Komplete 11 Ultimate Questions and Opinions

[Armagibbon]

The vsl stuff in kontakt's factory lib are pretty alright. Perc is great I still use it. Strings brass and wind... gonna need to grab the crossfade scripts for those and get some decent chops with your mod wheel or expedal.

[superscan]

I like the synths in Logic and really like Alchemy and that covers a lot of ground. I was thinking of buying Synapse The Legend, but maybe just Monark from Komplete would fit the bill there. Honestly, the rest of the synths would just gather dust. (I think). What are the gems here?

As a Logic Pro X user, I find my most indispensable tools (outside of Logic) from NI is Kontakt and mostly 3rd Party Kontakt Libraries. I started with Machine and cross-graded to 9 Standard. I'm up to KU 11. Probably the most used NI libraries are The Giant, Session Strings Pro, Retro Machines MK2 and the Gentleman.

Had I to do it all over again, I'd now get a Komplete Control S-88 (w/Komplete Select) and outright cross-grade to Kontakt 5. There are just too many great 3rd party libraries to not have Kontakt

REAKTOR
Not sure if I want to go down this rabbit hole. It looks WAY TOO DEEP.

Agreed. You'd know if Modular was your cup of tea.

INCLUDED FX
Anything better here than what is in Logic?

Personally not found anything. I use other 3rd party tools. If you are using something like Maschine, having some or all of these are great and fast workflow as they are built in.

How do they map MIDI-wise? Could you swap out Logic's Drummer and pop in an Abbey Rd drumset? Or Studio drummer with no issues?

Yes, option click your Drummer region (copy) down to another instrument like Abbey Rd, Superior Drummer, SSD 4 etc. I do this quite a bit to add depth or change out a kit piece. Use the Producer Kits in Logic to get the multi-track outputs. Quite a depth in opportunity there alone.

Thanks. I appreciate your insights. Nice to know the drums swap out easily.

Your main libraries are The Giant, Session Strings Pro, Retro Machines MK2 and the Gentleman. So it seems you don't really use much of Komplete - but Kontakt is needed for the good third party stuff.

Kontakt seems to be the thing to own. Any deals that happen with Kontakt regularly - like 50% off?

I seem to recall some noise a few years back about Reaktor going for 99 dollars. Can you crossgrade either of these for Komplete? Or just Kontakt?

Komplete is a great bargain especially now during the sale. It was always cheaper to get the bundle than to cobble what I needed. I believe they have a December sale with titles half off (not collections usually).

Take some time and play with the demos. Sounds like you don't know where to start and that can be dangerous for the pocketbook.

Just make music, that should drive you into the directions you need.

[rod_zero]

Maybe Komplete is not for you if you have so many doubts.

For me: I really need orchestral stuff and I like their synths. Apart from alchemy I also feel Now stuff is better that what comes bundled with logic (which is also older content).

As for shipping, they have a free options but you will have to pay customs outside of the USA and EU.

Re: doubts - well, I always evaluate purchases - regardless of their final cost. I would be spending almost 1000 dollars on software I'm sure there are some others are in the same situation - all insights will help us all of us out. Maybe Ultimate is more suited to pros? If you own a studio. Also if you were a serious money making composer. You could write off the expense, as well.

Which synths in particular stand out for you?

Do you find Essentials Orchestra gets you the results you want fast? Are you doing film or game work?

Well I am being honest, if you are questioning the purchase a lot that means you don't need it. As you say is quite a bit of money so it is important to know you will use it and if you are asking maybe you haven't had a good look at the content because you don't really need it.

For example I was pretty happy with Ableton Live Suite and some packs, doing mainly electronic music. But lately I am working with more projects with other artist, I am making rock now and I need acoustic kits, I am colaborating with a composer who needs strings, brass and woodwinds. So I really need the content.

If I was making only electronic music I wouldn't spend 700 on Komplete U, but get a HW synth instead.

[bigcat1969]

I need to update it, but this is a blog about free sample based instruments and many of them require full Kontakt... Now whether they are of high enough quality is of course another question. If a freebie is available in Kontakt or other formats, Kontakt is almost always better as you can do tweaking yourself. With a little ambition you can find free scripts for making ensembles from single instruments, doing legato, creating fake round robins and all kinds of things.
http://bigcatlists.blogspot.com/

PS Grad free Drumic'a and use it to crossgrade to Kontakt for $125 on the current upgrade sale. Cheapest price you'll ever find for Kontakt. Of course then you can also crossgrade up to Komplete from that if you like.

