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

[samsam]

Yes it's my first language. Cheers.

Sherlock for questioning the point of your post? Whatever.

Nope, whose.

Cheers

Aha. In that case, you're welcome young man

[Stefken]

Ya, and for some reason people are quicker to fault a random user for stumbling around trying to figure out wtf is going than the beloved NI for leaving us sitting with this mess.

What mess? It's more fun to tweak synths without manual. It's the best way to explore and learn synth or any other instrument. This way you can create a sound in a way that nobody else did before and most importantly it's so much fun to experiment with synths not knowing what to expect it's also good for brain to work this way.

Normally I’d agree with you, but on this one I’d say a manual is in order. The UI, IMO isn’t good, and it’s very easy to get confused on things that on other synths would be pretty clear. The fact that they released it without a manual is actually proof to me that they didn’t get this one done by the due date. Luckily there are beta testers who made some tutorials and people here helped out on a few things, so I feel I have a handle on it.

I could go on as to why Massive X’s UI is a mess, but evidently I already did and my post got lost in the “post review” feature (which is so stupid) of this site. Many things aren’t labeled. Many things don’t have any visual indicator as to the fact that they can be interacted with or even a parameter value. Aftertouch, Mod Wheel and Pitch bend are segregated from the rest of the modulators like the children of asylum seekers. I’m sure they thought they’d get a tool tip system in there and they had to drop it for the release.

Now, if you compare it with a competitor’s synth like Dune 3, I’ve never felt the least bit lost. Well, one time when I first got it, I didn’t quite understand how to turn on the oscillators. (You have to give them a voice count that’s greater than 0) Other than that, I’ve never had to sneak a watch of a tutorial or hit the manual. I get that Massive X has some flexibility and functionality that can’t probably ever be shown in an intuitive way, but it could be improved a lot. I’d put Massive X up there with Zebra 2, which I also think has UI/UX issues, but at least there is a good manual and plenty of online tutorials for it.

Shadowick stuffers from what a lot of people suffer from these days. Post or die syndrome. They feel the need to get something out before they’ve really done the homework to understand it. Those of us who have some level of sophistication can see right though that and you look like... a goof. Like when Deadmau5 got stoned and thought he’d make a video showing off his modular setup that he didn’t actually understand. You end up having some inflated hubris because you have all these subscribers. The bright thing to do is to just come clean and admit that you don’t get it and there’s no manual. No shame in that, and you might get a beta tester or NI employee to provide the answer in the comments.

This makes a lot of sense.
As to the reactions, I'm with Urs.
The cause of these extra harmonics is not easy to pinpoint. And people shouldn't be treated like they committed a capital offense when and if they made a mistake.

[machinesworking]

And people shouldn't be treated like they committed a capital offense when they made a mistake.

I'm pretty sure the internet runs on men getting into flame wars on forums, (plus selfies of 8 to 35 year old women doing the duckface while flashing fake gang signs on their social media platform of choice). Without these things the ad revenue dries up and we're back to dial up modem speeds as servers are powered down world wide.

So the next time you question whether you should respond to that perceived barb or wrongdoing on the internet realize you are doing Gods Work™

[ghettosynth]

And people shouldn't be treated like they committed a capital offense when they made a mistake.

I'm pretty sure the internet runs on men getting into flame wars on forums, (plus selfies of 8 to 35 year old women doing the duckface while flashing fake gang signs on their social media platform of choice). Without these things the ad revenue dries up and we're back to dial up modem speeds as servers are powered down world wide.

So the next time you question whether you should respond to that perceived barb or wrongdoing on the internet realize you are doing Gods Work™

Note, to properly do "God's work," you need an AVX compatible processor.

[ghettosynth]

In case you Mac guys just need someone to listen...

https://www.theonion.com/new-apple-frie ... 1819594936

[Telematix]

.. I'd surely hope that a user manual would clear up why the sine wave oscillators produce audible harmonics (nothing wrong with that if it's an inherent part of the synthesis..

Urs, the sine wave hasn't any harmonics when the filters are turned off. I suppose it's a kind of overdrive behavior.

[EvilDragon]

It's just not a perfect sine in the wavetable. It's more of an analog sine that has some low level 3rd order harmonics due to soft clipping a triangle wave.

[pixel85]

People today put way too much attention to visual representation of audio instead of use ears. MX doesn't have pure sine wave? So what? It's not the first or last synth without pure sine. Damn my last synth before MX, Roland JP08 have so many audible harmonics in sine wave that it shouldn't be called sine wave I'm curious if people complain about it to. Poor people before the age of cheap software analyzers, how they could make music then? They had to choose instruments based on what they hear. I feel really sorry for them. Imagine those poor unaware souls who used synths with sine waves that weren't pure, if they only knew, if they only knew...

