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

[wagtunes]

And then you get all the critics with...

"There's too much low end mud"
"There's too much low mid"
"The mix is too dense"
"It's too boxy"
"There's no room for the vocals"

And on and on. And since I try to appeal to the masses (unsuccessfully for the most part) I don't need to make things harder for myself by using sounds that take up the entire frequency spectrum.

Besides, I can do that with what I already own.

Possibly, but some of those criticisms could be applied to pieces of music that have sold really well. I get that it's not going to work for your approach, but I don't think it will exclude others from making those presets fit in a mix.

Absolutely. Some people make music that lives and breathes on that over the top stuff. I don't. I have no use for it.

Give me a basic polyphonic synth with basic LP, HP and BP filters and a few modes of synthesis (Subtractive, Additive, FM, Wavetable) and I'm happy.

[pixel85]

About this AVX thing... it is suppose to allow multiple instances with just one first CPU hit for first instance?
Because if it is then it works and it works very well. First instance hit 20% CPU and now with 7th instance it's 30% of CPU usage. Sweet! I was worried if I'll be able to run 1 instance and I can actually create entire track with just MX

[fisherKing]

'larger than life"? i just hear 'full, dense'. plus, a big sound gives you some good choices: A - make bigger music, or B - use less synths. anyway, glad i bought this thing...

Right. Like no one sometimes needs a single huge sounding synth for an intro, break or just a sparse arrangement. It’s like saying, “I love the food at this restaurant, but the portions are so big!” Don’t eat it all and take home the leftovers. My wife and I often split a dish when we know the portions will be huge... or even purposely order a lot because we know we’ll bring it home and enjoy it throughout the week.

No one is forcing anyone to use a giant sound. The preset is merely there to show you that it’s possible. Also, I personally enjoy going though presets, if they’re good. What I’ll do is set up a simple drum part and then use an audio looper to loop different parts from a synth. It’s really fun to me to find a preset that can create a great track all by itself with the right modulation. A huge pad where I can dig into macros using my Touché is sometimes just what I want.

And for that kind of music, yeah, these synths are great. Hit a note, move some sliders and you've made a track.

It's just not the kind of music I do and thus I won't get as much use out of something like Massive X.

In fact, for the music I do, a polyphonic mini moog is about all I really need.

some of us like big sounds, and can make genuine music that is more than 'hit a note, move some sliders'. if massive X is not for you, why spend so much time on this thread? just to be sure people know that YOU don't like it? what's the upside of that??

[zerocrossing]

Again, you're missing the point. Yes, they have to EQ the hell out of all instruments, guitars, drums, horns, you name it. Nothing gets put into a track of music straight out of the box. We all understand that.

My point is, the appeal of Massive X is it's sound. The patches are all bigger than life. Sound as good as anything I have.

But NONE of them are usable as is. They all have to be tweaked. Some a ton. Suddenly, all that "big sound" is gone so that you can fit it in the mix.

If that's the case, I don't need Massive X's big sound just to make it small, just to fit it into a mix when I already have HUNDREDS OF SYNTHS THAT CAN DO THAT.

I'm no longer impressed, nor do I care about synths that sound great out of the box because I know that if I want to use them for a song, they won't sound ANYTHING like that when the track is done. That's the trap I'm not getting myself into anymore. I already have more than enough synths to make music. I don't need Massive X to make music.

I can't make it any clearer than that.

I understand your point. But perhaps these patches are not even meant to be put in a mix but are just there to show the capabilities of the synth. Or perhaps they could be used without many other elements because they can stand on their own, e.g. cinematic sounds. However, I understand that these patches are not usable for your needs. Everyone has different needs and yours have just saved you some money.

I’m constantly amazed at the cluelessness of people who’ve been in this game long enough to understand that many presets that come with any new synth are what I call “billboards.” Big advertisements for the instrument. They’re fun to go though, but of course no one uses them. They’re meant to inspire you. Of course, I’m sure some of the presets will be perfectly usable as is, or with very little tweaking, but that’s not the point. To say, “I’m not buying this instrument because someone else’s sound design is not what I use in a song” is silly. Buy Nexus and a bunch of expansions and be done with it.

What you should do, is dig into any instrument from an init patch and find out what it’s character is like. What does it do that other instruments don’t do, or don’t do as well? Then, make a decision. I’m not saying that Massive X will change your mind, but judging it based on presets isn’t a way to actually find out.

You're absolutely right. You shouldn't judge a synth solely on how the presets sound. If I did that, I'd either buy everything or not buy anything because just about every preset that the dev puts into a synth is meant to show the synth off in its best light, unless he just doesn't give a crap.

The problem is, for most synths, best light is, as you say, a billboard that is usually unusable for most musical applications. At least in my case anyway.

So, having brought up many an INIT patch in my day (only been doing this 42 years) I can honestly say that whatever Massive X will give me outside of the billboard patches can't possibly be amazing enough for me to buy yet ANOTHER synth on top of the 100 plus I already own.

In that respect, I will probably never need another synth again. So something would have to be truly revolutionary (I doubt this is) for me to spend the cash.

