Native Instruments Virtual Instruments

Native Instruments Massive is a great popular synth mostly used for electronic productions. It provides a very deep quality sounds with a lot of options to tweak the sound to get something unique. The general configuration is great,everything works fast and the interface provides a nice touch of the incoming voltage that builds the sounds. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE The software works great without using a lot of cpu resources and it provides some nice stability. The gear doesn't have any programming errors,so it works very stable. I'm getting very good low basses sounds from the synth, also some high-pitched leads do work great as well. OVERALL OPINION The thing that I like most about massive is the unique sounds that it provides that can be induced into a more trance song, a lot of producers use it for basses and leads in their dubstep songs. Other great thing about this synth is the great design and easy to follow, so that way you can really get into oscillators and complex modulation possibilities and also the filters do provide some great touch to the sound to build something great from scratch. Also it has 600 patches build-in that you can use them in your mix and there are available some nice expansions. So on a level of usuability massive really goes all the way. It really deserves it's price because of all the rich and unique sounds that you can create from scratch, so native instruments did a really great job regarding the balance between money and quality. I've tried many synths, but there are very few on the market that could complete with the Native Instruments Massive, all the knobs, effects, build-in sounds, the great design that allows an easy understanding of the sounds. Without a doubt a must-have synth in your library that could take your songs on a complete different level and can make a much better music producers and assure you a spot on the main musical stage.

Native Instruments Battery 3 is compatible with Windows Xp , 7 and Mac, I haven't encountered any problems regarding the help manual, everything is pretty well explained and the functions are easily accessible. The general configuration is great,everything works fast and the interface is straight forwarded. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE The application performs well without using a lot of cpu resources and it provides some great balance between the human touch and the pc programming of the drums. The sampling engine has been changed and it has now a lot of improvements, the sample library is bigger and better, the matrix cells now can contain up to 128 patterns. The gear is very stable, as usual Native Instruments make a very good job. I've been using for about 2 months, and I gotta admit I like a lot, and I've been using in my electronic type of tracks and some that carry a rocky feel. OVERALL OPINION What I like most about it are the new functions that consist of a humanise choice and a choice of drumming articulations. Battery 3 has also been given a visible renovation - the angular, medical look of previously variations is gone and now we have a Pro feel. With all of its new features I could claim that is one of the best drum programming soft now on the market, You should check it out, the humanize functions really make a difference, and My advice is to use a midi controller, because that way you have full control over velocity of your drums and layers. The precision of the drums is well fixed, I like the snares sounds, you can easily create some great layering with those 12 gb of drum samples, so using the Native Instruments Battery can really boost your creativity patterns. I would buy over and over again Native Instruments Battery 3 because of it's high quality samples and the help that provides to the musician.

Native Instrument's New York Concert Grand is their standard sampled piano, that comes with their Komplete instrument line. Individually, it is a great sampled piano, with contemporary sounds, that work wonderfully with pop and modern music. The samples are stereo, and it is recorded with multiple velocities: a must for any professional, quality piano sound. Also, the samples here aren't ridiculously big like they made be with Ivory or other professional digital libraries; a couple hundred megabytes of data is all that is necessary here. Native Instruments does a great job with their samplers, of realizing high quality, high-memory sound, but not overdoing the samples, keeping the synths relatively lightweight, and very versatile. They work great live, like on my MacBook Pro, which I use for live shows for my band. The piano sounds great there, and it doesn't tax my computer's resources at all. The New York Concert grand synth runs inside Kontakt 4 or Kontakt 5, and it includes a few great parameters that you can adjust. The tuning can be adjusted, from over 8 different specific tunings, including stretch, equal, pure, and harmonic. I personally don't have a preference for these, but some pianos are tuned slightly off from the true tunes, and this option lets you modify that. There is also a control for the resonance during sustain, noise controls for the keys and sustain pedal, and you can even move the lid position. You can also adjust how dynamic the output volume of the piano is, essentially acting as an internal compressor without actually compressing. This is great for my live shows, when I want to send the house a relatively constant volume of piano, but without the artifacts of using an actual compressor. Overall, this is a great, versatile piano sampler that any modern musician can use. Be sure to check it out!