[sjm]

I think you're right to question whether you really need everything in Komplete. It is rather bloated, as it tries to cover a lot of bases in one package. That means that the more versatile your music needs are, the more bang for the buck you are going to get.

I knew that I wanted Kontakt for the simple reason (mentioned multiple times in this thread) that it is the de facto industry standard. If you want to use sampled instruments, you probably want Kontakt. Kontakt on it's own isn't cheap, as you've probably noticed.

I looked at the rest of the stuff in Komplete, and there were a few other things that I was intersted in. Seeing as the individual prices of the things I was interested in was already going to cost more than the Komplete package, it wasn't ever going to make sense to buy individual products. Essentially, if you want Kontakt + 1/2 other major components, it works out as more economical to buy the bundle. I personally have used Guitar Rig and Absynth the most aside from Kontakt. Obviously different people will be interested in different components (Massive was really popular with the EDM crowd, Monark gets a lot of love too) depending on your genres of interest.

I went for Komplete Ultimate largely because I wanted the additional sample libraries. This meant that I would have almost all my sampled instrument bases covered by the factory library and internet freebies. And while not all of the stuff in the factory library is amazing, it's all very usable IMO. I figured I can always purchase specific libraries if I need them.

Again, the moment you want more than a couple of the extra NI libraries, it's cheaper to get them all. Just view the rest of the package as good quality freebies to round off your instrument collection.

The various drum kits seem to at least share a lot of the drum mappings. I can't say anything about how they compare to Logic as a Windows user, but I have been using the same mapping for multiple kits. The mappings are in the manuals, so you should be able to look them up.

I've found myself using the softtube stuff a fair amount, although I definitely didn't purchase Komplete because of them. If you see these as essentially freebies, they're amazingly good value

As for the cheapest upgrade path to Komplete Ultimate, I went Reaktor ($ 99 on sale) -> Ultimate crossgrade ($ 399 on sale IIRC, someone listed $ 400 as the crossgrade price above). That means you can pick up Komplete Ultimate on sale for the same price as Komplete Sub-ultimate at RRP. You do need to be willing to wait for the right deal, and you might get an even better deal by picking up a qualifying product second hand. Especially now with the sale on, you might find people selling off their unneeded single licenses in the marketplace as they jump on the Komplete train.

I'll be perfectly honest and say I only bought Reaktor for the upgrade path, and while I find it fun to play around with the ensembles and have even made my own basic stuff, I don't think I've ever actually used it to make a song.

[Armagibbon]

Again, the moment you want more than a couple of the extra NI libraries, it's cheaper to get them all. Just view the rest of the package as good quality freebies to round off your instrument collection.

Spot on. Could even go so far to forget about the extra stuff you won't use. There's some psychological shit about trying to make use of everything you've got and that's a problem with buying bundles. You might not use everything in it and you'll guilt yourself about it. F*cking sucks for getting shit done.

Use what you want to use. Don't even think about the shit you don't want.

[ghettosynth]

Again, the moment you want more than a couple of the extra NI libraries, it's cheaper to get them all. Just view the rest of the package as good quality freebies to round off your instrument collection.

Spot on. Could even go so far to forget about the extra stuff you won't use. There's some psychological shit about trying to make use of everything you've got and that's a problem with buying bundles. You might not use everything in it and you'll guilt yourself about it. F*cking sucks for getting shit done.

Use what you want to use. Don't even think about the shit you don't want.

Indeed. I didn't even install everything. I installed the thing that I knew I would use and the things that intrigued me a bit, but I left a pretty big chunk of the fat libraries that I don't really need right now uninstalled. If I need them, they're there.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

What kind of sales happen with the bits and pieces of Komplete?

Various promotions throughout the year, normally now (Summer), and around Black Friday/xmas.

But I have picked up most of my stuff from the marketplace (buy/sell) here at KvR. As people upgrade/cross-grade to Komplete, they often let their single NI pieces go for pretty good prices

What exactly is an ensemble? Just synths and FXs?

Yes! It's the 'whole' unit/instrument/effect that you load into Reaktor

What do you like about these that made you buy them?

Replika XT has a ton of options for a delay unit. Molekular is a pretty unique multi-effect, which allows for a lot of movement within patches, and specialises in 'out-there' effects. (To be honest, I am only just getting to grips with this, and not even sure I won't pass it on).

[fmr]

Replika XT has a ton of options for a delay unit. Molekular is a pretty unique multi-effect, which allows for a lot of movement within patches, and specialises in 'out-there' effects. (To be honest, I am only just getting to grips with this, and not even sure I won't pass it on).

