NI have their Summer of Sounds sale going on at the moment.
I’m fairly new to NI after getting into Maschine a few months ago. I ended up getting deals on Komplete and I’m now at the latest version of Ultimate 14.
I’ve got access to a ton of good instruments, fx, expansions, etc, more than I’d probs ever need at this point… but, I don’t have a clear picture of where I am in the NI sphere!
How do I know what I haven’t got in the latest sale for example on the NI site? They show me products I already own… there doesn’t seem to me, as a new NI customer, an easy way to get an overview.
Then there’s the NKS compatible plugins that show up to me (Arturia, Softube, Sugarbytes)… is there somewhere I can go and get a complete overview of what’s available and worth considering from 3rd party devs??
Any help appreciated!
(Any recommendations for ‘must haves’ that I might have missed??)
The only way I have truly found is to open Native Access which will have a complete list of your licensed products. This is what I have to do if I want to take advantage of sales and buy packs for Maschine. As a Komplete Ultimate owner I learned years ago not to buy individual products. They almost always end up in some level of Komplete. I now have Komplete Ultimate Collectors and thus, never buy individual products from NI. KUC is expensive as an all at once purchase. I would only upgrade Komplete during the 50 percent off sales, and gradually worked my way up to Collectors. Collectors is only worth it if you have Maschine and want all of the packs.
PS: It only got more complicated when NI merged in with the other companies. Now their offers and upgrades tend to include products from Izotope or PluginAlliance members that I already own. The quality of customer service has also taken a hit since the merger.
It also creates headaches in product consistency. It really boils my blood that the uninstall process for some of the products is essentially a convoluted mess.
There’s a button you can click at the top of the store that hides you what you already have. It’s a show/hide owned plugins bar right near the top when browsing.
In terms of what to buy/what’s good, with K14 Ultimate you have a lot. You will be missing a small amount of content from K14 Collectors, and whatever is coming in K15.
In terms of where you are, as per the question, you have the 2nd biggest bundle they offer. There are some cinematic additions in Collectors (and literally every expansion). You also won’t have anything from Komplete 15 unless you buy those titles individually.
There’s definitely some nice stuff coming in K15 but if you can wait, this time next year you could update your Ultimate licence and collect a bunch of new stuff for a reasonable price.
If you want to know exactly what’s released and what might be in K15, I’d suggest checking out this spreadsheet which tracks additions to the NI ecosystem.
If there’s anything specific you’re looking for let me know. It kinda depends what you’re looking to add to your suite of stuff.
You don’t have to worry about missing out on anything. There are like three major sales. Black Friday, mid winter and summer.
And I would suggest running through a lot of what you have before buying anything more.
NI is like Roland. All the sounds have a sameness to the tone. This is great for consistency, and sounds great, but from what you already have (which is a whole bunch of great sounds!) a lot of bases are covered. And if something you like really comes up, a sale will roll around.
Yeah actually another thought here (and this is purely how I’ve navigated it.) This is my first version of Komplete. I picked up a few NI bits since K14 released but I will be changing how I do it after K15.
I think the way to do it as other have mentioned is to work your way up to either Ultimate or Collectors, especially if you’re into Maschine. It just makes sense financially overall, especially if you pick up 4-5 major releases from their catalogue or if you want the expansions, you get a tonne bundled into those packages.
I got trigger happy and picked up the 9 for 89 Expansions sale, Schema bundle, Session Percussionist and Arkhis. I’d expect the middle 2 of those 4 will be in K15 Ultimate, though the reason I got them is I could see a use case for them before Summer 2025 when K15 goes on sale. (And you can of course try to sell on those licences which means you may get some money back, though this is not guaranteed.) Now I’ve reached a point where the new stuff is less of a draw which means that Komplete 15 will have less stuff in it than I necessarily want.
What I think I will do next time is update Komplete, and then not buy between K15 and 16. Instead I’ll take a look at some of the 3rd party stuff for Kontakt. I’ve picked up a few things there too this year and I think it’s probably a better use of funds to go outside the NI ecosystem while they add to the latest version of Komplete. This gives you a nice mix of NI’s latest stuff one year and the cool stuff from 3rd party developers the next.
In terms of synths uhe, Synapse and Arturia are the most obvious candidates. Others (to taste) are Rob Papen, Plogue and AAS.
For samples there’s almost too much choice. But some of the big players are Spitfire, Heavyocity, Output, plus an entire universe of smaller creators like Luftrum, Void & Vista, Clay & Kelsey, or Slate & Ash. Many of them do support NKS which makes management easier.
One element of note is I’ve not seen any Spitfire stuff work outside of their early Kontakt instruments. Some newer ones show in KK for me but never actually load. Others don’t show. So it’s a real mixed bag. Perhaps understandable if they are focussing on their own player but a bit annoying nonetheless.
