Or “watch this space” which I’ve seen them reply with(and get roasted in the replies) in the comments to the mk3 video 
2 Likes
I’ve really liked everything from them so far.
Everything just works and is well thought out.
The ease of use and the quality of sound is awesome.
I can’t believe how lame this product turned out to be.
How does that work at NI HQ?
Hey lets bring out a new version and delete a couple buttons because we had so little to start with anyway. And also put a new CPU in there but not do much with it because we pretend to do that afterwards. As cherry on top lets give it some polyphonic aftertouch that hardly anyone uses to drive up coast a bit more as well.
1 Like
Kontakt users are surely a pretty big market for this keyboard. I imagine poly AT is a pretty big selling point for extra modulation source for like sampled string articulations and stuff like that.
1 Like
While some may use it and wanted something like for a long time I think the fast majority wont or will try to use it and make it sound terrible. I think a touchscreen would’ve been a 100x better selling point and speed up most users workflows. Specially with the extreme limited control that the device has. It has no good DAW integration, even for Komplete’s software it’s limited. MIDI mode seems like a joke again while having that beautiful crips display and CPU in there. No this whole design and the way they’re releasing it feels lazy to me with minimal improvements over all those years.
What functions do you feel would be better with a touchscreen?
Imo, for what the keyboard does, (scrolling & adjusting values for the most part) the physical controls are way better. Have you tried adjusting values with an iPad? It’s very imprecise. I’d much rather use a knob
2 Likes
Sorry my last post was meant as a reply to your post but i replied to the entire thread
I recently managed to update Komplete to 14 Ultimate during the 66% hiccup, mostly to get an updated version of Kontakt and the newer pianos. I spent some time today reading through the “Included products” webpage just to try and better understand what all is included.
I just read through a few pages of prior posts and get the impression some folks are underwhelmed by what NI offers with many of their plugins. I’ve got entirely too many options for VI’s that I really love, so I’m curious what folks would say are the things that NI does extremely well that I’ll find in this update of Komplete? Are there any standout instruments that you keep coming back to? Sample sets?
The Tim Exile stuff is always interesting to me, but I’ve largely neglected Reaktor after years of struggling with poor performance after it first came out in the late 90’s. When I could get it to work I really liked the weird things I could get out of it. I know there’s been infinite improvements since then, but I just haven’t kept up with it. It looks like there are a number of cool instruments built on the platform now, yes?
From a quick scan the things that read as interesting are Skanner XT, Trk-01, Sequis, Polyplex, rumlab…basically things that seem a little more out of the box, process-wise and might lead to unique/interesting outcomes.
Any suggestions for things to try out would be greatly appreciated.
New keyboards look great, but only exclusively with NI, Arturia and uhe software and that’s a big disappointment to me.
The reason I sold my S49, as nice as it was, was because it didn’t have chords and arps etc. I’m not bothered about transport controls for daws, so losing them is no big loss to me, but having that nice interface that opens up so many great features and keeping it just for it’s own products and couple of friends is very disappointing. I do get it though, but they will lose a lot of sales of hardware to try to force more people to use more of it’s software, so it’s not for me, even though I have V Collection and Komplete.
I don’t get why people keep saying this. It’s not a good excuse to exclude a touchscreen.
knobs, faders, pads etc are al super wonderful and I would prefer that most of the time because of the tactile feel and muscle memory. But including a touchscreen doesn’t mean that all somehow needs to go away.
Yeah I mean… this will come down to personal preference of course (I’m making house-ish stuff I think, so not too experimental here…) Personally, I find the most underwhelming aspect of NI the tech side of things. From a sound perspective, and for what you pay though (especially with that deal) you’re getting a lot to play with for sure.
My favourite stuff in Ultimate is:
- The Light Trilogy - sortof a granular playground with variants on a theme. Really good for textures and the like. You can load your own samples in, and the general advice is to use Ashlight as it’s the latest one and has some features the other 2 don’t.
- Mallet Flux - just a really quick and easy way to layer glock/mallet sounds
- Play Series - a lot of people hate on these because they’re basic on the face of it, what I like about this is being able to quickly find a sound based on mood in Kontakt (and soon to be refreshed in KK.) You can go in and re-make presets along the lines of what you want and there’s so much included that it’s a lot of fun to use. I may be wrong about this but I think Kontakt runs wavetables, so some of the sounds (I believe) may be synthesised. Not sure if you can edit/play with them (Serum it ain’t), but you can mix and match/layer stuff for sure and again it’s almost hard to get this one wrong.
