Ok, now that all the hype has died down... what do you think of NI's Premium Tube Series?

[electro]

NI need to leave the FX alone and focus their resources on more projects like Monark.

I agree that more synths from NI on par with Monark would be awesome, but I don't think much development time is being 'wasted' on the latest family of FX. They've all been coded by Softube, so at most NI have spent time working on great looking GUIs, and possibly integrating the algorithms into their framework yada yada... that's where I'm out of my depth, as a non-coder, so I won't pretend to know how it all comes together.

As far as I know they have a specialist GUI team, Mr Mokafix and another guy or 2, but the Monark synth development and Softube FX development don't encroach on each other at all AFAIAA.
On the contrary, Monark's development resulted in an amazing spin-off in Driver. No Softube logo on that. Driver just needs midi input and it's a synth in itself!

I didn't know Driver and Monark were related. If NI knew what they were doing, Mr Mokafix would have already been promoted to lead programmer for GR.

[xalama qo]

Well, it's just my view on it really, no insider info. But if you compare Driver with any filter NI has produced before, it's definitely on a new level IMO. So I'm pretty sure some of the Monark 'know-how' found its way into Driver. Again, just IMO. Gotta be so careful what you say around these here KVR parts!

Re Mr Mokafix, couldn't agree with you more. In the meantime he's doing a fine job on the latest GUIs. Looks are important to me, and the latest NI stuff just looks like fun somehow... hence my wondering if Vari-Comp just sounded good to me cos I like the way it looks too. Yeah, pinky purple, why not?

I agree with the previous poster about it seeming to run quite hot and getting into over-driven tones quite quickly, which I quite like as it's different to the IK comps I have. I don't have any hardware or software reference to compare it to, so I have no expectation as to how it SHOULD sound, just 'do I like how it sounds for what it is?' I think I do... now, is that worth the price?..etc etc. hehe!

Anyway, I've been away for a few days, so I'm looking forward to playing around with it again with refreshed ears.