Super 8 - New polysynth by Native Instruments

[pixel85]

I feel like people are becoming more and more fragile with every year and they uplift small things to something that in their eyes looks like a matter of life and death.

I don't think that Massive X would have an huge impact on sales if it would be in Reaktor (Player). I got feeling that people complaining about Reaktor are in huge but vocal minority.

On what do you base that assumption?

On life experience. In the past people were able to work with workflow that was 1000 times much more time and work consuming (like waiting few minutes to load 2kB sample from floppy drive) and yet people were able to make great music without complaining. Today people cry over opening additional shell (Reaktor). Life of a music producer is sooo hard these days

[EvilDragon]

The preset handing in Reaktor was fine 15 years ago. Today it's just awful.

Do you mean snapshots? Or presets? Snapshots save with the ensemble, and yes they can be a bit cumbersome. But you can morph between them, so that's cool.

But saving presets is really easy... File->Save preset as. That's it.

[mholloway]

On life experience. In the past people were able to work with workflow that was 1000 times much more time and work consuming (like waiting few minutes to load 2kB sample from floppy drive) and yet people were able to make great music without complaining. Today people cry over opening additional shell (Reaktor). Life of a music producer is sooo hard these days

This, absolutely. We are so incredibly spoiled. Threads like this are frankly embarrassing to read, we are all so absurdly spoiled.

The worst part of the Reaktor complainers is that, apparently, they don't even know how to use their own host DAW. Every DAW allows some method of saving instruments. In Live, as I've already mentioned here, I can load Reaktor, load Super 8, then right click - Group device into Instrument Rack, then save that Rack in my User Library. Guess what loads every time I grab that file...Super-8, ready to go, just like any VST in my collection. I'm sure other major DAWs have a comparable process. So all these people moaning about extra clicks and Reaktor being a deal-breaker issue, it just tells me they don't even know the most basic level of interfacing with their gear like a moderately intelligent human being. Man, what the hell would they have done in an 80s music project studio with all the hardware and wires and mixers and sends and DAT tapes or whatever the hell else? They'd just be sitting in the corner crying and writing letters to their friends about it, I suppose.

[kmonkey]

This is really nice sounding synth.

These days every host have decent preset browser. You can save your Super8 init preset in Reaktor and next time you simply drag and drop it and job done. So it isn't two click instead of one - it is one click (or drag). Wow shocking.

I simply cannot believe people complaining about Reaktor and few clicks more. For what you are getting with it...

It's ridiculous.

Quick question - is this added to Ultimate or separate product?

[AnX]

you dont need synthedit to run a synth made in synthedit, or a flaky service hub



if i wanted to jump thru hoops, I'd join the circus

[DrGonzo]

The preset handing in Reaktor was fine 15 years ago. Today it's just awful.

Do you mean snapshots? Or presets? Snapshots save with the ensemble, and yes they can be a bit cumbersome. But you can morph between them, so that's cool.

But saving presets is really easy... File->Save preset as. That's it.

I agree, the morphing part is cool and I have used it since what... Reaktor 4? Or was it 3?

I guess we are talking about "snapshots". I haven't been working with Reaktor for quite some time so my memory is a bit rusty - but I remember me leaving the whole platform in disgust after I tried to distribute presets to some friends. I managed, but it was not clear and not simple.

The way u-he does it (just as an example) is fantastic. Each preset is a separate file in a separate folder. If you want to backup your sounds, you just move the folder to your backup disk - done. If you want to know where the preset is stored on your drive, you right-click and select Locate in Finder.

/C

[spunkmuffin]

Threads like this are frankly embarrassing to read

I find it entertaining.

The way u-he does it (just as an example) is fantastic. Each preset is a separate file in a separate folder. If you want to backup your sounds, you just move the folder to your backup disk - done. If you want to know where the preset is stored on your drive, you right-click and select Locate in Finder.

+1

[gentleclockdivider]

You can save and export snapshots /banks , store them on your hard disk , thumb drive etc...send it your friends , grannie etc...so they can load it (assummin they have the same ensemble )
No need to save your ensemble everytime , just load the snapshotbank et voila ...only requirement is that you at least RTFM

[acid alex]

You can save and export snapshots /banks , store them on your hard disk , thumb drive etc...send it your friends , grannie etc...so they can load it (assummin they have the same ensemble )
No need to save your ensemble everytime , just load the snapshotbank et voila ...only requirement is that you at least RTFM

What! You expect me to read the manual every time I want to save a preset. That’s ridiculous.

