For me the standout of the upgrade is the
Akoustik Piano. It's a lovely collection, and the interface has just the
right controls to get these pianos to work well in a mix. They sound
gorgeous by themselves. You can make them sound wide and dynamic if you
want. Playing the Akoustik Pianos on my Fantom S-88 is a wonderful
experience as they exceed the stock Fantom S pianos easily. There are
3 Grand Pianos, the Steinway D, Bechstein D 280 and Bosendorfer Imperial, and an Upright,
the Steingraeber 130. I liked the Upright piano the least, but it
is kind of quirky, like an old dusty attic piano at grandma's house.
I'm going to use this collection regularly as they now make the grade as the
best pianos on my system.
The next best, (again, speaking only for myself)
is the FM8. It is now much more useful and interesting, thanks to the
addition of the arpeggiator, much better preset control with the
"Kore-style" browser built in, and interesting morphing and real-time
control. The FM8 now has effects, which gives more sonic possibilities.
Some of the sounds are sublime and beautiful. I have already used it
quite a bit and I predict I will use it heavily. The interface
is now white and gray, rather than DX style green. In fact, when using the FM7
one actually felt like they were programming a Yamaha synth. That is gone
now, but the functionality remains. You can import all your FM7 sounds
into FM8 and they sound exactly the same. There is no denying, however,
that the new interface is much faster to navigate, easier to understand, and
that the sound is of a higher caliber. Updated
Review.
Note the huge number of cells
available in the Battery 3 interface
Close behind in the realm of great value is
Battery 3, which is a mind blower. NI chose some great samples, all
carefully assembled into some large kits. I am impressed. If you have not heard the demos of
Battery 3, you should go listen to them at NI's site. 100 drum kits, 23,000
samples. 12 GB library. Just take about 20 minutes, sit back and
listen to all the kits in the demo. I feel this is a groundbreaker in
terms of sound. Battery 3 is Native's programming at its best.
Brilliant! The basic kits have a natural sound unmatched by most
sample collections.
Here's a link to my revised
review of Battery which now
also talks about Battery 3
Kontakt 2 I've reviewed this a
while ago so I won't say much more here, other than that it is, in my
opinion, the best soft sampler you can get. Definitely not the easiest
software to learn but once you have, it can take your projects using samples
into different dimensions. Kontakt 2 comes with a huge library.
An excellent orchestra, included. It will also import a huge number of alien
sample formats. Here's a link to my previous
review.
Reaktor 5 is next, which has one feature I
really like--its stable on my system. Some of the new ensembles are
fantastic. There is one sound generator called Skrewell, which is one of the
most fun FX synths I have ever used. RandomStepShifter als gets high marks
for glitching up drum samples in unusual ways. Ditto for Vectory. Plus
you get all the Reaktor classics, like the Junatik (remarkably similar to
the Juno 106), Carbon, Green Matrix, GoBox, Spring Tank...
Reaktor is really a bundle of software
instruments and effects by itself. These are called Reaktor
Ensembles. There are analog synths, digital synths, sample players; mini
sequencers; groove boxes; sample transformers; sound generators, and a
variety of effects. Reaktor 5 keeps the edge on sonic exploration. To get
more of an idea of what Reaktor is, see my older review of
Reaktor Session
The graphics follow
the sound in a striking way. Editing the sound is as easy as
dragging the mouse over the yellow green bar display.
Fantastic for space opera sounds.
Absynth 4 just saw its first update,
which makes it much more stable. It has a wide range of sounds. Some of the Absynth sounds are quite evocative
many will cut hard through any mix. When I need an unusual sound, I can
go digging through Absynth's database and I often come out with something
cooler than I went looking for. You can read more about Absynth in
my older review of Absynth 2.
The Elektrik Piano is sample-based,
unlike other EP instruments by other software makers who use software
modeling. Yet the sound is all there, warm and toasty, compared to the
brittle-like texture to many EPs on the market. The Pianos are quite
usable. I just have so many EPs on my system I am not so excited.
These do stand out for their "warmth", a buzzword term I don't like to use,
but when you hear it, I think you'll have to agree. It's warm!
The B4 II. I haven't explored
this much yet, other than going through the presets. As it was with
the original, its hard to find B3 emulations that compare. The sound
is warm and intimate, yet can hold its own in harder electronica club music,
and of course, rock and some some uh, funky, nasty blues. The presets
are simply dripping with character.
Guitar Rig 2. An awesome
software interface. Just in case you are wondering, you don't need
Native's Guitar Rig hardware to use this software. Just insert GR2 as
a plugin on an audio track and watch the huge "reason-like" rack of effects
processors open up on your screen. I counted 52 rack devices that can
be chained in various ways to help you define your guitar tone. Again
I am left with the word,
"big". In fact, I think it is the largest of all my plugins.
It takes up nearly half the screen on my 23" monitor. I have
not explored it too much yet, so you'll have to wait for an assessment.
The Pro 53 is unchanged form
Komplete 2. But for those who don't have it, it's an excellent
software model of the Prophet 5 synth by Sequential Circuits. It would
have been nice to get a Kore browser for this one, as there are many presets
in this synth and it is hard to find the ones you want. But for those
that don't know the Pro53, its one of the better sounding analog emulations
that has a small CPU hit.
The thing that stands out the most, for me,
for the whole Komplete 4 package, is how inventive the sounds are. There is great stuff here. NI's programmers are defining the cutting edge for
electronica. You get plenty of high quality sounds for any composition plus
a huge assortment of vastly experimental sounds that may help you define a
niche for your music. There is stuff here that simply has not been heard
before.
Kore and Komplete 4
Thanks to the Kore-like browser in many of
the instruments, sounds are easier to find than ever. By Kore-like, I mean
that the browser for many instruments works exactly the way Kore's database
works. You look for a sound by choosing some keywords of what you want
the sound to be like. It might just be a timbral attribute like
"Thin", the add the type of instrument, like "plucked string". Just
from those two you'll get a list of instruments that fit that description.
The idea behind Kore is to merge all these individual databases into
one monster-sized master database. Does it succeed?
As of Kore 1.1, I can say "Yes!" with
confidence. This was not the case with Kore 1.03, which could not
"see" Komplete 4 level Kore sounds. Now it can and the world is right.
While its still not a 100% perfect world, I am happy to say that Komplete 4
and Kore are ready for prime time.
But even without Kore, Komplete 4 is a huge, fantastic
package. If you are coming from Komplete 2, its a no brainer. If you are
not, I know of no faster way to get a software studio up to speed with a
variety of good sounding instruments.
Late October 2006
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