Disappointed with KOMPLETE (??)

[mholloway]

You just need to explore Komplete more comprehensively. If you're just testing out Massive and Absynth patches, I can understand your reaction, based on your stated needs. But there is so, so, so much more stuff in there.

As mentioned above, it sounds like you really need to explore Kontakt, both the factory content plus all the extra libraries that Ultimate comes with. This is some the highest quality "real instrument" stuff you could ask for... pianos, drums, organs, guitars, bass.... it's an entire band in a box, hell it's 100 different bands in a box.

IMO If you can't get the Kontakt content working for you, none of the other products recommended in this thread are going to solve your problem. Halion 6 when dude already owns K Ultimate? Pleeeeease.

-M

[pheeleep]

Grab the Xpand2 workstation while it’s free: http://store.dontcrack.com/product_info ... ts_id=2954

[3rdstone]

Not only will you find pretty much everything you need just within the basik, inkluded Kontakt faktory library, but you also get a ton more kontent within komplete which improves upon those basik offerings - Tons of great pianos, organs, real basses, real drum kits. Also, instruments like Kontour and Prism offer different takes on traditional instruments. Add to that the really good orkestral suites, and you really have all the instruments you'll need.

You also get kuality mixing effekts, guitar effekts/kabinets, and some great reverbs/delays.

And, who knows, maybe one day you'll get a bit more adventurous and step outside of your normal genres. Then you'll have everything you need for those, also

You're likely overwhelmed, and suffering from buyer's remorse. But if you take time to go through each part of the pakkage...slowly, you'll find that even if you rule out the parts that will never serve you, you'll still have ended up with many times the value of your outlay.

Thanks for all the info.
The quote section I underlined is good advice too, matter of fact, it's the conclusion I came to while thinking about all of this at work today..

I'll most likely pick up the M1 VST as well, given a price tag of less than 50 bucks, it's pretty much a no-brainer. If it does require an iLok, no biggie, I have a couple of them and an account.

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But while I'm here might as well ask all of you: If I put all these VSTs on an SSD, would that make a significant improvement in load times (I'd think so). That was one of the drawbacks I perceived using a VST as opposed to quickly being able to switch sounds on a workstation. Opinions welcome.

Also, keyboards not being my primary instrument, is there a source where I could (relatively quickly) learn the ins and outs of programming and layering synth sounds? Please share if you do..

Thanks once again,
-Steve

[3rdstone]

1. Korg M1 plug-in doesn't require iLok.

2. Kontakt + this one:
https://soundsandsamples.com/product/ko ... s-kontakt/

Hey, that link goes not only to the M3 samples for $40, but I see quite a few other workstation type sample packs, nice.

There has to be a catch somewhere, are these presets only, with no way to modify them?
Are these versions stripped way down or something? Seems too good to be true..hmm..

I'm going to investigate further, but thought I'd ask if anyone knows all the details...

But... before I get all trigger-happy, and before I spend any more $$, I'm going to spend a lot more time exploring KOMPLETE. Sure wish I knew how to grab this bull by the horns and dive right in to tweaking things to my liking (quickly) though... which is why I asked about a good source for learning all of this stuff... anyway...

Hey, thanks for all your help folks, very much appreciated.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

1. Korg M1 plug-in doesn't require iLok.

2. Kontakt + this one:
https://soundsandsamples.com/product/ko ... s-kontakt/

Hey, that link goes not only to the M3 samples for $40, but I see quite a few other workstation type sample packs, nice.

There has to be a catch somewhere, are these presets only, with no way to modify them?
Are these versions stripped way down or something? Seems too good to be true..hmm..

I'm going to investigate further, but thought I'd ask if anyone knows all the details...

But... before I get all trigger-happy, and before I spend any more $$, I'm going to spend a lot more time exploring KOMPLETE. Sure wish I knew how to grab this bull by the horns and dive right in to tweaking things to my liking (quickly) though... which is why I asked about a good source for learning all of this stuff... anyway...

Hey, thanks for all your help folks, very much appreciated.

