Native Instruments - Komplete and Maschine

GoFish

I'm a bit of a luddite but was looking at vst / sample / DAW based solutions for keys and drums (not really beats). What can any of you fine people tell me about the NI ecosystem. Is it worth investing in Komplete for various virtual instruments and plugins? Are there any real alternatives to Kontact libraries? Also, any word on the actual usefulness of Maschine as a controller and percussion suite? Can it be used with a midi keyboard to be a Komplete Kontrol S series alternative?

I know it's a lot of questions, but the internet seems to be filled with advertorials rather than actual use cases. Ta

spark240

My limited experience says that any single large VST pack invariably has a lot of stuff you will never use,... 

GoFish

Thanks for the input. No-one wants much redundancy, that's for sure. I'm interested initally in drums+ percussion, various keyboard based stuff like pianos, harpsichord, electric pianos and some bread n butter atmospheric ones such as dulcimers, harps, strings etc. Throw in a couple of production plugins (reverbs etc) and that's probably the bulk of it.

I've held off on getting any digital stuff since the inital round of updates made my 32 bit, x86 stuff obsolete. So I'm probably better placed to benefit from an all-in-one solution than others. I would like to avoid the plugin hunt that seems to go on forever.

Hmm, maybe I've spread this too thin. Let's focus on sounds to begin with rather than controls.  I'd want to avoid option paralysis while having a range of decent acoustic instrument VSTs? What would be my best options?

stratman3142

You might get a load of stuff you won't use with Komplete, but it could still be a lot less expensive than buying the things you will use as individual items. Also, you don't have to install everything.

It's worth looking out for sales, which I think usually happen around June time for NI stuff.

swiller

Have komplete (10 ultimate) and maschine (Mk1 micro) here. Never really felt the need to upgrade and lots of stuff you wont really use. If you just want perc and drum primarily may want to go with maschine on its own. But it operates like a daw on its own and does integrate with other daws, but not really like a VST would. Its a hip hop beat maschine stand alone primarily.

Plenty of good free stuff that may suit better. Cant recommend enough sonar (now cakewalk by bandlab) as a free daw and plenty of good drum stuff and stuff that will tick your box pretty sure. 

NI is ok, but guitar rig is inferior to amplitube for example and that resonates across the komplete library imho. Alicias keys for me is the stand out, but a one trick pony if thats your thing.

I opted for roland cloud recently and imho way better than komplete for all the classics as well as a whole universe of roland synths. £20 per month for the lot, free 30 day trial. That all operates as you would expect as VST instruments.
For your needs, i would probably just spend a bit of time grabbing free stuff though. Kontakt player is free and highly recommended. Grab spitfire free library (BBC orchestra i think), maschine free library etc.

ToneControl

komplete is probably the best value set of samples out there
I have ultimate, upgrade every 3 or 4 years
It might be cheaper to find an upgrade path

An alternative is Soundiron's $1k bundle
https://soundiron.com/collections/bundles
but this is not as comprehensive, although has some more unusual gems

other formats exist, but Kontakt is now dominant

stratman3142

Komplete Start is free, if you want to get started.

monquixote

For a broad selection of keys I'd probably grab VCollection when it's on sale. 

The Keylab controllers have good integration.

octatonic

monquixote said:

For a broad selection of keys I'd probably grab VCollection when it's on sale. 

The Keylab controllers have good integration.

I use Arturia's plugins way more than NI.

spark240

octatonic said:

monquixote said:

For a broad selection of keys I'd probably grab VCollection when it's on sale. 

The Keylab controllers have good integration.

I use Arturia's plugins way more than NI.

This...

GoFish

And there was me thinking Arturia was mainly synth based stuff. Kaylab controllers do seem to be rather excellent...

andy_k

Check out Pluginguru, Unify, it is a fairly comprehensive suite of synth / sample / drum stuff that runs on most machines.
Many libraries are available that cover a lot of genres and sounds, Cloud City is a particular favourite of mine for percussion and world music.
Plenty of demos on YT, and they have a demo version.

monquixote

GoFish said:

And there was me thinking Arturia was mainly synth based stuff. Kaylab controllers do seem to be rather excellent...

They are mostly synths but you get a decent acoustic piano and various electric pianos and organs, a clav, melotron, strings, and a choir.

If you just want piano then Pianoteq is the current go to.

GoFish

Pianoteq is modelled, correct? No preference, just interested.

I think I'd want more than just piano, but it's obviously important to have a good one!

Unify looks interesting, it's a whole ecosystem.

V collection looks to have a chucnk of what I'm after, and a whole load of classic synths too. Priced about the same as Komplete Standard - Do they have predictable discount periods like NI?

monquixote

GoFish said:

Pianoteq is modelled, correct? No preference, just interested.

I think I'd want more than just piano, but it's obviously important to have a good one!

Unify looks interesting, it's a whole ecosystem.

V collection looks to have a chucnk of what I'm after, and a whole load of classic synths too. Priced about the same as Komplete Standard - Do they have predictable discount periods like NI?

Not predictable, but regular. It was on offer when V9.2 came out.

One thing to mention is Arturia give additional discounts and personalised offers if you already own their software. 

I have Pigments, VCollection and FXCollection and got massive discounts on them by getting personalised offers when they were in the sale.

Def don't pay £599 for it!

I paid 149 Euros when it was on sale (Already had Pigments and FXCollection)

monquixote

And yes Pianoteq is physical modelling.

I've heard a few people say they rate it really highly though.