NI & Dgi - the sad sga continues

[wmmccoy]

I relented to intimidation and not wanting to think that I didn't do EVERYTING I could do to bow to NI USA's support person, so I purchased Pro Tools 7 (nice product BTW, one they add more tracks...) You have to believe that by nature, I'm an easy going guy, but I have products that I have promised to customers and they were already designed around Kontakt and Battery. Acoustic instruments are already tracked so...

Anyway, guess what?

My latest support form to NI regarding Kontakt and Pro Tools( the 4th for this problem, I still have one open from some time ago for a similar problem with Battery 2):

I have upgraded to PTLE 7.0. as suggested by ALL of you support personnel. Pro Tools works fine, great, in fact. Your product, Kontakt 2 STILL "works" the same way it did before I upgraded. I was obfuscated to, patronized, and talked down to because I was concerned that after upgrading ProTools, I would still have the same problem, and Lo, and behold, I do. This is not fair at all! Once again, I have included screen shots. If I'm doing something wrong, please tell me, but according to DigiDesign, I have their software configured correctly for what I'm trying to accomplish, which is have outputs on Pro Tools that make sense based on my Kontakt output configuration. You may want to tell {name withheld} in California that about this. I want to talk to someone that's not going to make ME feel like IM not an idiot. PLEASE???? Another weekend is going to be shot because of this. I have to leave to go out of town @ 11:45 DST, is there anyone I can talk to beside {name withheld}? Someone in you German headquarters?I do not want to speak to her ever again. She's not very good at customer relations and if keeps on going like it is, there's going to be a serious backlash of NI's own making. As for me, I've already posted open letters to both the NI and Didgi Design websites, and have sent letters to Recording, Sound on Sound, and Mix magazines to begin with, but that's just the start. You guys might be able to push around kids that buy your products because of good marketing, but I have been on both sides of this situation many times and you guy are doing a disservice to people (like me) who were once loyal customers. I refuse to be sorry for switching to Pro Tools, it was a choice I had to make for the type of work I generally do. You guys know how Komplete 2 costs and then Complete Care on top of that. I'm just a poor boy trying to make a living doing what I love. This letter will also be posted in the NI and Digi Design user group sites. Maybe you should read them sometime and REALLY get a feel for how happy folks are with some of your products.

Thanks
Michael McCoy
Yorktown, VA, USA

p.s. DigiDesign - good things in this upgrade. Now, if we only had more tracks....

[Equality 7-2521]

NI has the worst support ive ever come across. Absynth, Kontakt & Battery have been riddled with bugs for years and no matter how many times NI promises that there are updates coming soon, they never deliver. They are too busy releasing new products, which likely have bugs that will never be fixed either. I know we are not alone here. The NI forums are full of unsatisfied customers but funnily enough, NI dont even read their own forums. The thing that gets me is that NI claim their plugs are RTAS compatible but they clearly are not. Several pieces of their software are almost unusable under Pro Tools due to bugs....and I doubt it is a Pro Tools problem. Sadly, I cant see NI changing their ways.

[killcrush]

use reason, it works! no need for customer support

[wmmccoy]

Hey man, thanks for the reply, It is always good to know that one is not a whack job even though NI tries to make you feel as if you are.
And yes, I have found that EVERY RTAS plugin that NI distributes ALWAYS is either extremely buggy or does not have the features it's vSTI and DXI cousins have. As I have posted previously, NI blames this on Didgidesign and even states that Pro Tools is a less than stellar product (see previous post). I have forwarded a email to Digi, I hope they read it and reply.
They thing that gets me the most is that the "technical manager" gave me this long, pontificating speech on how NI and Digidesign have put their heads together and TA DA Pro Tools 7 is the result! I guess NI was the one who drove the new version in their collective corporate mind. The arrogance of it all!
It's really an empty feeling when you know you've been left out to dry but not quite powerful enough yourself to really do anything about it. I'm still not going to give up. I'll write letters to EVERY top recording/music production magazine I know until I annoy someone enough to listen to my story.

NI and Pro Tool users - stand up for your right and privilege to have functioning software!!!! Write letters, don't let NI push you around.

Digidesign - Is NI telling the truth? Did they collaborate heavily with you on Version 7? If so, where's the results? I think v 7 is a great product (not enough tracks), but is another, obviously less quality centric company going to attempt to pull you down with them? I respect you guys. Even though I've had to wait on the phone on long time on occasion, your customer service people are professional and usually have an answer that addresses the problem at hand and if they don't immediately, they will get one. Now a company that the antithesis of what you are is claiming an alliance that doesn't seem to be bearing any fruit except ones in the guise of obfuscation, patronization, and complete lack of the basic tenants of customer service. Are you going to allow this to happen? Are you going to allow NI personnel (poor guy, I'll bet he's in a lot of trouble for accidentally stating corporate mentality about Digidesign) make negative comments about your products just to get a lame apology from NI stating, "Oh, he was just one person, and he's been sanctioned."
Like I told NI, they can bully around kids who bought their software because of marketing hype, and a review of their product that was surely done using a vSTI or DXI version, but I refused to be pushed around. I've been on this earth over 50 years, done music and audio for 35+ years, and have been in many kinds of jobs, including customer support and programming (12+ years of that)and I know customer service. NI simply does not have it, nor does it seem that they have a concept about how it works. The same can be said for their products. Do they have a SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) policy in place? If not, even some kind of QA schedule? Man. the last place I worked, if by chance bad software made it to the end user, MUTLIPLE heads would roll. Also if it was discovered that I talked to a customer the way I was talked to yesterday, I would not have been sanctioned, I WOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED, plain and simple.
This will be posted at the N I site as well for all the good it will do.

Rant done.

[wmmccoy]

use reason, it works! no need for customer support

Well, that's a great suggestion, my friend, and I KNOW Reason works, I own it (as a vSTi). But do you know how much I paid for Kontakt? Better yet, how large my Kontakt library is? Why should I have to switch to anything, shouldn't the software I bought to do a specific thing work as advertised? I own nearly $2000 worth of NI software and the reason is that it seemed to work fine when I was using Cubase. I made the crazy assumption I would continue to have the same experience when I switched to Pro Tools. Surprise!

Anyway, thanks for the reply because it goes to show that Kontakt is certainly not the only horse in RTAS land that will get the job done.

Have a good one!