Native Instruments Massive X Synth - Sequel to Massive (Out Now!)

[McLilith]

fwiw, do developers live in caves? all my newer plugins have wobble basses.. does anyone still use those anymore?

One thing that always makes me groan when trying out a synth is finding out most the presets are either variations of supersaws or wobble basses.

[chaosWyrM]

well.....i guess im out in the cold.

ive literally never even heard of avx support before.

i know its old, but my phenom ii x6 1090t is still crushing every game, vst, video or audio application i throw at it.

but i guess massive x is just too advanced. gotta have dat avx yo...must be super important if nothing ive ever installed ever requires it.

[Echoes in the Attic]

From the videos I've watched it sounds great. Very good presets it seems. Unfortunately there are no presets when I go into the browser though. I've hit rescan presets in the settings and it does seem to scan through presets but there is nothing there in the preset browser except for some init patches. Anyone know what's going on here?

Despite the nice sound I've already noticed several steps backwards from the original. The envelope graphics don't change, what? You can't have 2 resonant filters in parallel? No mousewheel/trackpad support for parameters? Parameters not exposed to the host except for 16 macros? So you with Maschine, KK, Push etc, your hardware tweaking is limited to what's been assigned by the preset. Come on, the original had all of this. And to top it all off, Massive X is not usable on a touch screen as the knob adjustments are too difficult to control. Original Massive works fine on touch screen. Why is something that is more common these days, now not usable?

I still prefer the original GUI as well, nice and clear.

Disappointing but makes the choice of not upgrading my Komplete pretty easy.

[wagtunes]

So you might be ready to ask, "Why can't you make music with THIS synth?"

Well, I could. Absolutely. But, and this is where I finally stopped falling into this trap, when you take these synths with a sound that's bigger than life, and try to fit them into a track of music, well, you end up having to EQ the hell out of them so that they DO fit. Otherwise, they drown everything else out. All that low end on pads? You know that has to go, thinned out to almost nothing so that it doesn't drown out the vocals.

So I don't need another synth that sounds bigger than life to make music where I only end up destroying half the sound just to make it fit in the mix. I have plenty of them already. And my days of sitting and twiddling knobs and listening to the sound of a synth just for the sake of it are long gone.

Hmmm.. i don't understand this statement. You have to mix all tracks in a song what else? Sayin' the pads sound thin alone? Of course they do they are mixed but if you want to talk about why it's better not to use those "overdressed" factory presets in a track then that is a different story.

That's just my point. All these wonderful patches you hear in these demos? Almost none of them are suitable for actually making music. So you end up creating patches that you CAN use. Well, I've got enough synths to do that already so I don't need Massive X to do it.

Massive X is yet just another example of a synth that sounds great out there on its own but it absolutely useless within the context of making music where you can actually HEAR all the other instruments and vocals.

That's the trap I've stopped falling into.

[JoeCat]

...
I bypassed the filter (using Routing) and thought I saw the same results but maybe I missed something. It's more a curiosity for me; I already own the synth.

Dead horse, beaten.

It's not the filter filter it's the filter control on the waveshaping stuff. See where my mouse cursor is on the left of this screenshot....

Ah - TY.

[vurt]

From the videos I've watched it sounds great. Very good presets it seems. Unfortunately there are no presets when I go into the browser though. I've hit rescan presets in the settings and it does seem to scan through presets but there is nothing there in the preset browser except for some init patches. Anyone know what's going on here?

separate download

[RobertH2]

Been playing around with the knobs on MX. They are mouse speed sensitive. If you move them fast they react quickly, at normal speed more slowly. HTH

Great synth, love the UI, love the sound.

[midi_transmission]

So you might be ready to ask, "Why can't you make music with THIS synth?"

Well, I could. Absolutely. But, and this is where I finally stopped falling into this trap, when you take these synths with a sound that's bigger than life, and try to fit them into a track of music, well, you end up having to EQ the hell out of them so that they DO fit. Otherwise, they drown everything else out. All that low end on pads? You know that has to go, thinned out to almost nothing so that it doesn't drown out the vocals.

So I don't need another synth that sounds bigger than life to make music where I only end up destroying half the sound just to make it fit in the mix. I have plenty of them already. And my days of sitting and twiddling knobs and listening to the sound of a synth just for the sake of it are long gone.

Hmmm.. i don't understand this statement. You have to mix all tracks in a song what else? Sayin' the pads sound thin alone? Of course they do they are mixed but if you want to talk about why it's better not to use those "overdressed" factory presets in a track then that is a different story.

That's just my point. All these wonderful patches you hear in these demos? Almost none of them are suitable for actually making music. So you end up creating patches that you CAN use. Well, I've got enough synths to do that already so I don't need Massive X to do it.

Massive X is yet just another example of a synth that sounds great out there on its own but it absolutely useless within the context of making music where you can actually HEAR all the other instruments and vocals.

That's the trap I've stopped falling into.

so true, but that's no disatvantage from mx alone. it's a problem from a lot of synth.

[midi_transmission]

Been playing around with the knobs on MX. They are mouse speed sensitive. If you move them fast they react quickly, at normal speed more slowly. HTH

Great synth, love the UI, love the sound.

