebody. Said I wanted to get a legacy copy of the software. He said I was SOL. I asked if I could just send the data file and asked if they could tell me what samples it was trying to load. Again, SOL.
They have absolutely no support for anything they’ve released that’s more than a few months old. I assume they have copies of old stuff there, they’d be absolute idiots not to (when I worked at Apple we generally didn’t support legacy issues but in a special case such as this we had the resources and *could* do it.) So to just throw me under the bus like that is off-​putting enough to where I just grew a dislike of electronic music altogether.
With hindsight, they did me a favor. I think the kind of sounds that NI specialized in are dead. I’m having way more fun with my rediscovered guitar.

I’ve been having issues with all my Native Instruments products since I started buying them in 2010. But what has finally pushed me to write about my issues was what happened at the beginning of last week. On January 2^nd I wrote to NI’s technical support about sound issues I was having with their software «The Mouth.» On January 3^rd I called their technical support department about the same issue. The guy who answered the call tried to replicate the issue but he said it worked on his end. He asked me which sound card I was using. I am using the NI Audio 10 DJ. He said he would try to figure it out and call me back. He took my phone number. It is now January 9^th and I have not heard back from him. What’s worse, I haven’t even received an email response back from them from when I wrote to them.
I have also had the same issue with their software «The Finger.» I cannot get it to work. Yes I have read the manuals. There are no videos or any support for The Finger.
The first item I bought from NI was Traktor Scratch Pro with the Audio 8 DJ. I read through the manual many times but had and still have a ridiculous amount of issues with Traktor every time I start it up. The worse thing that has happened is the disappearance of all my sets on Traktor. I had made MANY DJ sets which were saved in folders in Traktor which would appear when I started the program up. A few of my sets were more than 300 songs. One day I open up Traktor and they have all disappeared. I spent many months staying up late and waking up early just to make those sets. That was a huge disappointment and blow to my motivation. What if I had been going to a gig thinking I had my set ready to perform, and get there and it’s gone? How could anyone be a professional DJ like that?
I spent every spare dime I had on NI products and other products which I intended to use with my NI products. I bought Traktor Scratch Pro and the Audio 8 DJ initially. I bought 4 Technics turntables to use with the 4 decks available on Traktor Pro 2 and the Audio 10 DJ, a Behringer DDM4000 mixer to handle the 4 turntables, I have 2 Traktor Kontrol X1’s, I have 4 Novation Dicers for my 4 turntables, the Numark Total Control, the Novation Launchpad, the Korg KPQuad, Kaoss Pad, Kaossilator Pro, Mini Kaoss Pad, the Korg Monotron, the Korg NanoKontrol 2, the NI Maschine hardware and software, the Komplete 7 software set, the Akai MPK 49, the M-​Audio 88es keyboard with 88 keys (specifically for The Finger software), a Samson C03 condenser microphone, a Roland drum set, 2 hard drives, an acoustic guitar, a bass guitar and an electric guitar. By the way, when I plug the guitars into my sound card and run Guitar Rig 4, I only hear the original guitar sound. The sound doesn’t change when I change the name of guitar type on the Guitar Rig program. I even bought 2 Canon EOS Kiss x5 cameras, a $ 500 lens and a $ 1500 lens for them. I bought a Habby Jib and Habby Cam holder for the cameras. I bought the Sony Vegas Pro video editing software for $ 500. But, what takes the cake is that my 2 previous laptops couldn’t handle the Traktor software without creating horrible sound delays and distortions. So I spent $ 1700 on a Dell XPS with a SSD drive. The Audio 10 DJ wasn’t even recognized on the Dell XPS. Yet this is the laptop DJ Endo uses. After at least a month of back and forth with the NI technical support department, they decide to send me a new Audio 10 DJ. I receive the new one and have the same problem. Finally someone at NI tells me to plug the Audio 10 DJ into the eSATA port of the Dell XPS. This was, of course, written nowhere in the Traktor or Audio 10 manuals. I even hired an audio engineer to help me get my studio up and running. He was unsuccessful but still charged me money. I have gotten either no support or very poor support from NI about their products. Yet celebrity DJ’s like Jazzy Jeff and Scribble get product specialists to set up their items. Obviously ‘professional’ DJ’s can’t get NI’s products up and running by themselves or by reading the manuals. They need personalized help. I am a better DJ than Jazzy Jeff and Scribble. Neither one of them blends or mixes any songs together. They just scratch and drop. They have no technique. And this is who NI deicdes to align themselves with — DJ’s who can’t DJ. Yet I can’t get any help.

Native Instruments provides the most professional expansive sound for Motion Picture, Video Products, and Commercial needs. I have worked with Native Instruments in Commercial Advertising. You can also bring in many tools from Native Instruments to other applications (please read their FAQ and your own Music Programs FAQ). If your a Musician without keyboards a blending of NI and others will give you the ambiance and feel you need to produce awesome work.

In my 15 years of producing music I’ve never heard instruments with such depth. Native Instruments is at the top of their game. I can even recognize a lot of their stock patches in a ton of stuff i hear all over, from radio to TV to major motion pictures.
When I used to run my whole rig from an old powerbook I’d find that Reaktor and Absynth would totally hog up my CPU, but now with Dual Core Macbooks and buff ass G5’s that’s no longer an issue. For Windows users, their product line is Dual Platform too!
The problem I’m running into reviewing Native Instruments right now is that they have such an array of products, that i don’t even know where to start.
How about Reaktor?
What a beast.
Reaktor is hands down the most flexible software synth I’ve ever encountered. The sounds are rich, fat and inspiring. I can sit down and bring up any Reaktor patch and music will just start flowing from my fingers. That is typically the litmus test for me. If the sound inspires me to write, and it doesn’t even feel like work. It feels more like vacation.
The coolest thing about Reaktor is the abilty to create your own software synth, upload it to the Native site and share it with other users all around the world. I’ve downloaded hundreds of synths and still haven’t played with all of them. I find Tim Shaw’s (Exile) work to be the most facinating of them all. If you haven’t pick up his record Pro Agonist, I recommend checking it out.
Tim is now working with Native Instruments and has added a lot features to some of their new products, including Traktor DJ Studio 3, which is a totally awesome experience in it’s own right.
I could go on and on, but I’m going to wrap here.
For anyone looking to explore software music production, hobbyist or professional, beginner or super advanced, I’d say that Native Instruments could inspire you to create some dynamic and groundbreaking work. Good luck! The rabbit hole is very, very deep.