Native Instruments released a slew of soft synth updates today – thanks to everyone who sent this in. The big news is that Absynth, the alien-sounding synth that has become a darling of sound designers, gets a big update. But with so much to cover, here’s the in-a-nutshell version so you can grok it all in one place.

The other big news – Komplete’s price is down to EUR499/US$559, with cheaper upgrade pricing to match. That makes the suite much more aggressive, and certainly as far as software instruments, as much as you can get in any one box, anywhere, for that amount of change. It’s not all good news, though – there were some cuts of instruments from the lineup. Correction: These products are in fact discontinued. Pro-53, Akoustik Piano, and B4 II are being terminated, though unlike the previous vocoder and spectral delay, it sounds as though the replacement is effectively sample libraries in Kontakt.

Disclaimer: I’m reading this from a press release and peppering it with what either might be considered my expansive experience and finely-honed instincts or, in technical terms, “randomly made-up speculation.” Less review, more fauxview. Expect more once we’ve used these in the flesh.

Absynth 5

The synth Jim Aikin once described to me as a “rabbit hole” has just gotten deeper. New in this release:

• Supercomb filter for “physical-modeling-type” sounds – think exquisite new resonance.
• Cloud filter for granular-based modulation.
• Filter feedback paths for “gritty” “unpredictable” …well, you know, filter feedback.
• “Aetherizer” for breaking up and rearranging sound particles, apparently derived from granular models but implemented in an unusual way.
• More presets, in case you want a guide exploring the stuff above.
• Mutator for morphing presets based on musical keywords – an alternative way of navigating presets.

Those new filters and processors sound really extraordinary to me. I have a small selection of “desert island” synths. Absynth might qualify for when you move to a different planet.

Kontakt 4

Here’s a surprise. You see, Native Instruments only updated its flagship sampler to 3.5 as recently as July. That was no minor update, either, featuring 64-bit memory support (on Windows) and greater 32-bit memory (up to 32 GB on Mac), plus improved from-disk streaming, multi-core support, MIDI learn, and other enhanced features and compatibility. In less than a month and a half, they’re back to announce version 4.

And it does sophisticated live convolution of samples. Somewhere, someone is thinking of realistic purposes for that. I’m thinking Absynth may have company on that alien planet.

Normally, pricing announcements and sales press releases bore me to tears, but this is actually news – Native Instruments is selling Komplete for July only at just US$/EUR 399, instead of $1139/EUR999.

That means if you were looking for Reaktor alone – about as good a desert island music software choice as you can find – this would be a good deal. You also get Absynth, the absurdly deep (if sometimes baffling) synth with surround sound envelopes and a workflow that could change how you think about sound, the very nice effects and loop recording in Guitar Rig, and the scriptable sampler Kontakt, as well as the Battery drum sampler and lovely Massive synth.

As recession specials go, this is a tough one to beat.

http://www.native-instruments.com/komplete5.info

In other news, we’re opening up more discussion of tools like Reaktor (among many others) to the community here on noisepages; check out Peter Dines’ recent modulations blog for thoughts on Reaktor (and the free and open source SuperCollider), or his just-formed Reaktor group, on which he asks, “what problems are you solving with Reaktor?”

Building and Using a Reaktor Grain Delay in Kore 2 from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Let’s cut straight to the reason we use this stuff: we want crazy-sounding delays we can play with. Reaktor guru Peter Dines shows just how you’d build such a thing in Reaktor from the ground up for CDM’s Kore site. He also takes it one step further by creating not only the Reaktor ensemble, but also a Kore performance preset to match. The advantage of going this route: Kore provides a way of organizing parameters for control, performance, and automation.

This is another all-free download, so have at it. Now I feel like I’m in a patching race with Peter, because I’ve got some ideas of my own for how you might modify this basic idea; let’s see if I can actually make that happen.

Making sense of Kore

The other side of the minisite is we’re further exploring what Kore is for and how to make it work. We asked readers of the minisite to tell us their thoughts on how Kore is going and how they use it, which has yielded an interesting comment thread:

How Do You Kore?

Our main focus, of course, is simply teaching people how to use the tool effectively – from there, you can decide whether it’s for you and how you want to use it. To that end, I’ve got the first half of a tutorial up that explains what for me was the biggest draw and the most initially confusing, which is the control pages Kore uses to assign automation and physical control. I walk through why you’d want this, how it works, and how you manage different levels of the control pages:

Demystifying Kore Control Pages for Automation and Performance, Pt. I: Different Page Types

We also have some important basics, like Kontakt automation, how to get a normal mixer view, and external MIDI control.

Coming soon: I’m planning some short features on each of NI’s instruments. We’ll have to call it the “get it out of the shrinkwrap” series, especially for people who got the overwhelming set of instruments that comes with Komplete.

Hardware is wonderful, but make no mistake about it: many musicians have put the same care and musical love into their software setup as once was limited to tangled guitar pedal rigs. We’ve been watching as intricate computer music studios appear in the CDM Flickr pool.

proem, the gifted electronic musician from Austin, Texas (see Wikipedia, proem’s own site) who regular shares haiku-like reflections in CDM comments, is the latest to post his setup:

• Dual Dell e207 LCD displays
• Windows PC
• FL Studio (aka Fruity Loops), with a custom dashboard for controlling all the hardware and a modded install
• Native Instruments Komplete
• Evolution MK249-c keyboard (Evolution was a UK-based keyboard maker later absorbed by M-Audio)
• M-Audio Trigger Finger
• Wacom Intuos3 6×8 (just picked up the same tablet myself and adore it — mouse, begone!)
• The now-discontinued (sadly) Fingerworks iGesture multi-touch controller. Apple iGuesture any time soon, perhaps? (I’ve heard rumors from a couple of sources that they bought the patents.)
• The not-discontinued Shuttle XPress
• Tablet2MIDI, which translates Wacom graphics tablets to MIDI data for use in performance