Audija KickDrum vs Kick 3 vs Kick Ninja

[Caine123]

yeah this topic had to be created, suddenly 3 competitors suddenly have similiar features releasing/released suddenly at the same time.

i myself am thinking about getting Kick Ninja as it is on sale now (i dunno for how long) but as an owner of Kick 2 I might think to go to upgrade to Kick 3. I didnt demo both yet.

has anyone experiences with all 3 so far?

especially the import features?

[El°HYM]

There is also this.

https://www.gumcuisine.com/details/kick

[Dr.Gunjah]

There is also this.

https://www.gumcuisine.com/details/kick

This looks like any kick synth from the last 10+ years. Nowhere near to what the other 3 offer imo.

[RPH]

If you really want to go nuts: https://fx23.net/psylab-pro/
Combine with: https://fx23.net/psyphaz-pro/

[PieBerger]

I own Kick2 and Audija KickDrum and I was on the beta team for Kick Ninja and for my needs and tastes, Kick3 is likely to be my go to. They are all great plugins and if you can't make a nice kick with either of them, it's a user issue, not a lack of quality or usability of the plugins themselves.

I prefer a log scale for the UI, because it makes way more sense to apportion more visible screen real-estate for the first 10ms of a kick, then the middle/tail and this is the main reason Kick3 is likely to be my go to in the long term. A linear scale de fact involves more zooming in and out and I just don't enjoy that workflow in a plugin, least of all when designing kicks, which is quite tedious/fatiguing overall for me, YMMV. I think the phase locking feature in KickDrum is awesome and better than the competition and I would be happy to see it implemented in KN and or K3, but 360deg phase rotation is a more than serviceable second best.

I prefer the dark theme of both K3 and KN vs KD's rather garish (by comparison) UI, but I don't hate the latter either. It's functional and in the end, that takes precedent for me over colourscheme, although I wouldn't bemoan a "noir" option in the future. KD kinda gets around the tedium of the zoomfest with it's bar system for editing nodes, but ultimately I'd prefer the option of log scale toggle, like SA are giving us in K3. I haven't fired on KD in a little while and maybe a later beta release has addressed the "jankyness" of editing any node/s near the leftmost boundary of the curve editing window, if not, I hope this will get fixed before a final release is pushed out.

KD doesn't have the "AI' import/conversion feature and I can't remember if the developer has made any noise about implementing anything like it or not. I prefer the implementation and workflow in K3 over KN; for the samples I tried, it generates curves with fewer nodes while getting pretty close to the source and while both plugins offer a thinning out feature, I like that K3 is less reliant on it by way of getting closer with fewer starting nodes. It makes tweaking faster and less tedious.

The other big draw for K3 for me, is that it can load (by way of conversion upon first opening) K2 presets, so my previous efforts and more importantly, the third party presets I generally for my tracks, are available in K3, with full access to the extended feature set, i.e. full 360deg phase rotation and the suite of FX etc.

Obviously I didn't pay for my copy of KN so there are no regrets, but equally I don't regret purchasing KD either. Jan at Audija has been quite receptive to my own feedback and that of others and in the face of very strong competition from both KN and K3 now, it's possible he may rethink some previously rejected ideas e.g. a log scale for the UI, so I remain optimistic that this and other requested features, could find their way on the roadmap at some point. I have "wasted" 20e on worse things in my life

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

[chagzuki]

I had a quick go with KN and K3. The resynthesis methods appear to be totally different, so I can see a case for having both. K3 seems to be trying to separate tone from inharmonic, whereas KN has a simple but effective high vs low frequency separation. I like the KN tone-shaping controls, and it appears that after resynthesis I can manually add some harmonics to the body/tail where the AI import has lost some higher frequencies by interpreting them as simple sine waves. Both plugins are impressive.

[waldemarjohann]

I own Kick2 and Audija KickDrum and I was on the beta team for Kick Ninja and for my needs and tastes, Kick3 is likely to be my go to. They are all great plugins and if you can't make a nice kick with either of them, it's a user issue, not a lack of quality or usability of the plugins themselves.

I prefer a log scale for the UI, because it makes way more sense to apportion more visible screen real-estate for the first 10ms of a kick, then the middle/tail and this is the main reason Kick3 is likely to be my go to in the long term. A linear scale de fact involves more zooming in and out and I just don't enjoy that workflow in a plugin, least of all when designing kicks, which is quite tedious/fatiguing overall for me, YMMV. I think the phase locking feature in KickDrum is awesome and better than the competition and I would be happy to see it implemented in KN and or K3, but 360deg phase rotation is a more than serviceable second best.

I prefer the dark theme of both K3 and KN vs KD's rather garish (by comparison) UI, but I don't hate the latter either. It's functional and in the end, that takes precedent for me over colourscheme, although I wouldn't bemoan a "noir" option in the future. KD kinda gets around the tedium of the zoomfest with it's bar system for editing nodes, but ultimately I'd prefer the option of log scale toggle, like SA are giving us in K3. I haven't fired on KD in a little while and maybe a later beta release has addressed the "jankyness" of editing any node/s near the leftmost boundary of the curve editing window, if not, I hope this will get fixed before a final release is pushed out.

KD doesn't have the "AI' import/conversion feature and I can't remember if the developer has made any noise about implementing anything like it or not. I prefer the implementation and workflow in K3 over KN; for the samples I tried, it generates curves with fewer nodes while getting pretty close to the source and while both plugins offer a thinning out feature, I like that K3 is less reliant on it by way of getting closer with fewer starting nodes. It makes tweaking faster and less tedious.

The other big draw for K3 for me, is that it can load (by way of conversion upon first opening) K2 presets, so my previous efforts and more importantly, the third party presets I generally for my tracks, are available in K3, with full access to the extended feature set, i.e. full 360deg phase rotation and the suite of FX etc.

Obviously I didn't pay for my copy of KN so there are no regrets, but equally I don't regret purchasing KD either. Jan at Audija has been quite receptive to my own feedback and that of others and in the face of very strong competition from both KN and K3 now, it's possible he may rethink some previously rejected ideas e.g. a log scale for the UI, so I remain optimistic that this and other requested features, could find their way on the roadmap at some point. I have "wasted" 20e on worse things in my life

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

Hello PieBerger ,
Thank you very much for your detailed information.

Have you ever built a kick with all 3 plugins, same settings?
Is the sound of the kick identical afterwards?

Many thanks for your help and reply!

[Dr.Gunjah]

Audijas Kickdrum stepped up its game: viewtopic.php?p=8978505#p8978505

Now it also has a sample analyzer and optional log scale. The former may be a game changer because the terrible presets were one weak spot of KD.

[Caine123]

hmmm really interesting! did anyone maybe compare the current state together?