Oh your right! It seems speed sensitive. But it just feels completely wrong to me and makes me hating tweaking knobs via mouse. My hand literally is stressed after some hours with mx. Try to move the noise volume slider for example from 0-100%. Like chewing gum.

[wagtunes]

So you might be ready to ask, "Why can't you make music with THIS synth?"

Well, I could. Absolutely. But, and this is where I finally stopped falling into this trap, when you take these synths with a sound that's bigger than life, and try to fit them into a track of music, well, you end up having to EQ the hell out of them so that they DO fit. Otherwise, they drown everything else out. All that low end on pads? You know that has to go, thinned out to almost nothing so that it doesn't drown out the vocals.

So I don't need another synth that sounds bigger than life to make music where I only end up destroying half the sound just to make it fit in the mix. I have plenty of them already. And my days of sitting and twiddling knobs and listening to the sound of a synth just for the sake of it are long gone.

Hmmm.. i don't understand this statement. You have to mix all tracks in a song what else? Sayin' the pads sound thin alone? Of course they do they are mixed but if you want to talk about why it's better not to use those "overdressed" factory presets in a track then that is a different story.

That's just my point. All these wonderful patches you hear in these demos? Almost none of them are suitable for actually making music. So you end up creating patches that you CAN use. Well, I've got enough synths to do that already so I don't need Massive X to do it.

Massive X is yet just another example of a synth that sounds great out there on its own but it absolutely useless within the context of making music where you can actually HEAR all the other instruments and vocals.

That's the trap I've stopped falling into.

so true, but that's no disatvantage from mx alone. it's a problem from a lot of synth.

Yes, it is a problem with almost every synth. And when I finally figured out that I couldn't just load up a patch and be done with it, I realized that I don't need MORE synths to EQ the hell out of until there's almost nothing left of the original patch. I can do that just as easily with what I already have.

Thus, another reason why there's no point in my getting Massive X. It's window dressing that I just don't need.

[BlitBit]

So you might be ready to ask, "Why can't you make music with THIS synth?"

Well, I could. Absolutely. But, and this is where I finally stopped falling into this trap, when you take these synths with a sound that's bigger than life, and try to fit them into a track of music, well, you end up having to EQ the hell out of them so that they DO fit. Otherwise, they drown everything else out. All that low end on pads? You know that has to go, thinned out to almost nothing so that it doesn't drown out the vocals.

So I don't need another synth that sounds bigger than life to make music where I only end up destroying half the sound just to make it fit in the mix. I have plenty of them already. And my days of sitting and twiddling knobs and listening to the sound of a synth just for the sake of it are long gone.

Hmmm.. i don't understand this statement. You have to mix all tracks in a song what else? Sayin' the pads sound thin alone? Of course they do they are mixed but if you want to talk about why it's better not to use those "overdressed" factory presets in a track then that is a different story.

That's just my point. All these wonderful patches you hear in these demos? Almost none of them are suitable for actually making music. So you end up creating patches that you CAN use. Well, I've got enough synths to do that already so I don't need Massive X to do it.

Massive X is yet just another example of a synth that sounds great out there on its own but it absolutely useless within the context of making music where you can actually HEAR all the other instruments and vocals.

That's the trap I've stopped falling into.

To me that's a rather strange argument. What about those engineers that have to mix real recorded instruments? I don't think they would go: "Hey, you! Your electric guitar sounds too wide and takes up too much bandwidth on the spectrum. Could you please get yourself a guitar that sounds tinnier and also dial in some thin sound on your amp? I don't want to work that much..."

[Functional]

Although people are tired of supersaws by now I'm sure, it's still worthwhile to mention that honestly this synth is perfect for supersaws. Not so much for the sound quality (in my case a lot of the "supersaw sound" derives from insert effects) but because it doesn't chug a CPU core while doing it.

Interestingly enough, I've also managed to make a reese with MX that has nothing on the inserts and sounds... perfect? Maybe it's just a stroke of luck but usually I have to process my heavily & overly filtered reeses like no tomorrow but MX just does it on its own.

[midi_transmission]

BlitBi. that is not what he meant. Most complex sound are not useful in a musical context because there is already to much going on. Also in electronic music.

[Reefius]

If you have any version of Komplete between 2 and 11, you can now update to Komplete 12 for $99.50, which includes Massive X, Kontakt 6, Reaktor 6 and some other stuff.

[RobertH2]

Been playing around with the knobs on MX. They are mouse speed sensitive. If you move them fast they react quickly, at normal speed more slowly. HTH

Great synth, love the UI, love the sound.

Oh your right! It seems speed sensitive. But it just feels completely wrong to me and makes me hating tweaking knobs via mouse. My hand literally is stressed after some hours with mx. Try to move the noise volume slider for example.

Thanks for responding... It's just different, so many times working with other controls, I often overshoot where I want to go. That is certainly not a problem in MX. It would be nice if there was a setting to control the response though.

OTOH when tweaking controls in MX just a little adjustment can make a huge difference to the sound, so although it's different, I've grown to like it.