Kick Ninja - Kick 3 / Audija Alternative

[Funky40]

Ninja Kick has also no host automation available. As is with the audija kickdrum.
i played with it. It´s funny, all three, Audija, Kick2, Ninja-kick are leading me to do different things, different sounds.
Each has it´s own strenghts to me. Yet, none feels like beeing perfect.
personally i want to patch in the realtimeplay host i use, and create live-performance patches, performing with kicks.
It´s quite fun, and feels like "real music-making".
Hence, host automation for nodes is -coming from there- a very welcome and useful thing.
(requires a host which has at least a min-max setting vs. the CC mapping. otherwise it´s unjammable)

Doing the jamming with the trackpad alone, i probably had with this one even greater results than with the audija. ( but i need to look again in the audija kick, now updated). I ***really*** would like to see this one updated in that regard.

We "could" take todays VST-kicks into realms where they´d even could start to outperform eurorack kicks in regards of manual jammings. By a long shot i´d say.

[swilow11]

My only complaint- and it's not insignificant- with Audija is the interface. The colours and everything being overlaid as it is is just confusing. But it's still fantastic and easy to dial in... Anyway, I will also demo this Ninja one but between Kick2/3 and Audija (and Bitwig) I think I'm covered.

[PieBerger]

My only complaint- and it's not insignificant- with Audija is the interface. The colours and everything being overlaid as it is is just confusing. But it's still fantastic and easy to dial in... Anyway, I will also demo this Ninja one but between Kick2/3 and Audija (and Bitwig) I think I'm covered.

So many kicks, so little time

[dionenoid]

I'm liking this a lot more than Kick3 to be honest. It's faster/more intuitive in use, less restricted somehow, has better/more modern sample selecting options, and the resynthesis is much better (altho not on par with Backbone/Halion).

Somehow this feels more like it's been made to design your own kicks. While Kick3 feels more like something to play and/or tweak expansion packs.

[chagzuki]

and the resynthesis is much better (altho not on par with Backbone/Halion).

That's interesting. My initial go with Kick 3 resynthesis didn't result in something particularly close to the source, which was a little disappointing. I was leaning heavily towards sticking with a reputable company with a long history and favourable copy protection. Whereas I have a hard time getting past the cheesy grift of The Him's self marketing as yet another global superstar/fake it till you make it kind of thing in a dumbass industry. I wonder who the coder is for the plugins, and how likely it is that they'll be supported over the long term. Of course, if the plugin is genuinely good, and if this is a long-term venture, it deserves to do well.

[OscSync]

and the resynthesis is much better (altho not on par with Backbone/Halion).

That's interesting. My initial go with Kick 3 resynthesis didn't result in something particularly close to the source, which was a little disappointing. I was leaning heavily towards sticking with a reputable company with a long history and favourable copy protection. Whereas I have a hard time getting past the cheesy grift of The Him's self marketing as yet another global superstar/fake it till you make it kind of thing in a dumbass industry. I wonder who the coder is for the plugins, and how likely it is that they'll be supported over the long term. Of course, if the plugin is genuinely good, and if this is a long-term venture, it deserves to do well.

Kick Ninja is coded by Jay himself (no pun) with no third party developer involved.

[PieBerger]

and the resynthesis is much better (altho not on par with Backbone/Halion).

That's interesting. My initial go with Kick 3 resynthesis didn't result in something particularly close to the source, which was a little disappointing. I was leaning heavily towards sticking with a reputable company with a long history and favourable copy protection. Whereas I have a hard time getting past the cheesy grift of The Him's self marketing as yet another global superstar/fake it till you make it kind of thing in a dumbass industry. I wonder who the coder is for the plugins, and how likely it is that they'll be supported over the long term. Of course, if the plugin is genuinely good, and if this is a long-term venture, it deserves to do well.

What OscSync said, also this isn't his first plugin either, so that might help give you some more confidence in his abilities and likelihood of sticking around for the longer term, or not, but that's up to you to decide

[chagzuki]

What OscSync said, also this isn't his first plugin either, so that might help give you some more confidence in his abilities and likelihood of sticking around for the longer term, or not, but that's up to you to decide

Yes, I don't want to sound disparaging. 10 minutes with the plugin demo shows that it's excellently conceived. Having envelopes for harmonics and distortion is great, so much better than having to blanket-add distortion as an effect etc. Congrats to the developer.

[bite_me]

For me it´s the linear thing. Move an envelope, see the effect right on spot in the waveform. That really stands out. Very intuitive.

[oobesan]

Are any of these kick synthesizers (Kick2/3, Kickdrum, or Kick Ninja) velocity sensitive?

[Dr.Gunjah]

all of them can be configured to change volume based on velocity

[PieBerger]

New version out:

-Added 6 distortion types
-Extra distortion section (now 2!)
-Automatable filter between distortion sections
-PsyTrance kicks by @adrenakrohm !
-New import mode including "full perfect", which does the import, then generates a phase flipped layer for pretty much 100% accurate recreation
-Phase locking for pitch points: allows you to lock a point (right click) so the phase after that point will stay locked to have perfect tails (can still look a little glitchy, but works great!)
-Selectable pitch tracking points: any point in the pitch envelope can now be pitchtracked.

[chagzuki]

New version out:

The downloads page still seems to have the same version. What's the number?

[DJErmac]

Shame on me, I didn’t read the manual (don’t even know if there’s one), but so far I haven’t been able to zoom in, to edit my attack precisely. I’ve looked around in Ninja Kick, tried the classic keys, and nothing.

So what I mean here is : unless I’m really stupid (which is quite possible I must say), the zoom is either lacking (?) or really unintuitive to me.

Don’t know if it’s only me... I found the zoom function immediatly in Kick 2 for example.

[Erik_Lucas]

Yes, the zoom function needs some work in Kick Ninja. It's the only thing holding me back from using it more. Audija's zoom works very well.