The Sound Board

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/s ... ound-2023/

Most things half price, inc upgrades.

A couple of things to note here - I have 13 CE and logged into the My Offers page, for whatever reason only the standard version showed an upgrade price by default. You have to click on the small See Update Price to reveal it for Ultimate (£179) or CE (£224).

They are offering the update price to Standard which I don't think they've done before, but it's the same price as Ultimate, so moot. I don't think you've been able to "downgrade" before.

I've had 9 months to think about it and still can't decide. Nothing significant seems to have migrated to Kontakt 7 yet. I'd quite like Lores, Ashlight and Picked Nylon. Lores is the most appealing, but even that isn't essential.

This has finally moved me from 12 Ultimate after 4 years. Good value for additions at $199.

Kontakt 7 just leaves me cold.
I dislike the new front so much.

I am leaning towards skipping this round. I seem to recall it was some time after K6 release when non-player libraries were released K6-only, but it did happen eventually. I'm guessing it'll be the same here.

It'll be 2 years until the next discounted Komplete upgrades... will that be leaving it too long? Ach, I'll live.

Malachistos wrote: ↑May 26, 2023 2:38 am Kontakt 7 just leaves me cold.
I dislike the new front so much.

You can switch it to the old (good) version. Sorry I'm not in front of my work computer at the moment so I can't give instructions on how to do it, but I have done it with mine.

I'm on Komplete 9 regular and will finally make the jump to Ultimate.

FYI: check prices at Thomann and BestService

I caved in and upgraded from 13UCE, sequis, lores, the guitars, omnia and piano colors tilted the scales for me this time.

I made the leap from 12 to 14 standard this past holiday season, prior to that I think I was on 7. The only things I'd like from Ultimate that I don't already have I purchased a la carte. And that wasn't much.

It's the same with PSP, UAD, and Plugin-Alliance - I have everything I want (and a few I could have probably skipped, but timing is everything!) from all three developers. And I have the complete collection from Soundtoys.

And it's the same on the sample library side, can't think of anything I need, and in fact I am thinning out both plugins and libraries - continuously it seems.

Other than some oddballs and one-offs there is very little out there that encourages me to open my wallet - which is a good thing I think. Either I've finally outgrown G.A.S. (unlikely) or I've bought too many toys. The most recent purchases were the Pulsar 8200 and the Plugin-Alliance Mastering Compressor, (which I posted about earlier) both of which have made several other plugins obsolete. Before that I think the Pulsar Echorec was the last, and yeah, I was extremely excited about that one! (Soundtoys Echoboy does a pretty good job of emulating the Echorec, but this thing is even better)

Part of me misses that excitement that comes with discovering something new and shiny, but my bank account is okay with it.

I found myself weakening yesterday when I realised I had a bunch of credit with Audiodeluxe and with the exchange rate can pick up the CE update to a mere £160. Then followed a couple of hours of obsessive research on Kontakt 7 (including re-reading my own posts from trialling the Player version which I'd entirely forgotten).

In theory, Kontakt 7 has something I would really like, the new browser where - finally - you can integrate the player and non-player libraries alike. and it has a tag browser. As ever, especially with NI, the devil is in the details. By default, it doesn't import any artwork from the image in the library header or tag anything, or make use of directory structure resulting in a bewildering mess. Also you cannot add user tags. All of which makes it sound pretty hopeless in practice.

But wait - many of these things ARE in fact possible. Here's Soundiron to explain:



I think they've explained it well, and the end result looks great. But holy moly, I was exhausted by the end. What on earth is it with NI that in over a decade they still can't make a decent functioning browser? Komplete Kontrol is still a Komplete Mess, Massive X is still nowhere near as good as Massive and now Kontakt 7 is continuing in the family way. I realised to actually make it useful would take possibly weeks of my time, and I think that would also be useful only on my current rig - if I ever updated machines I'd need to do it all over again. And even then - on one post I read, looking for CHOIR on their setup returns only one result, and that doesn't include the new Omnia CHOIR, which apparently uses non-deprecated tags and you'd need to look separately for WOMEN'S CHOIR or MEN'S CHOIR for it to show up.