Not when I need a brass and woodwind library that's top of the line SO badly.

I understand what you’re saying. You’re right, we could all probably pick a handful of instruments and be done. Happily making sounds for the rest of our lives. I don’t think anyone here’s arguing against that statement. It also definitely butts up against the law of diminishing returns. You’ll get no argument from me on that.

Anyway, this synth cost me $99, (the cost to upgrade from Komplete 8 to 12 with the Summer Of Sound sale) and as a bonus, it came with a big contingent of other instruments and sample libraries. Whatever was the difference between Komplete 8 and 12. I don’t know what the exact dollar breakdown was for it... but it’s tiny. Less... a lot less, then I’ll probably spend on dinner for myself tonight. (and you should see what I turn that into. ) I probably will get close to that amount for the entire family. Easy. I haven’t even downloaded all the sample libraries yet, but I will over time. I think if I were to have to pay full boat for this as a single instrument, I’d be looking at it with a more critical eye. It definitely will take some getting used to in the UI department, that’s for sure. Maybe I’d pass on it too, but not before I dug into it to find where its hidden treasure is. I’m not 100% sure there even is hidden treasure there, but judging by my limited time with it, I get a sense that it’s there. Plus, sometimes I just want a fresh landscape. There’s nothing like a totally different take on things to get the creative juices flowing. Sometimes that alone is worth the price of admission. I may have mentioned it before, but I bought a Microfreak, knowing full well that I could put together my own virtual Microfreak using VeeSeeVST for free, but to me, having the physical instrument there and how it’s designed will lead me to places where the software will not.

[dangayle]

Yeah, for the kind of bad techno/progressive stuff I make, a thicker fatter sound is the entire point, lol.

But, and I’m being a bit facetious here, Massive X seems to have jumped the shark. I’ll wait until it is included in K13U, unless it comes up cheap in a few weeks.

[EvilDragon]

About this AVX thing... it is suppose to allow multiple instances with just one first CPU hit for first instance?

Not exactly quite like that...

[zerocrossing]

'larger than life"? i just hear 'full, dense'. plus, a big sound gives you some good choices: A - make bigger music, or B - use less synths. anyway, glad i bought this thing...

Right. Like no one sometimes needs a single huge sounding synth for an intro, break or just a sparse arrangement. It’s like saying, “I love the food at this restaurant, but the portions are so big!” Don’t eat it all and take home the leftovers. My wife and I often split a dish when we know the portions will be huge... or even purposely order a lot because we know we’ll bring it home and enjoy it throughout the week.

No one is forcing anyone to use a giant sound. The preset is merely there to show you that it’s possible. Also, I personally enjoy going though presets, if they’re good. What I’ll do is set up a simple drum part and then use an audio looper to loop different parts from a synth. It’s really fun to me to find a preset that can create a great track all by itself with the right modulation. A huge pad where I can dig into macros using my Touché is sometimes just what I want.

And for that kind of music, yeah, these synths are great. Hit a note, move some sliders and you've made a track.

It's just not the kind of music I do and thus I won't get as much use out of something like Massive X.

In fact, for the music I do, a polyphonic mini moog is about all I really need.

some of us like big sounds, and can make genuine music that is more than 'hit a note, move some sliders'. if massive X is not for you, why spend so much time on this thread? just to be sure people know that YOU don't like it? what's the upside of that??

I post, therefore I am. I don’t need to tell you, I’m in the band. (NPG IN THE HOUSE!)

It’s funny, one day I made a preset in MPowersynth and I assigned a bunch of macros in it. Normally, I assign any macro to something that I can manipulate in real time, like aftertouch, velocity, expression pedal, etc. I’m not much of a knob/slider tweaker. Not while I’m playing. One day, someone wanted a demo, and I just wanted to get something done quickly, so I just used automation lanes in Live to do all the macro changes.

It was great. It sounded really amazing... kind of much better than my usual real time fumbling around improvised stuff. I never did that again. I don’t like doing that. I could probably release a pretty polished album every few months if I wanted to work that way, but I’m not really interested in creating product. For me, it’s about the process, and I have to love the process or I might as well just put on someone else’s music. (Which I do was well)

[AcrossTheSky]

About this AVX thing... it is suppose to allow multiple instances with just one first CPU hit for first instance?

Not exactly quite like that...

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articl ... extensions

[BlitBit]

About this AVX thing... it is suppose to allow multiple instances with just one first CPU hit for first instance?
Because if it is then it works and it works very well. First instance hit 20% CPU and now with 7th instance it's 30% of CPU usage. Sweet! I was worried if I'll be able to run 1 instance and I can actually create entire track with just MX

AVX makes better use of the single cores of your CPU by performing certain operations in parallel on several values at once. Each CPU has a set of so called registers that can hold values. You can then perform operations with these registers and put the result into another register. So you can for example instruct the CPU to load the value 3 into register A, the value 5 in register B and to put the result of the addition of the two registers into register C. After this operation register C will hold the value 8.

