How is KORE working for you?

[2windy]

Seeing a the money I put aside for Kompplete 4 is free I've been looking at the KC2006 upgrade offer for KORE.

Just wanted some opinions on how it's working out for you if you bought it. Is it just a glorified (but clever) preset manager? What other uses has it been used for?

Cheers

A

[ew]

I use it all the time (but then again, I would ). I find it great for sound design. I use it to host my plugins inside other hosts. And, with something like Channel Grabber on a group bus inside KORE, I use it for spontaneous tracks. This and this were recorded like that- live with ChannelGrabber on a group bus.

ew

[Arpeggio]

What is Channel Grabber? Link?

[ew]

http://www.tobybear.de/

ew

[johnfoll]

Seeing a the money I put aside for Kompplete 4 is free I've been looking at the KC2006 upgrade offer for KORE.

Just wanted some opinions on how it's working out for you if you bought it. Is it just a glorified (but clever) preset manager? What other uses has it been used for?

Cheers

A

No, its much more than a preset manager. It is many things to different people. It has the ability of turning your MIDI Keyboard + VST Synths/FX into a massive Live Virtual Synthesizer - its as if you have just one synthesiser to play with - but with millions of potential presets!

In practice, you need Komplete3 or Komplete4 to get its full potential. There are some issues with it that I hope NI fixes, that I have posted to them, but what it currently offers is supperior to anything else, including VST Chainer host.

In practice, you will have to wait until you can convert your vst into KSD or wait until someone else does it for Kore to achieve its full potential.

However, if you want dynamic, expressive music, its a MUST. I have Keyboard with a lot of knobs on it, but I like KORE because I can "document" knobs in its controller pages. I have setup several synths, like Rhino, Angelina, Crystal, E/W Bosendorfer 290, Cosmos 2 and Kosmos XT and some others. I have set up Angelina FX, too. I am working on CronosX3, which is going to be Kewel when it is done! Many of the "Free" VST plugins really Rock with KORE! Crystal is one of them! I can change "LFO types", OSC Types for each of the six oscillators in real time! When I am playing a note, it can change or change between notes as I turn the knobs. I can also change the filter types or reso paramters in real time! It makes Crystal work like a brand new synth, being able to tweek parms by knobs! Also in Rhino, I am able to turn a knob for any of the 13 Osc + AM1/2 + Raw Matrix Assignments in real time! This works out to be about 16 x 13 combinations! I had to create 13 Controller Pages to do this! Usually this stuff is "built in" to a preset that you might occcasionally tweak a little by mouse, but I can do any of them anytime I want on the keyboard! This is kind of like the hands on you get with a Analog Synth, except you can only tweak up to 8 knobs at a time. I wish it had more than 8! I have more than 8 on my midi keyboard, buy it is tedious to setup, and changes with each pluging / preset and their are no lables to document what each knob does.

I setup my controller pages 1st for VST Automation into a sequencer (up to 8 pages), then the rest for me just tweaking presets. This could be a great tool for creating new sounds based on the old. One flaw, is there is currently no way to migrate Controller Pages between KSD KORE Files, which I hope NI fixes. So you had better get it right the first time. Also, it keeps you from easily combining VST Synths or VST Synths and VST FX with prebuilt template Controller pages - it would have to be manually rebuilt, which sucks.

Yes its awesome for sound design, live keyboard playing.

Many VST Sequncers have a terrible organization for finding PlugIns. If you have a lot of them, it is bad. I can organize my stuff the way I want in KORE, and just use KORE in the VST Sequencer. That way, I don't even care how the sequencer handles it! Maybe someday, NI will build a Sequncery arround KORE! This would be a great idea, so that everything integrates even better! I don't like the 8 VST Automation Page Limmitation!

I found sounds that I didn't even know I had or had forgotten (I owened Komplete 2 & 3 prior to KORE, and I own Komplete 4 now.) I was doing a Vocal project and was just screwing arround with the preset browser - what it found, and loaded up a Vokator project with one of my vocal wave files, and was able to sing along with Vokator, while playing Vocator on my keyboard - a duet with my Vocoded voice in real time! Vokator is trikey to setup if you haven't done it, and I always seemed to busy to sit down long enough to figure it out, but it worked instantly from KORE! The Komplete library really shines under KORE. I could never get a handle on those too numerous to mention Reaktor modules, much less remember many of them. I mainly use Kontakt2, but with KORE, I was able to start using Reaktor Modules that I needed and did remember about right away!

If you have a VST Synth that only has a couple of good sounds that are really killer, you typically forget about it totally, while only working with the "go-to" synths. But with KORE, it doesn't really matter how many good sounds a Synth VST has, you can find the one good synth that may be the perfect fit for your track, without having to navigate through 1000's of VST Synths to find it! I can't wait to get more of my VST Synths loaded into KORE and attributes setup.

[aMUSEd]

This came up just a few weeks ago so this is pretty much the same as what I posted then

I find it's really useful if you are into sound design. Not only can you build huge multi patches of synths and effects that you know will work on any host you can load KORE into - and that means cross platform, the high resolution and sensitivity of the controller means you can create very subtle or very big changes with total control. The knobs are very very responsive - you only have to touch them and they light up and snap to the controller they are assigned to and assignements are in many cases automatic and those that aren't are easy to set up, and control is very smooth, no stepping and with endless knobs you don't lose your place in the sound. You also have buttons that can be assigned. And to cap it all the KORE browser classifies every patch by sound, not by where it was made. That is so important. It means you can work at the level of the sound itself. For example if I create say a warm, evolving, granular, sample based pad sound I can save it with those attributes and then if I want to find it or other sounds like it I can select the attributes warm, evolving, granular etc and I will get a list of all sounds with those atrributes regardless of the instruments and effects that created them. Finally the controller also allows you to work with sounds without staring at the computer screen - you can see every knob assignment and the level it is set to when you turn a controller, and you can even see all patch names loaded and browse patches from the LED window. It still has a few bugs but now it is at version 1.1 it is maturing I think, it still needs a few things to make it perfect - like it doesn't have a sequencer and maybe doesn't need one if you could load any of your own - eXT or Reaktor for example. But for that to work it needs to enable midi routing between layers and I believe that is planned but not yet implemented. Also it would be good if it could work fully as a midi controller, not just interface, in other hosts and if it had OSC capability and an internal recorder box (so EW doesn't need to use Channel Grabber - I use the recorder in Reaktor or Guitar Rig for the same reason) - these too are coming I am told.

In many respects it bridges much of the gap between the worlds of hardware and software and enables a fusion of the best aspects of both - the tactile immediacy and smoothness of hardware, the patch management, flexibility and open endedness of software. I think that was NI's vision of it from the start and it's a good one to have.

[2windy]

Thanks guys. I really like the concept, I may just wait to see what the process of ironing out the glitches goes before taking the plunge. I'll keep an eye out.

[Jace-BeOS]

i'm finding it to be really neat, too. in fact, until mentioned above, i hadn't considered setting up my favourite or "the only patches i like" from each of the VSTis that i have in my VSTPlugins folder. Great idea. Then i don't have to remember what each VSTi is like. i just go for the presets.

The true gotcha is that you have to either create Kore sounds for everything you already use, or hope someone else does. But just setting up your favourites from the billions of synths you have installed because you like a couple presets... brilliant idea. thanks!!