This is all utterly ridiculous.

Which has left me now so exhausted at the thought of going through all this pain for not all that much gain - Quick Load is okay after all - that I just can't be bothered. I did update 7 Player to the latest version, to discover even 50% of my Player libraries lack an image, any tags at all and don't import the basic directory structure. For example, Audiobro LADD just has an impenetrable list of 1,611 presets, most of whose names are truncated (and all lack the basic tag of DRUMS.

How, exactly, is this progress?

based on history, at least as I remember it, NI seems to follow the Apple philosophy of "ship it!"

They routinely release half finished features (or software for that matter), and then fix them based on user feedback. I think it is possible that they had no idea what people wanted in a browser. I don't use the browser, I might if it functioned as a browser, so perhaps I am not part of the public providing feedback? Maybe I should?

OMG so much stuff. SO MUCH STUFF. I'll never even install it all.

Happy to have the full Spotlight Collection now, though, and looking forward to checking out cool things like Thrill and Noire and all the strings and guitars.

Malachistos, I think the way to change the GUI is the three vertical lines right next to the work KONTAKT in the upper left side.

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑May 28, 2023 4:25 am I found myself weakening yesterday when I realised I had a bunch of credit with Audiodeluxe and with the exchange rate can pick up the CE update to a mere £160. Then followed a couple of hours of obsessive research on Kontakt 7 (including re-reading my own posts from trialling the Player version which I'd entirely forgotten).

In theory, Kontakt 7 has something I would really like, the new browser where - finally - you can integrate the player and non-player libraries alike. and it has a tag browser. As ever, especially with NI, the devil is in the details. By default, it doesn't import any artwork from the image in the library header or tag anything, or make use of directory structure resulting in a bewildering mess. Also you cannot add user tags. All of which makes it sound pretty hopeless in practice.

But wait - many of these things ARE in fact possible. Here's Soundiron to explain:

[removed link]

I think they've explained it well, and the end result looks great. But holy moly, I was exhausted by the end. What on earth is it with NI that in over a decade they still can't make a decent functioning browser? Komplete Kontrol is still a Komplete Mess, Massive X is still nowhere near as good as Massive and now Kontakt 7 is continuing in the family way. I realised to actually make it useful would take possibly weeks of my time, and I think that would also be useful only on my current rig - if I ever updated machines I'd need to do it all over again. And even then - on one post I read, looking for CHOIR on their setup returns only one result, and that doesn't include the new Omnia CHOIR, which apparently uses non-deprecated tags and you'd need to look separately for WOMEN'S CHOIR or MEN'S CHOIR for it to show up.

This is all utterly ridiculous.

Which has left me now so exhausted at the thought of going through all this pain for not all that much gain - Quick Load is okay after all - that I just can't be bothered. I did update 7 Player to the latest version, to discover even 50% of my Player libraries lack an image, any tags at all and don't import the basic directory structure. For example, Audiobro LADD just has an impenetrable list of 1,611 presets, most of whose names are truncated (and all lack the basic tag of DRUMS.

How, exactly, is this progress?

I spent a lot of time putting together my QuickLoad and that's how I access the libraries that don't show up in the panel, and it's easy to copy the QuickLoad file from version to version.

If I need to search for an instrument, tbh I just use EasyFind, because then it searches everything on my Samples drive(s) and will bring up other libraries like EastWest, Omnisphere and even Logic/GarageBand instruments.

Laura - yes, Quick Load is a better solution for browsing than the new browser, as you say its dead easy to copy them between versions too.

For basic word-searches, I also used Kontakt's built-in search sometimes, and that worked pretty well for me. In K7, that's moved to the new browser. And I found if you ignore all the tags and just type in "choir" or what have you, it works quite well, and I actually like how it first shows you all the libraries that word appears in, and then you click on any to navigate the patches.

