Native Instruments

Love it or hate it, incomparable Massive (a pop culture watershed) might be one of the most popular and important soft synths ever conceived.

Massive is the sound of pop music, and it will be for many years to come.

This is what a software drum sampler should look like, and it is excellent using factory kits. However, when you start to go off on your own, things can get confusing and buggy very quickly. There are no industry standard template maps and having to map buttons constantly can kill my creative workflow in no time flat. I struggle to find the time to sit down and create them myself.

But if you can afford to take the time to make it your own, it's a more than capable machine. I recommend getting it with some version of Komplete, and getting the value of Kontakt and maybe Massive along with it. Then like me, if you find yourself not using it much, the value in Kontakt and Massive will more than make up for it.

It's actually my favorite for creative and different sound design. The amps and effects are very useful and it's easy to get lost with the options.

Here is an overview I made showing how to use Native Instruments Guitar Rig 6.

Native Instruments Guitar Rig 6 - Deep Dive
https://youtu.be/IZfIevN_-Ik

Got this for $10. Probably the best $10 i've ever spent.

The modulation is super straight forward and easily modulatable via envelopes. Much easier than Dexed IMO.
Very nice sound quality too, even though the effects are bit meh (The grain-delay is good at least).

Kontakt needs a serious overhaul for 2023 to meet great plugin standards. The Gui should be resizeable, preset management should be modernized, even the way we select a library and add it should be more of a a bunch of smaller squares or something instead of the current large panels on the left. Samples are slow to load, volumes need to be cranked up to hear them.

I am hugely surprised that a company as NI with all their experience and knowledge sell such an unfinished and raw product. Yes, the engine is top notch as always, the sonic palette is endless but the experience of using this plug-in is painful. You can not scroll options like changing wavetables or modes on the fly, yes the same is true for Massive but now there is a lot more of everything and you have to navigate with a mouse click every single time and it is a lot of clicks while exploring and designing a sound. There are no options to deal with presets, you can not create your own folders, well you can, but it will be shown as a single list and when there are a lot of presets this list will become a long long one, there is no option to find presets by author or bank, NIs own expansions are installed in the Public Document folder meaning that you will have presets in different places without an option to make a single one Massive X presets folder. And overall Massive X files are scattered all over the place for some unknown reason. Initially I thought that NI will make an user experience more pleasant with time on this synth, but now after couple of years nothing has been improved on this matter and I found myself using this synth only once in one song because of how clumsy it is, and I think it deserve more, but 3 years after it still gives an impression of being a very raw and unfinished product. So in the end this is NOT a synth I would advise my friends to buy even though it is a sonic powerhouse and I've seen a lot of comments on other platforms expressing dissatisfaction with Massive X, some even call it the most failing NI product ever. This is something I might agree with and it is not that it is failed at it's core, no, it has the potential but it is all those small things like the preset management that makes big different, especially for a go to everyday synth. And the most baffling thing for me is - this NI synth I'm talking about! like wth? Why? Has it been outsourced and developers stubbornly want to keep it as clumsy as possible? Or what is the reason? Cause it is not some obscure option I'm talking about it's the basic things that should be obvious by default.

I have developed a deep appreciation for Massive and consider it to be one of the best soft synths ever created...

Initially, I didn't like the sound, but when I started programming it for the tracks, I realised just how powerful and flexible Massive really is...

It can run the whole tone spectrum from warm analog to harsh digital and the modulation options are extensive...

It feels like a "real" instrument to me and through the the use of modulation and the macros, you can get a lot of mileage out of just one program...

Perfect for a live synth....

As a bonus, there are a million and one presets available and there are some good ones that are an excellent starting point for research and development...

It has an excellent browser, so finding a few sounds amongst the million and one is quite effortless...

There are many reasons why Massive has become a classic and over the years, it has proven itself to be a real workhorse in so many styles of music...

I have a few nice soft synths in the toolbox and after all this time, Massive is still an indispensible part of the setup...

An oldie, but a 5 Star goodie...

still one of the bundles to buy on the market.

Some included products need updates but sound is more important then the graphics.