So the default signal flow for all Sample Cells is: Again, if you right-click on the Master channel, you will see that the Master channel is being routed to stereo output 1/2 into the host DAW. Individual Sample Cells > Master Channel > Master effects > Direct Output 1/2 > Host DAW channel stripĮach Sample Cell is by default routed to the Master outputs, which you can see by right-clicking on a Cell and selecting Output at the bottom.
You may think the Master effects section is plenty, but each Sample Cell has its own dedicated effects chain that will process the sample before it gets sent to the Master channel and further processed by the Master effects section. If you select the Effects tab, you can see the dedicated effects section for the selected Sample Cell.įor example, you can turn on the compressor of Sample Cell one, and independently turn on the limiter of Sample Cell two. These effects are applied before the signal hits the Master channel. Combined with you favourite DAW this package is almost unbeatable, though quite whether you will get around to using every element is another question entirely.You can now see that you can have a Sample Cell routed through its independent effects before being fed into the Master channel and its effects:Įach Sample Cell has its own dedicated Effects section accessible by clicking the Effects tab. Whatever genre of music you work with you’d be hard pushed to find something here that doesn’t enhance your writing or production. The hard-disk installation format is far less painful than feeding DVDs into your computer for hours on end, and allows this collection to be uncompromising in its kompleteness. Komplete 9 Ultimate is double the price (but would weigh in at an eye-watering £7,600 in unbundled form) and is outstanding in terms of depth and scope. Remember also that existing users of Maschine, Kontakt and Reaktor get a favourable crossgrade discount on both versions of Komplete. In fact, bought individually the components would value over £3,000. Who needs ‘real’ musicians anyway?! Everything you’ll ever need?Īt €499 (about £425), Komplete 9 isn’t a pocket-money impulse buy, but when you take a close look at what is actually included in terms of both instruments and effects as well as raw content it increasingly appears as extremely good value. For percussion purists Ultimate includes all five of the Abbey Road Drummer packs and all the Scarbee Bass libraries. Komplete 9 Ultimate adds six other new libraries taking in horns, film scoring, bass and drums. Both of these are straightforward to use and capable of great results. Two new premium libraries are included in Komplete 9 – Session Strings (a string ensemble with an ‘Animator’ section for automatically creating riffs and phrases in multiple styles) and The Giant (a detailed recreation of a Klavins Piano Model 370i – the world’s largest upright piano – that also includes unusual plucked, kicked and scratched techniques).
Kontakt is now the go-to sampler for any serious third-party sampled instrument provider, and many of these libraries have been developed with outside assisstance, but don’t forget that even the basic factory content is over 40GB in size. Almost without exception these are sonically excellent and make use of Kontakt’s customisable interface and advanced low-level scripting.
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Komplete 9 Ultimate users also get the Premium Tube Series (two EQs and a compressor developed with Softube), Reverb Classics (emulations of a selection of Lexicon reverb favourites) and the Vintage Compressors bundle alongside existing Komplete effects – so nearly everything you’ll need in a mix session is covered, especially when you also get Guitar Rig 5 Pro and the FX-only versions of many of the included synths (even in the standard Komplete bundle).īy far the biggest hard-drive muncher in Komplete is the Kontakt sample content, supplied as individual multi-gigabyte libraries. Previously these plugins were only within a Guitar Rig shell, so the fact they now appear as standalone AU, VST, RTAS and AAX plugins is very welcome. NI are certainly not the first to do this, and I’m not going to claim that they sound exactly the same as the originals or even other emulations, but they do certainly capture their spirit, and make light work of core mixing tasks. The Solid Mix Series is the big news here, consisting of three plugins – Solid Bus Comp, Solid Dynamics and Solid EQ – that aim to capture the sound and spirit of their famous Solid State Logic (SSL) hardware counterparts. Now we turn our attention to dedicated effects plugins, a relatively new venture for NI.