Native Instruments FM 7 is very easy to use and to understand you wont need a manual nor will you have any issues running it with your system no matter what system you have. I have ran it on macs and pc’s and have seen it work on some really old systems before. I still have FM 7 and still use it, I havent really felt the need to upgrade it, I purchased it when it first came out and have been using it every since then. I only thought about upgrading one time and that was because they had some sale going on but I didn’t do it. I am very happy with FM 8 and probably wont upgrade untill they put out like FM 11 or so. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE Set up is easy and every thing is pretty much automatic, you wont have any issues installing or running it on your machine as long as you have a decent amount of ram you should be ok, if it installs correctly on your system then you wont have any issues with it freezing or messing up in the middle of your session. I have used it in about 3 different daws and it hasn’t caused a problem in any of them. OVERALL OPINION I am glad to say that I have been using FM 7 for all these years, and I have it to the point where I have all of my own sound banks now. I no longer even touch any of the presets I have all of my own presets that I have built over the years and I am very happy with them. I have even uploaded some of my presets online so other people can use them and all I get is thanks. FM 7 has worked great for me, and once you get the hang of it you will be creating your own presets too.

The Native Instruments Elektrik Piano can be purchased for a great price from native instruments site. Any one who has used Native Instruments stuff before knows how good the vst’s the make are going to be. I usually always keep my eye out on Native Instruments website for new vst’s that they will come out with. I am a frequent customer of theirs. If you are looking for a great stage electric piano sound to add to your music and patch collection then Native Instruments Elektrik Piano could be just what you are looking for. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE Very easy to use, and to install . There really isn’t too much with it, the best thing about it is the sounds. There are only maybe 7 knobs on the whole vst and interface so there really isn’t too much stuff going on that can confuse you or make you need to take out a manual. Though I havent even seen a manual for this because when I purchased it I just got a download link for the full vst not for a manual or any instructions so im thankful that its easy to use. OVERALL OPINION The sounds are great, very realistic and even some what vintage. You will love how well rounded each patch really sounds. They are so thick and full of good tones. You can edit the eq and tun pan and volume right on the interface of Elektrik piano as well. Thre is nothing confusing or tricky going on when using. Its just great and simple at the same time. I recommend it to everyone. All of the sounds are basically coming from 4 different boards, the Mk1 and MK 2 as well as the E7 and the A 200. All of those boards are known for the electric pianos and they are all brought into one device. The Native Instruments electric Piano.

Native Instruments came out with Razor a few years ago and immediately I wanted to know what it was about . Mainly because I know Native Instruments repuation for putting out great synths, vst’s and plug ins. So I knew that I had to see what Razor was about. Getting started with it was so simple, I didn’t need to touch the manual and setting it up in my pc was very easy quick and painless. In fact I still have it on the same pc to this day and still gets used a lot and never causes any problems. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE It has never crashed, or at least I cant remember it crashing or freezing. It hasn’t caused in problems, the software runs great on in windows XP. My XP machine is rather old and it still runs good. The software by Native Instruments is very stable as most of the plug ins that make are. OVERALL OPINION I am very happy with razor, Razor gives you a bunch of presets to mess around with and to mold them into your own sound or however you want it. Razor is actually one of the easier VST’s to operate and manipulate that native instruments has put out. Believe me Native Instruments has put out some vst’s that are a hassle to use and to work with, but this isn’t one of those at all. You will love Razor and you will use it often. If you have any problems with it just contact NI and they will take care of it really fast like they did for me after I had a license issue when transferring it to another machine. All I had to do was call them up and tell them that I cant find my codes and registration stuff and they where able to look it up and take care of me really fast. They have great customer service.

