One synth to rule them all?

[MBTC]

Ended up ordering K9 Ultimate. There were several items included in the K9U package that I decided I wanted after researching them a little, especially Evolve, Damage, lots of string/horn/drum sounds. I was a little concerned that I wouldn't be able to "crossgrade" from K9U to K10 regular when it comes out (i.e. I would forever be locked into a higher upgrade price) but that does not appear to be the case.

Looking forward to playing around with Monark and many of the others.

[Berni]

Damn bro, seems like your GAS is getting out of hand, Lol. Can't really say too much myself though having also recently acquired the NIKU9 bundle. Got to say I was going for the Komplete upgrade but thought what the hell & went the whole Ultimate deal as it was still a great price on my upgrade from K8. I'm just glad it comes on a hard drive as a DVD set would be a long ass time to load on. Even on the hard drive set aside an evening & a LOT of HD space to install. Having said that my install went very smoothly after I figured out where to put everything. I decided to clean install all libraries & trash the old K8 ones which freed up a lot of space (I of course saved all user banks etc.)
As you probably know there is soooo much stuff on there & the soundtrack stuff, damage etc. is crazy good especially because it uses Kontakt as it's main engine so you can pretty much do anything you want with it sample wise. Razor & Monark are very cool along with all the other stock synths it comes with & combined with the Maschine or a midi controller & your DAW of choice it really makes you wonder why anyone would spend a hell of a lot more cash on a solitary synth with a few knobs & keys & then have to buy a DAW as well for it to work properly.

Komplete Ultimate + Mashine = $1600

Virus TI Polar = $2990

[MBTC]

Heh.... well GAS syndrome may not be over for me yet for the year 2013. This is the year of a complete revamp of my home studio, so the expenditures were inevitable. This is a neglected project that is now getting its due attention Realistically there will probably not be too much more hardware added to the mix. The UltraNova was more of an experiment to see how well "integrated hardware" would play with my current workflow... I think of it sort of like a lower cost mono-timbral Virus with some cool real-time playing options I wouldn't get any other way. There may however be a Virus joining the flock sometime soon, or maybe a Prophet 12, or maybe a Poly Evolver or something else to scratch the hardware itch.

That said, there is probably no single hardware device out there that is going to come close to matching the overall music making capability of the items that make up Komplete, and not at the price point or even ten times that.

My overall cost for K9U + Maschine is significantly lower than retail... paid $400 for Maschine then did the Crossgrade for Maschine owners to K9U for $750 for $1150 before shipping and such. I can't get a Snow for that!

I'm definitely glad all that comes on a hard drive though. I still haven't installed Omnisphere just because its so many DVDs and hours of swapping (need to get that started... maybe today actually).

I will say I'm finally getting close to getting the studio set up where I can just sit down and make music again. Yesterday I got some of my project templates created in Cubase (i.e. the templates that help you sit down and just fire up the DAW and go, rather than starting from scratch setting up /routing connections, adding same plug-in tracks and labeling them and crap like that).

Komplete should be here tomorrow, so hopefully all that will be installed by the weekend.

[Berni]

Yeah I got the deal on the maschine V1 for $400 & got KU9 for $649 because I already owned K8. Like you say, can't even buy a Snow for that! I'm very happy with Native Instruments right now

[MBTC]

Been meaning to ask, what do you think of the FX plugins (the reverbs, compression & such)?

(that question is for anyone that's tried them, regardless of owning the KU bundle)

[TweakHead]

Originally Posted by MBTC

Been meaning to ask, what do you think of the FX plugins (the reverbs, compression & such)?

(that question is for anyone that's tried them, regardless of owning the KU bundle)

Total killers! The new Bus compressor alone works wonders on groups of sounds! Of course you don't really need it for drums since it's integrated inside Battery 4 - if you like using it. The reverbs sound awsome as well, but they're inspired in classic units (so it's not bread and butter) - but they're very lush sounding reverbs. The new EQs inspired on analogue gear work just as great emulating the real thing as Monark - just give it a go.

Very happy with Native Instruments here to!

[MBTC]

mmm... more stuff to look forward to then

[Berni]

Originally Posted by MBTC

Been meaning to ask, what do you think of the FX plugins (the reverbs, compression & such)?

(that question is for anyone that's tried them, regardless of owning the KU bundle)

Not really had a chance to evaluate the NI ones much due to being in Plug-in overload at the mo (not a bad place to be) I just started to get into all the new EQ's, comps. etc. that come with Live 9 & the Max for Live stuff & now I have even more with the ultimate bundle...I'm pretty sure I don't need to get anymore. The solid stuff seems to be SSL emulations bit like the new 'glue' bus compressor in live so will have to see if they come close to the real thing. I have the SSL channel strip anyways so will be interesting to compare.
I put the solid bus compressor after an instance of Monarch last night in Maschine & it made it sound really fat & Moogish.

[TweakHead]

Originally Posted by Berni

The solid stuff seems to be SSL emulations bit like the new 'glue' bus compressor in live so will have to see if they come close to the real thing. I have the SSL channel strip anyways so will be interesting to compare.

Do you have the real thing, in hardware? Or former Duende plug-ins from SSL themselves? Or Waves Audio?

I have the later but haven't compared them yet. Will be interesting to A/B them since they're based on the same circuit. But I have the feeling this new one is a winner!

Only used it as a Bus Compressor so far, with gentle settings to bring the elements closer together on Drums, and even gentler on Kick and Bass. This is entirely subjective of course, but I've used this plenty and I think this one does work better.

While I can't be to sure about the compressor, I'm pretty damn sure the EQ is amazing! I don't usually boost frequencies with digital EQs, only started doing it with good emulations of analog circuitry, and with gentle settings, something like +3dB at most. That's like saying, if I'm boosting I want it to sound musical and without sacrificing the harmonic balance of the sound in a way that just feels... well, like digital mud. There's a couple of them out there now that work very well for this: and this one imprints some really juicy character on the sound. Also tried it on Bass Instrument's group, a slight boost around 80-100Hz. Sounds very nice to me, doesn't produce any sort of artifact or annoying latencies (which demanding algorithms sometimes do). Solid as a rock and sounding more like it's out of some high end studio to my ears!

This is the kind of stuff you'd get with very expensive dedicated DSP cards only a few years ago, I think... Ok, rant over guys

[MBTC]

Well the shiny K9U box showed up at my doorstep in all its glory earlier than promised, so it's installing now....
....so in the meantime I'm hovering over the keyboard, rubbing my hands together, sweating and drooling, anxious to get started creating Balinese Gamelan Trance!

Oh and I did actually finally get Omnisphere installed and updated today. Productive day! (Funny, it wasn't as painful as I remembered. When I first installed it many years back, it was on a PC that I used for getting work done so I had to wait for the install to finish. Not nearly as painful when done on a dedicated music PC in another room.)