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kondwanikaphaizi « Clear, Good Quality Sound »
Published on 07/15/14 at 00:38Nexus is a rompler which has a lot of clean sounds, most usable within dance and electronic music. It has a variety of patches ranging from pads, pianos, basses, horns and orchestral sounds, arpeggios and various other sounds. The basic edition with no expansion packs included costs $299. The complete package costs a hefty $3,539. The quality of the sound backs is brilliant. All the sounds are clean; if you run it through a spectrum analyzer you'll see that each sound is shaped really well which makes fitting the sound into a mix quite easy.
I first got it when I saw a demo song on YouTube and was impressed with the clarity and fatness of the sounds. My main aim was to use it in my dance music productions but I've ended up using it more in my hip hop beats. There are expansion packs for adding on extra sounds, which cost an extra $40 - $65 per pack.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
It runs on both Mac and PC and can be installed as a VST, AU, AAX or RTAS plugin. Installation of the plugin is straight-forward. Once installed it takes up roughly 5GB on your hard drive and it requires a minimum of 2GB RAM to run smoothly. I have 4GB RAM on my current machine so that's not an issue. However, my previous laptop which had 2GB RAM used to take quite a number of seconds for the plugin to load and running several instances of it would slow down my PC, so you need to have a decent amount of RAM to run this smoothly. The full installation with all the expansion packs requires roughly 50GB. The package also comes with a USB eLicense dongle, so you need an extra USB port on your machine.
It should be able to run in most DAWs. I use it mainly in FL Studio and occasionally in other hosts but in 3 years of using Nexus I haven't experienced any crashes caused by it in FL Studio (my main DAW) which is a testimony of the plugin's stability. One of the things I like about the plugin are the onboard effects. The delay, reverb, etc is very good. There is usually no need to add any extra effects to the sounds which saves CPU and editing time (for adding and tweaking effects).
OVERALL OPINION
I think its strongest point is the quality of the sounds. There is very little to no editing required for you to make the presets sound good which saves a lot of time, especially in the mixing phase. A discouraging factor is the price of the full package. $3,539 is a big price to pay for a semi-professional/home user like me. For professionals who make a lot of income this may not be an issue. If the price is too high you may consider getting other romplers for less like Wusik station, Alchemy, Sampletank and Yellow Tools Independence; most of which have free versions. Another great alternative is Native Instruments Kontakt. Kontakt Player Free which is also a free alternative which comes with some pretty neat sounds and with enough scouring through the net you can find a tonne of free libraries.
It's best to listen to demo sounds to get a taste of whether it will suit your needs because once you buy it you can't create custom sounds. So if you're a sound designer you should not even consider getting Nexus. But if you are a dance music producer and want to get clean sounds that will allow you to make music instantly without tweaking too many knobs and a lot of clean-up work then Nexus may be the plugin for you. Given a chance to buy it again I would but after quite a bit of consideration, because the price is quite high. However, the quality of the sounds justifies to a great extent the reason for the price.
Pros:
- Brilliant sound quality. The presets are clean and shaped very well
- Wide variety of sounds and expandable via the expansion packs
- Good on-board effects
Cons:
- The presets are not customizable
- The price of the full edition is steep. You can get similar, more customizable plugins for much less
- You can't load your own samples or create your own patches easily
I first got it when I saw a demo song on YouTube and was impressed with the clarity and fatness of the sounds. My main aim was to use it in my dance music productions but I've ended up using it more in my hip hop beats. There are expansion packs for adding on extra sounds, which cost an extra $40 - $65 per pack.
SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE
It runs on both Mac and PC and can be installed as a VST, AU, AAX or RTAS plugin. Installation of the plugin is straight-forward. Once installed it takes up roughly 5GB on your hard drive and it requires a minimum of 2GB RAM to run smoothly. I have 4GB RAM on my current machine so that's not an issue. However, my previous laptop which had 2GB RAM used to take quite a number of seconds for the plugin to load and running several instances of it would slow down my PC, so you need to have a decent amount of RAM to run this smoothly. The full installation with all the expansion packs requires roughly 50GB. The package also comes with a USB eLicense dongle, so you need an extra USB port on your machine.
It should be able to run in most DAWs. I use it mainly in FL Studio and occasionally in other hosts but in 3 years of using Nexus I haven't experienced any crashes caused by it in FL Studio (my main DAW) which is a testimony of the plugin's stability. One of the things I like about the plugin are the onboard effects. The delay, reverb, etc is very good. There is usually no need to add any extra effects to the sounds which saves CPU and editing time (for adding and tweaking effects).
OVERALL OPINION
I think its strongest point is the quality of the sounds. There is very little to no editing required for you to make the presets sound good which saves a lot of time, especially in the mixing phase. A discouraging factor is the price of the full package. $3,539 is a big price to pay for a semi-professional/home user like me. For professionals who make a lot of income this may not be an issue. If the price is too high you may consider getting other romplers for less like Wusik station, Alchemy, Sampletank and Yellow Tools Independence; most of which have free versions. Another great alternative is Native Instruments Kontakt. Kontakt Player Free which is also a free alternative which comes with some pretty neat sounds and with enough scouring through the net you can find a tonne of free libraries.
It's best to listen to demo sounds to get a taste of whether it will suit your needs because once you buy it you can't create custom sounds. So if you're a sound designer you should not even consider getting Nexus. But if you are a dance music producer and want to get clean sounds that will allow you to make music instantly without tweaking too many knobs and a lot of clean-up work then Nexus may be the plugin for you. Given a chance to buy it again I would but after quite a bit of consideration, because the price is quite high. However, the quality of the sounds justifies to a great extent the reason for the price.
Pros:
- Brilliant sound quality. The presets are clean and shaped very well
- Wide variety of sounds and expandable via the expansion packs
- Good on-board effects
Cons:
- The presets are not customizable
- The price of the full edition is steep. You can get similar, more customizable plugins for much less
- You can't load your own samples or create your own patches easily