Native instruments Kore player was a virtual synth that I downloaded for free years ago and still use it today. To actually get the module itself is free you can download it. But to have more packs and sounds you will have to pay for those. I downloaded a strings pack for about 45 dollars which wasn’t bad at all. Kore player gives you a few options at the top to edit and manipulate the sounds a little bit but it really doesn’t give you full control of how the sound will come out. I wish it had some EQ options built into it so I didn’t have to do all of that from the mixer tracks. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE Software runs good though, never had a issue with it and never will. I have been using it for a few years now and not much has changed and I don’t think they have come out with a new version of it. For some reason I think it is discontinued or something because even on the website it isn’t available to download (at this current moment. ) So im thankful I already have it in my computer. OVERALL OPINION I like how easy it is to use, it doesn’t take any effort to get to what you want as far as sounds go. Changing some sounds doesn’t take any effort either because you don’t have many things you can do to change them. I wish they would put out an update changing how long it takes to load up some of the sounds. Not the sounds that come with it, but I have some string patches that take 5 to 10 seconds to load after you click on them. that’s way to long it should be instant! Hopefully they fixed in the newest verson from Native instruments sooner than later.

Native Instruments Absynth 3 didn’t surprise me at first glance but after really digging in and using it for a while I got the hang of how it works and how to really change the sounds to the way that I want them to sound. Without needing any knowledge of sound creation or sound design I was able to really get in there and change the parameters of the sounds and make them my own (because I hate having to use presets over and over ) The layout of Absynth 3 isn’t confusing if you have some basic understand of vst’s. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE Setting it up was really quick, I just inserted the disk and waited a few minutes I actuall think that it updated some online as well just to have the latest tech stuff. I also needed to create an account at NI website when I purchased this. OVERALL OPINION Overall, I was very happy to have a program that didn’t confuse me that I can used often and has some really good synths which is what I was looking for. As far as the synths go, I think they could be a little fuller sounding some of them are really thin and I had to fatten them up with some equine and some effects. But the program has worked for me perfectly and hasn’t froze or crashed at all and it doesn’t seem to look like it will. Also, I run multiple versions of it at the same time and it doesn’t take up to much cpu unless I use some of the presets that are very cpu heavy then you can start to tell. The price for Absynth 3 isn’t cheap at all , if you are looking for a cheap vst look around online and don’t just go buy this one. It will take a little time to understand and you don’t want to invest 300 or more dollars on something that will leave you confused at first.

Kontakt is a software sampler made by the German-founded company, Native Instruments. I started using Native Instrument products only recently and quickly discovered (and should warn you) that their awesomeness should be described as addictive. Kontakt 4 is one of a series of their products in their virtual instruments catalog that have me hooked. Kontakt 4 is priced at $399 or $149 (in the event that you are already an owner of a previous version, lucky bast**d). Instead of buying just Kontakt 4 alone, I would recommend investing a few more bucks and purchase the Komplete 7 bundle ($559), which comes with Kontack 4, includes many other sound libraries and other instruments, and is worth every penny. <a href="http://www.glintonline.com">http://www.glintonline.com</a> There are many aspects on which Kontakt 4 stands out. First off it comes with a beautiful and grandiose library under 7 different main categories (Band, Choir, Orchestral, Synth, Urban Beat, Vintage, World), which contains subcategories of almost every instrument under the sun. The sound quality of these samples is amazing and super realistic. Each instrument comes with a wide variety of sound tweaks so you can achieve all your sound goals. I have to point out that the Orchestral instrument is so far my favorite, with a stunning collection of orchestral instruments, which includes ensembles and solos. Its interface is clean, intuitive, and (most importantly) powerful. But, of course, quality always has a price, and the price you pay for Kontakt’s its CPU usage. Make sure to have a vast amount of RAM if you are going to run a few of these Native Instruments at the same time (and I bet you will). Oh the Germans relationship with sound technology seems to be a match made in heaven. Beautifully conceptualized, designed and created, Kontakt 4 is a solid sound-making machine. Kontakt is an amazing tool for producers, composers, songwriters and sound designers. A collection of beautifully crafted virtual instruments with an almost infinite path to wherever your creative mind wants to tread. This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