- Playbox - this can be hit or miss depedning on what you want. It’s sortof an idea generator, chord suggestor thing. Like all the other new NI instruments you can be a preset surfer like me. But you can use your own sounds in here too, and again like the Light/Play series, I find this one really good for finding unsual textured soundbeds for a track.
- Reaktor to me is quite hard to use outside of Komplete Kontrol. That said there are some wild sounds in there. From what I’ve heard, I like the feel of Kontour quite a lot and also Razor. I don’t have the first idea what these are doing, but they sound good.
- Samples - I have XO/Ableton scan these and use the one-shots via the auto kit generators in XO, or fill out a track with a top loop or somethingin Ableton. I find this gets more out of the sample packs than Battery 4, and mixes and matches them in interesting ways.
- Pianos - There are so many here. I actually think some of the ones included in Standard are plenty good enough, but Piano Colors is nice. I personally find myself diving into presets in Una Corda and The Giant as there are a lot of non-bread and butter sounds in there.
- Softube - There are some old gold compressors with some interesting vintage flavour in here, which seem to be pretty decent (assuming NI don’t end support for them!) They are baked into Guitar rig too, so hopefully they’ll be around for a while.
- Notable Extras - I think I could see myself eventually resampling and messing with Action Strikes, Damage, Mysteria and Sequis, but I’ve not had chance to dive in enough yet. These are more on the cinematic end of things. The “hits” libraries like Damage and so on are interesting to consider for transitions and changes in songs.
What I like most about Komplete is that I ended my other subscriptions (Arcade, Splice etc.) With this much content, you are forced to dive into the included sounds. I find myself using samples and sounds from genres I would not normally partake in, because they’re there. And for that, I enjoy the included sounds a lot.
3 Likes
This is super helpful! Thanks for taking the time to write all that out. I’ll look into all of that. Appreciated.
2 Likes
You simply can’t go wrong with KU for 66% off @infiniteposse . I have my issues with NI and likely wont buy any new hardware from them but there’s still no doubting legacy or new sounds, synths, play series, kontakt instruments etc if you have tons of storage and don’t mind dealing with Native Access.
@holonology dropped some really great game up there. I highly recommend you also dive through everything yourself over time. Like @holonology i frequently used an ai kit finder app (atlas 2) to analyze all of the expansions and battery 4 library to create maps and kits for ableton, logic and my hardware samplers. Endless supply of inspiration.
3 Likes
+1
1 Like
That actually isn’t true at all, at least from my experience with KK.
I’ve had experience loading non-NKS vsts into the plug-in as user instruments so that I can use them in my projects. If memory serves, that TAL-Bassline and the Spitfire BBC Orchestra
I make more cinematic electronic music, and my last album I believe I went to the Piano Colors and Arkis well a lot.
Those are safe bets for beautiful and interesting sounds.
Una Corda is my favorite Piano sound for fairly gentle/fragile piano sounds.
Going through the KK sound previews, I’ve found myself gravitating towards the Light Trilogy sounds(or duo for me, because I’m not at the latest update, but bought a couple instruments ala carte)
2 Likes
With its limited control, what good would a touch screen have been? All the screen shows is a static thumbnail for the current device
1 Like
There are so many options were a touchscreen benefits from a regular screen. The most obvious one is probably an XY pad. Just look at all the amazing stuff on the phones and tablets we’ve been using for 2 decades and developers keep figuring out new ideas.
That doesn’t mean it would be innovated the same on a closed system like NI’s.
Even if it were open, it still doesn’t mean it would receive the same investment from developers.
Also, including a touch screen means additional cost and addition time to develop interactions that make touch interaction easy.
Then, if it were there, you’d have have plenty of people complaining that there was no point in adding something they won’t use and how it sucks they have to pay more for it.
It always works this way because not everyone wants the same thing
I just cram to understand how they can continue to sell new hardware after they’ve proven to under support and under-develop it—based on controlling software they’ve proven to under support and underdevelop.
It’s astonishing really.
4 Likes