I wouldn't spend another penny, if I were you

If you find, after a while, that you really are missing specific sounds only found in these sample packs, then you can buy them later. Most stuff that is currently on sale will be again (That air product is usually on sale for $1, multiple times a year, and imo pales in co parison to what you already have)

I would start just exploring the Kontakt factory library, and jamming with presets. From there, it shouldn't be difficult to learn how to set it up with multiple instruments, changeable with one click, to give you a simple workstaion workflow.

I''ll see if I can find some tut's, tomorrow. However, the manual might be pretty easy, in that regard.

[mholloway]

1. Korg M1 plug-in doesn't require iLok.

2. Kontakt + this one:
https://soundsandsamples.com/product/ko ... s-kontakt/

uhh....that website looks frankly rather sketchy and it's quite odd they don't offer audio examples of any of their products...my instincts say, Stay Away.

[Boone777]

1. Korg M1 plug-in doesn't require iLok.

2. Kontakt + this one:
https://soundsandsamples.com/product/ko ... s-kontakt/

Hey, that link goes not only to the M3 samples for $40, but I see quite a few other workstation type sample packs, nice.

There has to be a catch somewhere, are these presets only, with no way to modify them?
Are these versions stripped way down or something? Seems too good to be true..hmm..

I'm going to investigate further, but thought I'd ask if anyone knows all the details...

But... before I get all trigger-happy, and before I spend any more $$, I'm going to spend a lot more time exploring KOMPLETE. Sure wish I knew how to grab this bull by the horns and dive right in to tweaking things to my liking (quickly) though... which is why I asked about a good source for learning all of this stuff... anyway...

Hey, thanks for all your help folks, very much appreciated.

Watch some videos on Youtube about how to use Banks, Multis and Quick load in Kontakt. If the interface of the library is not enough to get the sound you want Kontakt will allow you to tweak the samples further take your time to learn it it's pretty powerfull.

[flugel45]

If you're into realistic/acoustic instruments, Kontakt is the only real must-have. (With that, you can pick and choose among 3rd-party libraries).

NI's piano and drum libraries are also very good.

IMO, if you got Komplete for less than the normal price of Kontakt with a couple other NI libs, then it was well worth it.

[yellowmix]

Hey, that link goes not only to the M3 samples for $40, but I see quite a few other workstation type sample packs, nice.

There has to be a catch somewhere, are these presets only, with no way to modify them?
Are these versions stripped way down or something? Seems too good to be true..hmm..

Yes, they are recordings of the factory presets. A good sampled instrument will sample each note, as well as the same note at different velocities, and multiples of that. Which is why the library is an enormous 80gb. There isn't much tweaking besides putting another amplitude and filter envelope on it, and FX. Honestly not worth it to me.

TBH, listening to the M3 demos, you can recreate those patches using synthesizer plugins. All the FM sounds can be done in FM8, for example, and there are existing factory presets. Of course, if you have no sound design experience or desire, they present barriers while the sample pack tears them down at the cost of flexibility (and hard drive space).

However, there are many tweakable presets packs out there, and Massive is extremely popular. So you can look up something like "Massive Pad preset" on YouTube and get a step-by-step tutorial on how to make one. If you just want to throw money at the problem there is no shortage of sound designers.

[3rdstone]

Hey, that link goes not only to the M3 samples for $40, but I see quite a few other workstation type sample packs, nice.

There has to be a catch somewhere, are these presets only, with no way to modify them?
Are these versions stripped way down or something? Seems too good to be true..hmm..

Yes, they are recordings of the factory presets. A good sampled instrument will sample each note, as well as the same note at different velocities, and multiples of that. Which is why the library is an enormous 80gb. There isn't much tweaking besides putting another amplitude and filter envelope on it, and FX. Honestly not worth it to me.

TBH, listening to the M3 demos, you can recreate those patches using synthesizer plugins. All the FM sounds can be done in FM8, for example, and there are existing factory presets. Of course, if you have no sound design experience or desire, they present barriers while the sample pack tears them down at the cost of flexibility (and hard drive space).

