Virgil’s right . . . I expect price would be closer to $500 based on past experience. Well, almost right — I’ll betcha KORE took more time than Guitar Rig to develop. But anyway, that’s not how you price products; it’s a marketing decision (and you think more about support costs than development costs, because that impacts your cost per user). I’m hoping for a very low price, because that will speed adoption, and the more broadly KORE gets adopted, the more successful the idea will be — and the more likely third party developers will be to develop for the “universal sound format.” But I would be very surprised if it’s over $500. And you can quote me on that, because no one at Native told me or anyone else anything, so you can be positive that this is entirely based on my uneducated instincts.

Peter

Ask yourself, in order to work efficiently, do you need to organize your sounds and set mental boundaries around what you’re doing, or do you need to erase those boundaries and find out where that approach leads you. The answer to that question may very well tell you if such a Librarian is of any use.

As for splits and layers, can’t you just do that within your host just as easily? I’ll admit, I’ve been standardized on Live for the past couple of years (with an occasional foray into Rax). Splits/Layers have just never given me that much of a hassle.

Now one place where I could imagine the KORE’s librarian might be more useful is with *effect* plug-ins. Where synth sounds are usually fairly contained to a single VST (or at least a few VST’s that are pretty easy to pick apart — “hrm, was that Klingon Blood Falling on a Wet Dog layered over Imploding Plasma, or was that Slurping Cthuluean Saliva?”) it’s usually much harder to separate or even identify some effects when they’re chained together, much less recreate a chain. In Live 5, you can now do this using the Audio Device Groups, but I’d see a use for it elsewhere (read: everywhere). “Uh oh, did I put KT Granulator before or after Augustus Loop on that patch…?”

Overall, I’d still place this merely in the “knob box” camp. Just like knob, sliders, buttons, joysticks, IR controllers, D-Beams, or any other interface tool, it’s going to appeal to the way some people like to work. Other people would just as soon do everything with a mouse. And others still just won’t care much about the whole argument in the first place.

As always, it comes down to the universal YMMV…

– glitch.@#$%!

You’re right to suspect this ain’t no Receptor. This is a control box + audio + software. NI is not getting into the business of making PCs. And while I’d love a Receptor, I can’t afford one at the moment — or tow it onto the NYC Subway as easily as my laptop. So I’m not especially keen for NI to do what the Receptor already does. (Plus I’d need both a Receptor and my laptop just to run Live . . . erm, no thanks.)

Now, as for your second charge, why wouldn’t you be able to use this with any style of music you want? Splits / layers / controller assignments apply to just about everyone. (I like to collapse dwarf nebulae with my left hand while playing imploding plasma layered with Klingon blood falling on a wet dog in my right, personally.) And I might then want to automatically switch to another sound without reading for a mouse. And since you can provide your own categories, if you’re doing your own sound designs, there’s no reason you can’t make up your own system. That’s certainly what I do already, and how I’d use this. No one else may want this particularly odd and unpredictable pad based on unhealthy modulation I’ve designed, but I can probably think of a category by which I can remember it. (In fact, if anything, that’d encourage me to sit down and finish more of my own patches.)

This will work with Reaktor instruments and (via Pluggo) should work with Max/MSP stuff, too. And there’s computer to computer OSC sync. So for the weirdness factor, you’re good to go. Otherwise someone as weird as me wouldn’t be interested.

Still not saying it’s for you, but my bet is this will appeal *more* to the hard core sound designer and plug-in addict than Joe Keyboard player, for whom this might be overkill.

Peter

And the editor/librarian features are utterly useless to musicians like myself who are more interested in pushing boundaries than comping backing tracks for the local bar band.

I mean, yeah, using it to save time looking for a Bass synth or a Rhodes sound has some merit if you’re a gigging musician. But what do you do if all your sounds are things like “Collapsing Dwarf Nebula” or “Gravel Slowly Falling on a Tin Roof”?!? Any category I give those patches would be merely arbitrary, and wouldn’t serve any purpose other than to limit my use of those sounds with pre-conceived notions.

Not for everyone, and certainly not for me… :zzz

– glitch.@#$%!

It’s a circular problem: I think this could benefit developers other than NI, but only if they invest this huge amount of time they don’t have . . .

But I’m at least as intrigued by the hosting features as the librarian features. I usually wind up spending more time configuring performance than I do looking for the right sound (though that may just be me). I mean, even to take the NI instruments as an example, it isn’t so counterintuitive to look for the B4 sound in the B4 plug-in, etc. And, even without meta-data, if I’m just looking for Rhodes patches, I could type in the name. (As long as the patch isn’t named something silly like Rodez, which some are.)

I don’t think it’ll be worthwhile going through the ~17,000 patches I have for 138 VSTi’s and deciding whether each one is, say, “lead” or “bass”.

Why would plugin developers bother to support a format that would only marginally benefit them and their customers but would greatly benefit NI? Does a strong NI benefit us all? Especially with a product tied to hardware, so will be limited in its adoption from the outset.

Unless NI makes it an open standard, I can’t see it taking off on a large scale. But if they do open it up, they’ll lose the advantage they have with Kore’s only unique feature.

I suppose they could do what Muse does with its abridged VST standard for the Receptor. I could see that some developers might include this feature in special versions of the plugins and then charge an added premium for those versions.

1. Yes — NI says they want to evangelize this, but it’s a lot of work (it was for them), and that’s a new area for them.

2. I’m also skeptical of the hardware, but I don’t think it replaces MIDI controllers. I think the idea is, it becomes a hardware lowest common denominator. Then you put this next to your Novation or whatever. Hey, I don’t think they added a mount for a mic stand, though — let’s hope I’m wrong. As for cost, well, we have to see. I think it’s hard to get people to see value with software-only packages, sadly, so it may be a good idea.

I think they said the hardware is optional. If they made it into a dongle for running the software, they would face the full force of my wrath. (But I don’t think they did.)

3. Agreed, but see point 2. I’m perfectly happy putting some settings on the 8 rotaries, then having something else on pitch / mod / X-Y / the various faders on my keyboards, etc.

So, in other words, my main concerns remain the same: how do MIDI assignments work? What happens with third-party plugs (since that’s a big stated goal of NI’s)? And where am I going to put your nifty rotary box?

Stay tuned. :-)