Native Instruments Komplete & Upgrades 50% off

[wst3]

keep it coming Guy - I am still considering either the basic or maybe the ultimate versions of Komplete 12. There are things there I might use. and the value would be good - but so much of it is cruft I will probably not even download.

And that's not meant as a slam - it is cruft because I have more than enough processors and effects, for example, and probably enough synths (although I'm sure to at least take them for a spin.) Or pianos, strings, etc.

Here I go talking myself out of it again<G>!

[Guy Rowland]

I think the meat of it for me is the sample libraries in Ultimate. Just like you Bill I have a gazillion effects and synths - at least these don't take up any room! India, Middle East and Thrill all carve out very clearly defined very usable space, as actually does Session Strings Pro (I don't have anything else with those distinctive articulations). The acoustics are so well executed that might just find serious use for them too.

It's sometimes a bit easy to be a little dismissive of NI. Many think of those libraries above as "bloat". I'm not sure the Symphony series has helped their reputation, as they're all bettered by many others. But I'm finding their other sample libraries have been extremely impressive in the past few years imo - many of those above really are best in class in their respective corners.

[Lawrence]

Coming from Komplete 8 Standard, I don’t have the better pianos, Action Strings, Action Strikes, Thrill, Session Strings 2, Session Horns, etc. I’ll need Kontakt 6 soon enough. I’m interested in Reaktor 6 and blocks. I’m sure I’ll find some useful things among all the other stuff. At $250, it feels like time.

[Guy Rowland]

Just a quick bit of feedback on the Expansions, as I installed a few today just out of curiosity. The good news is that, contrary to what I thought, the Battery content does show up in the main Library section automatically, great swathes of new kits. The bad news is that there's no easy way to filter it - the only way to do it that I've found is to type the name of the expansion in the search box (or type Factory to find only the core ones). This is pretty clumsy - tags should appear for all the expansion names and the factory library. You do get drop down filters of the expansions in Monark etc via Komplete Kontrol.