Softube Modular

[Mushy Mushy]

The intention of a musical instrument is to make musical tones that you can play.

Well that certainly cleared things up for me.

Those two lines are comedy gold

[wagtunes]

Well, I know I'm going to take some heat for this, but going on the suggestion that I download the Reaktor 6 player, I did. Unfortunately, the player only comes with a few ensembles like Spark, Monark, etc. So I had to go to the user database and download others to get an idea of what Reaktor 6 was capable of doing.

Now maybe I just downloaded bad ensembles. I don't know. It's possible. But I just didn't hear anything that made me want to go pay the $99 upgrade price to go from 5 to 6. The core sound engine sounds the same. It's fine for certain things and I use Reaktor 5 for certain things, but for what I'm looking for, sound wise, out of a modular, Reaktor 6 falls short. It just doesn't do it for me.

So I'll be patiently waiting for Softube and hope it has more of the sound that I'm looking for.

So in what way does it fall short?

Perhaps you don't possess the skill, knowledge or experience or perhaps you've fallen for the mystic hype and don't actually know what you want to hear from a modular but believe it must be something incredible like the aural equivalent of the 'Nectar of the Gods'

Or you just need to add another soft Synth to the list of overcompensation you're famous for posting

I love the way people make assumptions about other people's skills.

Par for the course for KVR.

[Dasheesh]

..Yeah, I don't use NI stuff because I'm trying to eliminate extensive copy right protection from my machine..

Dude, Native Instruments extensive copyright protection?
I buy the plugin, activate it and it's done. On more than one DAW.

Their software is non-intrusive and installs neat and fully configurable.

If that is extensive i wonder what you think about a dongle. Illuminati-Police-State-Global-Over-Extensive?

That's fine if that's all you use. I have fx pansion still on my hard drive. The problem is once you start layering software managers and dongs and any other way they can think of to punish legitimate paying costumers it becomes a tax quickly. My goal is to have nothing but a downloadable license or less for anything on my hard drive. I'm almost there.

[Dasheesh]

By the way, just to stay on topic. This soft tube one sounds good to me. Plug a keyboard in it and I could go a few hours strait playing it and have a blast.

[zerocrossing]

I love the way people make assumptions about other people's skills.

Par for the course for KVR.

Well, you did completely miss the point of Reaktor 6 and its Blocks system. Part of the issues is NI flubbing the demo thing, but trust me. It's great. Just play around with Monark for a while and then imagine that you had that sound quality but with really nice and easy to work with modules. I made a hybrid Minimoog/Microwave synth out of Blocks in a few minutes.

[wagtunes]

I love the way people make assumptions about other people's skills.

Par for the course for KVR.

Well, you did completely miss the point of Reaktor 6 and its Blocks system. Part of the issues is NI flubbing the demo thing, but trust me. It's great. Just play around with Monark for a while and then imagine that you had that sound quality but with really nice and easy to work with modules. I made a hybrid Minimoog/Microwave synth out of Blocks in a few minutes.

No, I didn't miss the point. I get the point. My comment was purely on the sound or Reaktor in general. Monark is the only Reaktor ensemble that, IMO, sounds really great. Everything else has that thin, digital, washed out sound that borders on SynthEdit synths. At least to my ears that's how Reaktor sounds.

For some applications, that sound is what I'm looking for. But if I want a big fat synth sound, outside of Monark, I'm not looking to Reaktor to get it.

So no, I didn't miss the point.

[Daags]

I love the way people make assumptions about other people's skills.

Par for the course for KVR.

Well, you did completely miss the point of Reaktor 6 and its Blocks system. Part of the issues is NI flubbing the demo thing, but trust me. It's great. Just play around with Monark for a while and then imagine that you had that sound quality but with really nice and easy to work with modules. I made a hybrid Minimoog/Microwave synth out of Blocks in a few minutes.

No, I didn't miss the point. I get the point. My comment was purely on the sound or Reaktor in general. Monark is the only Reaktor ensemble that, IMO, sounds really great. Everything else has that thin, digital, washed out sound that borders on SynthEdit synths. At least to my ears that's how Reaktor sounds.

For some applications, that sound is what I'm looking for. But if I want a big fat synth sound, outside of Monark, I'm not looking to Reaktor to get it.

So no, I didn't miss the point.

[wagtunes]

I love the way people make assumptions about other people's skills.

Par for the course for KVR.

Well, you did completely miss the point of Reaktor 6 and its Blocks system. Part of the issues is NI flubbing the demo thing, but trust me. It's great. Just play around with Monark for a while and then imagine that you had that sound quality but with really nice and easy to work with modules. I made a hybrid Minimoog/Microwave synth out of Blocks in a few minutes.

No, I didn't miss the point. I get the point. My comment was purely on the sound or Reaktor in general. Monark is the only Reaktor ensemble that, IMO, sounds really great. Everything else has that thin, digital, washed out sound that borders on SynthEdit synths. At least to my ears that's how Reaktor sounds.

For some applications, that sound is what I'm looking for. But if I want a big fat synth sound, outside of Monark, I'm not looking to Reaktor to get it.

So no, I didn't miss the point.

