Hypernode

I'm new to Rigid Audio's work and I sensed this was one of the rare and unusual cases when a lone developer (in this case seeming to be focused on Kontakt Script Processing [KSP] turns out to have a great ear for putting together aptly named sonic material representing an unusual variety of moods and genres. Similar to "Plugin Guru", Dennis Lenz out of Berlin has both the ability to place material conveniently together, and program the %^$*) out of the interface. His sound palettes make excellent sense in several styles.

There's over 9 gigs of zipped sound content (close to 12 on unzip). The site continues to have ridiculous pricing (the sale price the other day was less than $30), and here price has a bit to do with my rating. Even at 3 or 4 times that price I think Hypernode would merits a full 5-out-of-5 stars, both because of the sounds and because of the creative interfacing and feature capability... I did not find a manual or sufficient tutorial videos to be able to understand all the features or uses (even some buttons remain mysterious), and there's been a delay getting a response to some support questions; so I'm settling for 4-out-of-5. That said I haven't fully explored the features of the package (tested the demo and purchased last night). But there is enough here to both jam and record into a DAW in lockstep (or swing, although the swing positions are in 10% increments, would be nice to see a little more resolution in case, say, one is matching to another product like BFD3 for example - but after all this is all within Kontakt).

I'll continue to try & learn the interface and possibly add to this, but I thought it was worth jumping in with a quick review.

Note that the full version of kontakt is required to access full functionality. But a 5 multi demo is available for free download. If you are not impressed with the demos it may not be a fit for you; but ambient & chill lovers should find the included samples useful enough for the discounted price at the very least. (NOTE: The demo blurb indicates that a free version of kontakt is sufficient, but this may mislead a buyer into thinking it applies to the full version and full use of the product - it is not...).

Fantastic programming on this one. Jamming with it harkens, for me, to what is possible with MIDI quantize as incorporated into Vsts like Omnisphere and Stylus by Spectrasonics (and elsewhere of course.) I haven't seen another Kontakt instrument by a single developer with more modularity and control, period.