There are registers that can hold exactly one value. If the core uses these registers it will add one number to another in a certain amount of time. But there are also some special registers like the ones used by AVX that can hold several numbers at once. Let's assume registers D, E and F are such special register and we want to compute (2+1) and (5+4). In that case we'd load register D with (2, 5) and register E with (1, 4). Notice that this notation looks like vectors and indeed we will just perform a vector addition. This is why these CPU extensions are also called vector extensions. We instruct the CPU to add D and E and put the result into F. So F will hold (2, 5) + (1, 4) = (3, 9) at the end. The thing is that adding these special registers is faster than doing the individual operations with the single value registers.

If I remember correctly an AVX register can hold eight floating point values. So it can for example add eight numbers in parallel and by doing so is much faster than doing eight addition one after the other.

If more companies will start to exclusively target AVX enabled CPUs this might have a similar effect like the 32 bit and 64 bit transition.

[fisherKing]

'larger than life"? i just hear 'full, dense'. plus, a big sound gives you some good choices: A - make bigger music, or B - use less synths. anyway, glad i bought this thing...

Right. Like no one sometimes needs a single huge sounding synth for an intro, break or just a sparse arrangement. It’s like saying, “I love the food at this restaurant, but the portions are so big!” Don’t eat it all and take home the leftovers. My wife and I often split a dish when we know the portions will be huge... or even purposely order a lot because we know we’ll bring it home and enjoy it throughout the week.

No one is forcing anyone to use a giant sound. The preset is merely there to show you that it’s possible. Also, I personally enjoy going though presets, if they’re good. What I’ll do is set up a simple drum part and then use an audio looper to loop different parts from a synth. It’s really fun to me to find a preset that can create a great track all by itself with the right modulation. A huge pad where I can dig into macros using my Touché is sometimes just what I want.

And for that kind of music, yeah, these synths are great. Hit a note, move some sliders and you've made a track.

It's just not the kind of music I do and thus I won't get as much use out of something like Massive X.

In fact, for the music I do, a polyphonic mini moog is about all I really need.

some of us like big sounds, and can make genuine music that is more than 'hit a note, move some sliders'. if massive X is not for you, why spend so much time on this thread? just to be sure people know that YOU don't like it? what's the upside of that??

I post, therefore I am. I don’t need to tell you, I’m in the band. (NPG IN THE HOUSE!)

It’s funny, one day I made a preset in MPowersynth and I assigned a bunch of macros in it. Normally, I assign any macro to something that I can manipulate in real time, like aftertouch, velocity, expression pedal, etc. I’m not much of a knob/slider tweaker. Not while I’m playing. One day, someone wanted a demo, and I just wanted to get something done quickly, so I just used automation lanes in Live to do all the macro changes.

It was great. It sounded really amazing... kind of much better than my usual real time fumbling around improvised stuff. I never did that again. I don’t like doing that. I could probably release a pretty polished album every few months if I wanted to work that way, but I’m not really interested in creating product. For me, it’s about the process, and I have to love the process or I might as well just put on someone else’s music. (Which I do was well)

sorry, was responding to wags post about the synth...

[vurt]

9 more pages

[McLilith]

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.

Just to clarify my earlier statement, I do like supersaw synth patches. I just don't want the preset folder of my synth overwhelmed with them. A few good ones are all I need.

Wobble bass, on the other hand, having one or two wobble presets is ok, but let's just say I wouldn't be disappointed if a synth didn't have any wobble bass presets.

[McLilith]

Yeah I hate acceleration like this. Hopefully a settings to remove it will be given.

was cleaning my glasses as i scrolled, really thought you said "i hate accordions..."

In my mind, I just heard Marilyn Manson doing an all-acoustic polka song with these lyrics: "I hate accordions, but accordions like me.."

It was an oddly beautiful little ditty.

[cron]

Looking at aliasing on a scope appears to be in vogue. All the Facebook groups I'm in are going nuts over it because some big Youtuber did a video on it, and I'm guessing whatever video we're talking about is just part of the trend. It's kind of funny how aliasing is suddenly a hot-topic when it's been in marketing messages for years. I really can't think of a modern synth I own of any repute (other than Thorn and, in some circumstances, Cyclop) where bona fide aliasing is profound enough to affect the way you use it. That's why all these kids making videos about it all of a sudden are pointing it out with their eyes rather than their ears.

[felis]

Is it just me or Velocity Off in T1-T4 modulators doesn't work? My keyboard is sending Note Off values but Massive X doesn't seem to receive them

Not just you - pretty sure it's broken.
I wasn't going to bother with a demo until I saw this post and thought maybe it'd be another softie with release velocity.
Simple to set up, with nice breakpoints/curves, and drag and drop, but it doesn't seem to work though.

On a more general note, Massive X doesn't seem to work with older pc's either. I have an older desktop and a newer laptop.
It runs fine on my laptop, but crashed my DAW's on the desktop. I can't even remember the last time that happened.

It didn't show up in my list of instruments and crashed the whole thing when I scanned for it - several times - oh well.
I was going to blame the desktop's age, but I have about 50 other softsynths, including N.I. Komplete 11 on there that run just fine.

MX is deleted from both computers now though. I don't need the headaches.