[Greenstorm33]

The main issue I have with Reaktor is that it uses CPU even when idle, and NI's recent synths tend to not be very CPU friendly. I don't have a top-of-the-line PC so I would have to constantly freeze stuff which is too much of a workflow hindrance when I have comparable tools that don't do this and work just as well. I don't use stuff like Rounds from Komplete because of this, despite it being a fine synth otherwise for my purposes, and I probably won't use Super 8 when it becomes part of Komplete for the same reason.

[v1o]

It’s hard to deny that there isn’t an undercurrent of hipsterism present here though. U-he releases a simple one page synth that does absolutely nothing new in terms of synth evolution (hive) and we lap it up, NI does the same thing and the haterade starts flowing. Human nature.

I understand your point, but I can't see this as a good comparison. Hive doesn't need Reaktor to work. One can launch Hive in a blink of an eye.

You can launch a Reaktor ensemble in 2 blinks of an eye, which is admittedly longer, yet still not something that I would get my panties in a bunch over.

I have a mild dislike for NI using Reaktor for all their synths too, but only because I tend to forget that they are there, not because its an enormous burden on the act of making music, it’s like one extra frigging mouse click.

It is more like 3 extra mouse clicks... but I don't care about the 3 extra clicks either...

It is the poor browser, poor preset handling, non resizable GUI, no MPE, inconsistent behaviors between ensembles such as many random parameters (Osc 1 PWM knob) not automatable in Rounds, or automation parameter names in Prism all starting with the same term so when you assign them to macros you get a whole bunch of macros with the same name... and so on. And of course there is a significant CPU hit, even without notes playing.

Nothing is ever perfect. You can make a lot of the same complaints about others VSTs.

I bet you’ve never had to wire up a patch bay and switch the mains power on for a mixer. Then try to figure out ground loop issues? Things like this never stopped people from making music.

[v1o]

you dont need synthedit to run a synth made in synthedit, or a flaky service hub



if i wanted to jump thru hoops, I'd join the circus

(Mouse clicks)= (jump thru circus hoops)

Were you born idle?

[wagtunes]

People keep using arguments that things were harder years ago. I grew up with rotary phones. Does that mean we go back to using rotary phones? I mean why not? They can make and receive calls. Let's just get rid of our cell phones. We lived without them before.

Let's go back to synths without presets. Hell, that's pretty much all we had in the 70s.

The point is, there's a reason we have progress. There's a reason we don't constantly live in the stone age. There is nothing wrong with wanting things to be easier. I don't want to go back to the days of a Teac A3440 that cost me $1,200 and doesn't do one one hundredth of what Cubase does. I'm only sorry I didn't grow up in this era.

If something is hard to use, why would anybody want to use it when there's so much out there that's easy to use?

[EvilDragon]

I guess we are talking about "snapshots". I haven't been working with Reaktor for quite some time so my memory is a bit rusty - but I remember me leaving the whole platform in disgust after I tried to distribute presets to some friends. I managed, but it was not clear and not simple.

Yeah... for sharing stuff to your friends, it's better to use presets, because they aren't embedded into the ensemble, there's no import into ensemble required as with snapshot banks (.ssf). You just double-click the preset from Explorer/Finder, it opens Reaktor (or you drag the preset into Reaktor) with the correct ensemble and off you go...

NI added this specifically for easier patch sharing (and better preset support for Reaktor Player products).

[zerocrossing]

you dont need synthedit to run a synth made in synthedit, or a flaky service hub



if i wanted to jump thru hoops, I'd join the circus

I'm on both sides of this argument. For a synth like this... I'm with you. Sounds lovely, but so do many of my instruments... including some Reaktor instruments that are very interesting. I went though the demo, and aside from the oscillator blending and waveform morphing, there's nohting new there. Filter sounds good, about what you'd get from Diva/ZebraHZ, but something like ZebraHZ is really going to run rings around this in every single way, and you should already have ZebraHZ if you're any sort of serious electronic musician who uses plugin instruments.

Then, there are the oddball instruments, like SkannerXT. Things that might not get made at all due to their kind of off-the-grid nature. I'll go to Reaktor for those types of things with no hesitation. I know that making a commercial VST based on something with a probably very limited audience is most likely a bridge too far.

So, frankly, this seems kind of like a "free Christmas" gift, or something included in the basic Komplete. But to buy it? No. Not enough there. Great tone though.