I have had no compatibility issues so far. I run this library in Kontakt Stand alone, as well as both Logic 9 and Ableton 8. It's a pretty simple setup, all you need to do is load the Library, then load the instrument you want. There are some features like the Sequencer for creating patterns that you will benefit in reading the manual, which is a pretty concise read. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE So far, I have had zero drop outs or glitches. I run all my samples at a buffer rate of 128. According to Kontakt, that puts me around 5 milliseconds of latency, which I can deal with. It has never caused any crashes and any no work whether in standalone or host has been lost. As for performance it gets a 9 out of 10. The samples all sound excellent, and the GUI is polished and user friendly. The playability of the instruments can be a little challenging however. With pattern access on the keyboard and a host of "utility" samples (i.e. clicks from striking instrument) as well as odd scale patterns, there is a little bit of a learning curve. I have been using this for about two months. OVERALL OPINION What I like most about this set is the quality of the samples brings instruments, some of which I have never even heard of, into my instrument choices that would be otherwise very hard to get. Native Instruments really does a good job on the pattern sequencer too. It's user friendly and setup to stay true to the feel of African Music by encouraging poly rhythms. I don't really have any complaints about it. I paid $119 for this which is a good deal for this many solidly sampled instruments. I have come across many hardware and software versions of similar instruments, but I put West Africa on the top of the list. I highly recommend this to people who want to expand there instrument possibilities and expand percussion writing.

This package contains only multi-sampled instruments. These instruments are designed to be used in Native Instruments Kontakt. If you are familiar with Kontakt, then these instruments will pose no problems. Simply load them into your set, set the midi control and you are good to go. The setup of each instrument is fairly simple, offering a few "built In" effects such as Reverb and delay that can be manipulated from the front of the plugin. Other than that, they are simply setup to mimic a Rhodes, Whurly and a Clavinet which are essentially simple instruments. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE The sound quality of these samples are superb. I stopped luggin my 88 key Rhodes Mark 1 out to gigs because it was just too heavy and was in search of a decent enough software replacement. Although nothing beats the real thing, these plugins come so close that I don't even think for a second of dragging the heavy beast out anymore. I run these samples in Kontakt of course with a Macbook Pro i7 and an RME Fireface 800. I can get the latency down to 3ms which is imperceptible to my ears and is absolutely necessary for any serious keyboard musician. Anyone who needs faithful reproductions of these beautiful instruments can look no further. OVERALL OPINION What I like most about these plugins is the quality of the sounds and the fact that I can get the latency so low that I don't hear it. What I don't like only applies to the Clavinet. Using the "Full" Preset is extremely CPU intensive and requires that I increase the buffer which causes more latency. I only use the "upper" preset and that seems to work fine at 126 samples. Other than that, I love everything about it. Although you need to buy Kontakt 5 which can cost up to $400 first, spending $169 for these plugins is a small fee for such solid samples. I have not heard a software version of these instruments that can best this library. I have used many different software versions of these plugins including Lounge Lizard, GSi, and built in patches in Logic and Ableton and Scarbee bests them all. Yes, I highly recommend this library to any Kontakt owner.

Alicia’s Keys by Native Instruments is a great sounding piano synth. The piano isn’t really like a grand piano to me, it sounds more like a piano that would be in a vst but with just better quality. Native Instruments is known for bringing top quality vst’s and sound packs to the table for all of us musicians. I ran Native Instruments Alicia’s Keys on my Windows Vista Quad Core pc. I had zero issues with it, it worked perfect. All I had to do was insert the disc make sure all of the files were saved into the vst folder where my program was and I was good to go. It worked like a charm, but keep in mind that it does use a lot of your CPU. So you may get some lagging or choppy type of sounds. Even if you are using Asio drivers you may still experience some sort of choppy and glitch like sounds. Overall I feel like this is a great piano vst. There arent too many vst’s on the market that concentrate on piano sounds instead of a bunch of synth and brass sounds. This one is all about the piano, and them using Alicia Keys face and name on it really doesn’t have much to do with it. That was more of a sales tactic, but I feel like this is a great software that any producer needs if they are using a lot of piano in their compositions. The sounds of the piano’s are very high quality and radio ready, you wont even need to do to much eq to the sampled sounds. The price that I paid for this brand new I think was 105 and it was a great buy, especially from Native Instruments, who will keep you up to date with any upgrades and they will give you special offers on other products that they have, you just cant go wrong with this.