However, there are many tweakable presets packs out there, and Massive is extremely popular. So you can look up something like "Massive Pad preset" on YouTube and get a step-by-step tutorial on how to make one. If you just want to throw money at the problem there is no shortage of sound designers.

Yea, I figured as much, thanks for the clarification.
I've been goofing around in MASSIVE all morning and you guys are right, I could get just about any synth sound I want out of it, (and FM8 too).

But boy do the presets suck, I mean, I think maybe 5% of them are useful to me, and that fact is almost solely responsible for this thread's creation..lol..

I'll keep tinkering and reading manuals, and hopefully sooner, rather than later, I'll have replaced the presets with all my own sounds.

[Guenon]

Hey, about synth sounds... Remember, as a Komplete/Reaktor license holder you also have access over here: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/r ... r-library/ ...

These can also be very very inspiring: http://boscomac.free.fr/?p=rack

And so on. Not all of the stuff available like this is up your alley, of course, but there are bound to be some gems you'll enjoy! And in my opinion, the user library and stuff like this is very much a part of the overall experience and value of having a NI license

[yellowmix]

But boy do the presets suck, I mean, I think maybe 5% of them are useful to me, and that fact is almost solely responsible for this thread's creation..lol..

I hear you. A lot of them are one-trick ponies that I'd never use. Many of them are EDM-oriented. In fact, there's a running joke in EDM producer circles about the Modern Talking wavetable: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define. ... %20Talking

On the other hand, the EDM producers (and wannabees) are the reason many plugins were made and became affordable.

But don't let that discourage you. It's a powerful synth that introduced a modulation workflow that many other synths have since copied. The workflow is very good, and lets you make more subtlety beautiful sounds faster than some other synths.

[salvodaze]

Grab the Xpand2 workstation while it’s free: http://store.dontcrack.com/product_info ... ts_id=2954

I agree, get Xpand to play around with the patches a bit. It's a very fun rompler. Also as suggested, take a look at Korg's own legacy collection. There are some beautiful instruments in there.

A few people said to explore Kontakt factory library but to me that entire library (maybe with a few exceptions) sounds quite bad and I have no idea why. Komplete on the other hand has better quality stuff but I can't be the judge of how much as I only own Kontakt and use it for 3rd party libraries. You can also go that route as there are very good libraries out there for Kontakt (kind of why most people end up buying Kontakt in the first place). I hope this helps

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Hey, that link goes not only to the M3 samples for $40, but I see quite a few other workstation type sample packs, nice.

There has to be a catch somewhere, are these presets only, with no way to modify them?
Are these versions stripped way down or something? Seems too good to be true..hmm..

Yes, they are recordings of the factory presets. A good sampled instrument will sample each note, as well as the same note at different velocities, and multiples of that. Which is why the library is an enormous 80gb. There isn't much tweaking besides putting another amplitude and filter envelope on it, and FX. Honestly not worth it to me.

TBH, listening to the M3 demos, you can recreate those patches using synthesizer plugins. All the FM sounds can be done in FM8, for example, and there are existing factory presets. Of course, if you have no sound design experience or desire, they present barriers while the sample pack tears them down at the cost of flexibility (and hard drive space).

However, there are many tweakable presets packs out there, and Massive is extremely popular. So you can look up something like "Massive Pad preset" on YouTube and get a step-by-step tutorial on how to make one. If you just want to throw money at the problem there is no shortage of sound designers.

Yea, I figured as much, thanks for the clarification.
I've been goofing around in MASSIVE all morning and you guys are right, I could get just about any synth sound I want out of it, (and FM8 too).

But boy do the presets suck, I mean, I think maybe 5% of them are useful to me, and that fact is almost solely responsible for this thread's creation..lol..

I'll keep tinkering and reading manuals, and hopefully sooner, rather than later, I'll have replaced the presets with all my own sounds.

Haha! If I knew you could design your own sounds... Honestly, man, once you get over your panic/buyer's remorse, you're gonna have a hell of a time with this suite

[chk071]

I think so too. NI's stuff is great quality, everything. Komplete would sheer slay me though. So much stuff, and i'd probably check out a mere 5 % of it, or so. But, that's a personal thing.