Native Instruments
More info
- Creator
- Stephan Schmitt
- Released
- 1996
- Type
- Software and hardware maker
- Website
- native-instruments.com
The Berlin company that made software instruments a serious alternative to hardware, with Reaktor, Kontakt and Traktor.
Stephan Schmitt founded the company in 1996 around Generator, a modular synth that ran in real time on an ordinary PC — close to unthinkable at the time. It became Reaktor, followed by the Kontakt sampler, the Traktor DJ software and synths such as Massive. The Komplete bundle let you buy an entire studio as a single download.
With Maschine in 2009 the company moved into hardware too: controllers that are only half an instrument without the computer. Kontakt's library format has become an economy of its own, with third-party developers selling whole orchestras, and the 2015 Stems format tried to do something similar for DJs. In 2022 the company was merged with iZotope and Plugin Alliance under private-equity ownership.