Hey man, you can face palm me all you want. That's what Reaktor sounds like to me.

[Daags]

I believe you. hence the facepalm.

[wagtunes]

I believe you. hence the facepalm.

Hey you know what? Some people love a synth and some people don't. That doesn't make them an idiot.

[zerocrossing]

I believe you. hence the facepalm.

Hey you know what? Some people love a synth and some people don't. That doesn't make them an idiot.

No, there are many reasons.

[wagtunes]

I believe you. hence the facepalm.

Hey you know what? Some people love a synth and some people don't. That doesn't make them an idiot.

No, there are many reasons.

So we're going to turn this into a typical KVR insult fest?

[JerGoertz]

I love the way people make assumptions about other people's skills.

Par for the course for KVR.

Well, you did completely miss the point of Reaktor 6 and its Blocks system. Part of the issues is NI flubbing the demo thing, but trust me. It's great. Just play around with Monark for a while and then imagine that you had that sound quality but with really nice and easy to work with modules. I made a hybrid Minimoog/Microwave synth out of Blocks in a few minutes.

No, I didn't miss the point. I get the point. My comment was purely on the sound or Reaktor in general. Monark is the only Reaktor ensemble that, IMO, sounds really great. Everything else has that thin, digital, washed out sound that borders on SynthEdit synths. At least to my ears that's how Reaktor sounds.

For some applications, that sound is what I'm looking for. But if I want a big fat synth sound, outside of Monark, I'm not looking to Reaktor to get it.

So no, I didn't miss the point.

I mostly agree with you, wags. I downloaded the free Reaktor block-made synths with Reaktor 6 player and the sounds were pretty bland/characterless to my ears. Also agree that Monark is one of the few (and of especially high quality) exceptions to my overall impression with Reaktor synths. Although there are some others (the original OP-X was/is available for Reaktor; also the old Ernst Meyer ensembles) which sound pretty good too, these were long before Reaktor 6 & blocks.

Also, don't worry about the personal attacks, etc. What does it matter? Some people aren't capable of or choose not to disagree with people civilly, but whose problem is that?

[wagtunes]

I love the way people make assumptions about other people's skills.

Par for the course for KVR.

Well, you did completely miss the point of Reaktor 6 and its Blocks system. Part of the issues is NI flubbing the demo thing, but trust me. It's great. Just play around with Monark for a while and then imagine that you had that sound quality but with really nice and easy to work with modules. I made a hybrid Minimoog/Microwave synth out of Blocks in a few minutes.

No, I didn't miss the point. I get the point. My comment was purely on the sound or Reaktor in general. Monark is the only Reaktor ensemble that, IMO, sounds really great. Everything else has that thin, digital, washed out sound that borders on SynthEdit synths. At least to my ears that's how Reaktor sounds.

For some applications, that sound is what I'm looking for. But if I want a big fat synth sound, outside of Monark, I'm not looking to Reaktor to get it.

So no, I didn't miss the point.

I mostly agree with you, wags. I downloaded the free Reaktor block-made synths with Reaktor 6 player and the sounds were pretty bland/characterless to my ears. Also agree that Monark is one of the few (and of especially high quality) exceptions to my overall impression with Reaktor synths. Although there are some others (the original OP-X was/is available for Reaktor; also the old Ernst Meyer ensembles) which sound pretty good too, these were long before Reaktor 6 & blocks.

Also, don't worry about the personal attacks, etc. What does it matter? Some people aren't capable of or choose not to disagree with people civilly, but whose problem is that?

Thank you. You've restored my faith in humanity.

There are a few Reaktor 5 ensembles that I do like. Off the top of my head I don't remember which ones outside of Monark as it's been a while since I've used the synth other than some of the cool sequencers like the VSS series. But for sound generation, I find most of the stuff just dull.

I'll compile my list of "quality" Reaktor ensembles and post them in case anybody is interested in downloading some good ones.

[mosaic_]

Monark is the only Reaktor ensemble that, IMO, sounds really great. Everything else has that thin, digital, washed out sound that borders on SynthEdit synths. At least to my ears that's how Reaktor sounds.

For some applications, that sound is what I'm looking for. But if I want a big fat synth sound, outside of Monark, I'm not looking to Reaktor to get it.

So no, I didn't miss the point.

I would disagree that Reaktor has a particular "sound." It gives you very low-level DSP components to work with and it's up to you to assemble them. What gives each Reaktor ensemble its character or "sound" is what the builder puts into it. With the Blocks, you can leave all this DSP stuff to others and just patch together these modules to your own specifications... and a lot of the stuff on the UL is characterful to say the least.

The software itself wouldn't color it, because then the builder would have less creative control over their creations. But have you tried Razor, or Rounds, or Kontour? Prism? I think Reaktor 6 Player comes with a selection from the Blocks Wired Christmas ensembles; definitely check those out. All of those things I mentioned definitely don't sound like the archetypal SE synth to me, with characters of their own.

Also, if you own Reaktor, people are churning out great Blocks at an alarming rate (e.g. Euro Reakt) that you can get for free. If no one comes along to make your dream block, you can roll up your sleeves and mod an existing one or build it from scratch. You'd have to pay by the module in Softube's new environment, which turns me away.