So my current thinking is that the tags are useless in K7, and you can at least hide them. But for basic searches, it does it with a little more refinement than previous versions.

Oop, just as I thought I had something that worked in K7...

I have Spitfire HZ01. The browser believes I it contains but one patch - 'Timpani Hits - Timpani Hart Sti..." That's it. So even using the built-in search it is going to miss stuff. What a mess.

To make a library that has missing patches show up - batch resave. If it still doesn't show up then the komplete.db3 database in the Kontakt 7 AppData folder, and it will rescan on launch.

I've made all the images work by using the Soundiron method in the video above (imo it does make a difference to visually see what you're looking for quickly). The one exception has been Sample Modelling's The Trombone 3.0 - the full stop (period for USA folks) in the folder name messes up the NI system it seems. I tried renaming and resaving the library without it, but it still reads 3.0 in Native Access and Kontakt.

I'm not touching the tags for all the aforementioned reasons - a waste of time.

Because the results don't have any folder structure and I therefore get many duplicate filenames (in different mix folders for example), it's still a lousy way to browse in general. But the text search now works tolerably well - you still get some duplicates, but it's more manageable at least in the context of a search string.

Sheesh....

So after all that, having found a use for Kontakt 7, looking at the exchange rate and the AudioDeluxe credit, like a chump I went for it.

Kontakt 7 is all as discussed. I really do like a very quick view of what libraries have, say, glockenspiel in them, reminding me instantly what I may have forgotten. A bit of a fight to get there, but not too arduous. Everything else about it is meh.

The big joy is Lores. It’s absolutely fabulous, possibly their best cinematic instrument yet. It feels like the kind of thing Spitfire have been trying to do for ages, an organic (not electronic) scoring tool that isn’t limited to phrases or cliches and has quite inspired elements and combinations. It’s exceptionally well conceived and executed and close being worth the upgrade price on its own.

Ashlight is the latest in the Light series, and that seems promising too. Much more disappointing was the Omnia Choir - lovely tone, but the scripting is quite poor and the phrases just don’t join together naturally at all. You can tweak volume on each syllable to at least to sort the most egregious horrors. East Asia is the latest in their world Spotlight series which I’ve found very good indeed, and this doesn’t let the side down. They’re a quiet success story of NI in the past few years that tends to get overlooked.

That’s as far as I’ve got on day one. Enough already to make me unremorseful at weakening.

So, did I get that right, 14 is still not native silicon?

P.S. Back in my Ireland days, you could just call Berlin NI support and solve issues on the phone, very friendly and knowledgeable Ladies & Gents back then, really. So, that no longer exists and you have to go through the ticket stuff online instead and have an endless back and force in front of you when it is an issue that does not hit all their boxes and requires listening to the customer instead of ticking boxes.

Wow.

Basically, I can upgrade to Standard 14 edition for 99 Euros, but I wonder how that will work on my Mac mini or whether I (likely) have a lot of bloatware included. Ah well, horses for courses.

Pretty much all of it is supported Gerog, here's a full list - https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... 0014683497 . Crucially, Kontakt 7 IS natively supported (so never mind all the browser problems, migration is inevitable eventually for anyone that wants to go M series). The only NI plugs not supported are not in Komplete 14 eg Absynth 5 and Tracktor DJ2.

There's a useful spreadsheet that Production Expert run on all the developers support for silicon - https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/apple- ... lity-guide

Been road-testing some of the other new libraries. The Picked Nylon is very good - again, NI don't get the credit they should for their recent guitar libraries. All are limited, but within their confines they can work very well, and are pretty easy to figure out. Which is more than can be said for Playbox - I have no clue what that's about or how I'd ever use it. I was a little disappointed by Piano Colors - I see what it's trying to do here, but the net effect just doesn't work for me. Noire covers similar territory better, and if you have Omni and Keyscape, that combo does is brilliantly with the Keyscape Creative library. Orchestral Tools' Sequis is not entirely dissimilar - ok on paper ("Quickly create looping melodies, dynamic pads and rhythmic patterns") but the end results left me uninspired and underwhelmed.