[Stefken]

It's just not a perfect sine in the wavetable. It's more of an analog sine that has some low level 3rd order harmonics due to soft clipping a triangle wave.

That's my hypothesis too.

[kvr235]

Latest version of Reaper here.

Somehow Massive X feels a lot more sluggish and CPU intensive on my machine than other comparable synths.

I just made a test project, and with the same unison settings Massive X uses up ~ twice as much CPU as Massive 1. And even 3x more than Serum.

When I disable GPU processing for Reaper, it just becomes unusable, so that seems to be crucial in a way.

Is there any settings I might try that would help reduce CPU usage? Lots of people report it being so CPU friendly, I'm starting to suspect there's something going on specific to my setup.

[pixel85]

Ya, and for some reason people are quicker to fault a random user for stumbling around trying to figure out wtf is going than the beloved NI for leaving us sitting with this mess.

What mess? It's more fun to tweak synths without manual. It's the best way to explore and learn synth or any other instrument. This way you can create a sound in a way that nobody else did before and most importantly it's so much fun to experiment with synths not knowing what to expect it's also good for brain to work this way.

Normally I’d agree with you, but on this one I’d say a manual is in order. The UI, IMO isn’t good, and it’s very easy to get confused on things that on other synths would be pretty clear. The fact that they released it without a manual is actually proof to me that they didn’t get this one done by the due date. Luckily there are beta testers who made some tutorials and people here helped out on a few things, so I feel I have a handle on it.

I think it's different from person to person. For me, I don't have a problem with MX. Building ensembles in Reaktor would be a different story without any manual/additional help But MX for me is quite easy to understand and the parts that I don't understand allows me to use them in wrong way which may lead to something surprising. I'm tired of my knowledge about synths because it makes me do some things automatically, because 'it's the way how it should be done' which often may block my creativity. MX is taking me back to pre-internet era, to times where I was learning synthesis only by tweaking knobs that I didn't understand what's it's suppose to do. Ah sweet nostalgia...

[beater]

New video from sadowick seems more reasonable. A little bit snappy though.

[ghettosynth]

New video from sadowick seems more reasonable. A little bit snappy though.

Pretty sure that nobody gives a shit.

The only reason people cared about the old one was because he was making questionable asssertions. I don't think that most of us in this thread really care about any youtuber's opinion, even if they do have a number three record on the "grandma's favorite Canadian cuts" chart.

I don't even care what Nick from Sonicstate has to say TBH.

[EvilDragon]

I don't even care what Nick from Sonicstate has to say TBH.

Ah you know Nick, he's always gonna do BUT DOES IT PWM?!

[Functional]

The aggressive tone in much of the debate here worries me.

Some people here are exaggerating the actual proportion of it. For example, there was at least one person if not two who insisted that people made attacks against him by bringing out a status related to his health. Only one person brought that whole topic out and it wasn't really an attack against him (although entirely unnecessary regardless). And yet, at least one person repeatedly insisted that people really did attack him like that.

But there's no denying that I, for example, did not take a liking to his whole attitude. And I'll die on the hill where I say that it's been his own doing, not so much because of the videos but how he acted here. Take a look at following example of his behavior:

Dude, you're a moderator on the NI forums so what you say is very suspect. The oscillators alias with frequency sweeps close to nyquist and reflect consistent to a poorly optimized band-limiting filter. Its not "beefing up" the sound.

Serum and Phase Plant do not alias like this. Address that.

Again, use the Filter knob if you want to have a pure sine. The image is shown above. There is no aliasing in frequency sweeps close to Nyquist then (if you could even call that aliasing rather than FFT noise when input changes too fast for the analyzer to react).

Serum and Phase Plant don't sound interesting (not to me at least) due to their overly clinical nature. If you want that, by all means, use them instead of MX.

Anyone can take an aliased sinewave at 500hz and filter it. What are you even saying? be objective NI employee. Also tell the team to do their job.

He was told to use the filter knob to get rid of the harmonics. Instead of thinking even twice about it, he decided what this meant on ED's behalf. Instead of asking "What filter knob?" (clearly he didn't figure out that part), he just throws out the whole message because ED is affiliated with NI. And he also tells ED to go and tell NI employees to "do their job".

If he is going to be an ass, people will treat him like one. Is it really unjust?