Having gotten into this world now, I have to say getting Komplete has been the best cost to value ratio for my music despite the clunk (klunk?!) that it comes with. The biggest hole in my arsenal when I started producing was quality sounds, as I enjoy mostly writing vs spending time (which I don’t have much of) designing a sound. I now wish I’d gone with my gut and started with a Komplete deal rather than trying a piecemeal approach plucking bits of the best from various sources (which also took time and mental overhead). That’s not to say Komplete or NI is perfect - far from it. But on value, what you get in the SoS bundle sales isn’t matched anywhere else for value. For the price of maybe 1-2 other synths you’re getting synths plus an entire sound library of sampled instruments, oneshot samples, loops and more to mess with. In my mind it’s a good balance of options (to give depth and variety) but tools like Kontakt & KK that help you hone in on the feel you want so you can get writing. The technical stuff is its biggest issue from my playing around so far.
In terms of the way the’re headed, this approach works for me. I prefer to start with presets and go from there, and the Play series (and the whole Komplete set up to be fair) is literally designed around that, so I’ve actually gelled with that more than any synth. To be fair, their rivals like Arturia are also heading in this direction with their Augmented series, so I suspect this is NI reacting to market changes.
On breaking new ground, I found it interesting that NI classifies Playbox (which is very obviously a sampled instrument) as a “synth” alongside Massive and other traditional synthesis based instruments. I think what they’re doing is trying to use Playbox as a new flagship instrument, which sits above the Play series; and I reckon they see that as competition for Arcade from Output.
I think overall, there are so many synth companies (Arturia, Xfer, PhasePlant) that have the allure that maybe Massive once did, that I kinda see why NI would focus on samples instead of synthesis. Their whole thing is based around Kontakt and I’m not sure any other soft synth maker would have that same play there. To your point (and our other chat on cool sample manglers) I think that because of various technology and musical trends, sampled instruments that is the way things are going, and so aside from rebooting or redesigning a synth, I can see NI keeping the foot on the gas in this direction.
This reminds me that I need to have a play with Form. That one looks fun! I also think Super 8 (on having a quick play with it) sounds really good too.