Sonuscore's Action Strings 2 however is potentially more useful than you might think, or at least I might - historically I never seem to use these sorts of libraries in practice. Where they are at their most useful imo is in fast-run motifs, which sound considerably better and more natural than most sample libraries, and sure enough there's a lot of very good fluid stuff here. But then you have to integrate that into everything else, and this is where we feel in new territory. This time they've added basic articulations - Staccato, marcato, sustain, trems and trills to play at will, and there's 4 mic positions and a mix. There's also a pattern editor with some ability to change notes, create variations, sculpt the attacks etc, and there's midi drag and drop. You also have basic control of high strings / low strings. So all-in-all you have quite a lot of flexibility to write your own lines. Don't know if I'll adapt, but I'm minded to try - this feels well conceived and executed. I doubt they'd ever do it, but if they recorded legatos and a few other articulations with the same players and space in a companion library, it would make an interesting new approach. I don't know if it's a tonal match with Sonuscore's Orchestra series.

There's a brace of new Massive X expansions, a synth that has a lot of admirers but stubbornly refuses to bond with me. Everything sounds digital and cold. If that's what you're after then terrific, but Pigments does digital without that over-bright clinically abrasive quality that I hear in almost every Massive X patch.

I haven't installed the new factory library, or tried any of the new Play series. There's also the brainworx stuff including Knifonium. But as it is I'm happier than I thought I'd be, even if several of the new products I won't ever use. Lores not only lived up to my expectations it actually exceeded them, Action Strings 2 is far better than I expected. Ashlight, the Nylon Guitar and East Asia collection are both very nice to have. For £160, that's more than fair imo.

Guy, do you find that Action Strings 2 sync to tempo perfectly? I used the earlier version once on one piece, and sync was a real struggle.

Lawrence wrote: ↑Jun 04, 2023 2:31 pm Guy, do you find that Action Strings 2 sync to tempo perfectly? I used the earlier version once on one piece, and sync was a real struggle.

I’ll get back to you on that…

Lawrence wrote: ↑Jun 04, 2023 2:31 pm Guy, do you find that Action Strings 2 sync to tempo perfectly? I used the earlier version once on one piece, and sync was a real struggle.

I just did a quick variable tempo test - seems to track solidly, and as a bonus even on tempo ramps the blurry phrases seem artefact-free. I had to drag the midi timing forward a little globally. but that's to be expected. (Metronome chores courtesy of LADD).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nf3jfg3ye56e0 ... t.mp3?dl=0

Is there any particular scenario in the first one that would make it trip up?

Thanks for doing that Guy. I found that I had to drag tempo and it still wasn’t consistent. Yours sounds better. I wonder if it’s the difference between AS 1 and 2 or just user error on my part.

Having a helluva time with Native Access. It keeps saying there's a problem with the downloading and I have to restart the program over and over.

Guy, you make a compelling case for upgrading, even if you already have 13CE (as I do).

As for Action Strings 2, Daniel James 'ad a look at it a couple of years ago:



It's a two-hour long video, so if you want to cut to the chase, Daniel's summary is at 1:54:29. I believe his video was recorded before the 2.1 update:



Best,

Geoff

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Jun 03, 2023 2:46 pm The big joy is Lores. It’s absolutely fabulous, possibly their best cinematic instrument yet. It feels like the kind of thing Spitfire have been trying to do for ages, an organic (not electronic) scoring tool that isn’t limited to phrases or cliches and has quite inspired elements and combinations. It’s exceptionally well conceived and executed and close being worth the upgrade price on its own.

I don’t know how I missed Lores when it was released; but after watching the videos below, I see why you feel the way you do, Guy. It’s like the British Drama Toolkits on steroids, but even that description doesn’t do it justice. Instant cinematic sound.





Best,

Geoff