Probably worths mention that these two are only present in Ultimate. Replika (not Replika XT) is part of Komplete standard.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Replika XT has a ton of options for a delay unit. Molekular is a pretty unique multi-effect, which allows for a lot of movement within patches, and specialises in 'out-there' effects. (To be honest, I am only just getting to grips with this, and not even sure I won't pass it on).

Probably worths mention that these two are only present in Ultimate. Replika (not Replika XT) is part of Komplete standard.

You are correct!

While 'Ultimate' is what the o.p is after, I guess it makes sense to make the distinction for other lurkers

[festeringheap]

I have Komplete 9 and really think about jumping to Ulimate 11.
So: think about Reaktor as it's own full environment, giant engine frame for anything. So there are synths running in Reaktor (ie. Monark, Prism, Razor and many others); effects (all the classic: compressors, delays, reverbs, pitchshifters, filters etc); utilities (like sequencers, samplers or loopers)... Sky is the limit. You have vast library included, there are also thousands of third party and (mostly) free Reaktor ensembles.

Included fx: do not underestimate this. K11 Ultimate has full suite, ie. excellent dynamic processors made for NI by Softube. Many of them are covered with your IK Multimedia though. I don't know SpaceDesigner, but Reflector is absolute top notch. Don't forget about whole Guitar Rig PRO, which is -again- huge frame with effects or effects chain. Replika is also very good delay effect.

Synths gem - you'll get iconic vst like Massive, Absynth and FM8. Massive is one of the most popular soft synths of the world, with thousands of external libraries Absynth is a bit like Alchemy, I mean it lets you to import own samples to joy with synthesis. FM8 is very faithfull Yamaha DX7 recreation, it can ever import Yamaha soundbanks.

Really, hard to find such ultimate and top quality sound production bundle.

Thank you for your insights. I appreciate that. Interesting that you don't mention Kontakt and the sampled instruments - like these guys ...

As a Logic Pro X user, I find my most indispensable tools (outside of Logic) from NI is Kontakt and mostly 3rd Party Kontakt Libraries.... There are just too many great 3rd party libraries to not have Kontakt

I knew that I wanted Kontakt for the simple reason (mentioned multiple times in this thread) that it is the de facto industry standard. If you want to use sampled instruments, you probably want Kontakt. Kontakt on it's own isn't cheap, as you've probably noticed.

...who barely mention the synths

It's too bad that there isn't an Ultimate for Reaktor/Synths/FX and an Ultimate for Kontakt/Sampled Instruments/FX.

[festeringheap]

Komplete is a great bargain especially now during the sale. It was always cheaper to get the bundle than to cobble what I needed. I believe they have a December sale with titles half off (not collections usually).

Take some time and play with the demos. Sounds like you don't know where to start and that can be dangerous for the pocketbook.

Unfortunately, I can't find demos for a lot of the sampled stuff, which is one of the reasons for the thread. However, I have tried out a few things: Kontakt demo and some Essentials.
I wasted an hour as Logic didn't recognize Kontakt originally and I had to hunt down the reason for that. I have 4 Essentials downloaded, but can't access the solo brass for some reason - still trying to figure that one out.

I seem to go in circles on the NI site.
Are there demos for Session Horns, Session Strings, Action Strings, Action Strikes Damage Strummed Acoustic?

[festeringheap]

Is Kontakt due for an upgrade any time soon?

If it gets upgraded to 6, and you own Komplete or Komplete Ultimate, do you pay to upgrade Kontakt? Just curious - I really don't know anything about Native Instrument ways.

[ghettosynth]

Is Kontakt due for an upgrade any time soon?

If it gets upgraded to 6, and you own Komplete or Komplete Ultimate, do you pay to upgrade Kontakt? Just curious - I really don't know anything about Native Instrument ways.

That's hard to say, but, generally, a full version upgrade you will have to upgrade it. Either with the next komplete or just standalone.

It's unlikely that it will be out soon, but, it might be. They might not wait for K12. They didn't wait to release R6 and so those of us unwilling to wait for K11 had to upgrade it by itself.

[Ryan99]

Is Kontakt due for an upgrade any time soon?

If it gets upgraded to 6, and you own Komplete or Komplete Ultimate, do you pay to upgrade Kontakt? Just curious - I really don't know anything about Native Instrument ways.

You pay for any new major new version released after the latest version of Komplete you have. Or you can wait to have it included in the next version of Komplete.