I guess I always had it in the back of my mind that once the Komplete Ultimate 11 upgrade hit the sales, I'd update it as I have every version of Komplete since 8. More of a reflex thing really. But having already seen what was in it, I had never been that excited about upgrading. Took the opportunity to upgrade today. Wish I'd saved my money to be honest. 
 
I think it's been slowly dawning on me that Native Instruments has shot its bolt and is unlikely to do anything really exciting again. 
 
I really wanted to upgrade to Reaktor 6 since I love Reaktor and use it all the time, and admittedly Blocks looks like a lot of fun so I'm happy about that. Apart from the new preset functionality - it's such a PITA to navigate around those presets as opposed to using the menu to fire up snapshots. There doesn't seem to be any way to just skip to the next one, and each time you load a preset the browser skips back up to the top so you have to remember where you were and scroll down. That just seems like a giant step backward to me, although I'm sure someone will tell me I'm doing it wrong. But what else is there Reaktor wise in Ultimate 11? 
 
Well, there's Forms. Sure there's a few interesting sounds in there, but going through the presets to get an idea what it does, I couldn't help thinking that I'm just listening to the same old boilerplate, plastic sounding Native Instruments crud. I felt like I could be navigating through the presets in Kontour, Spark or Skannar XT, they sounded that similar. It's all very unmusical and unusable. I know, I'll probably come up with something interesting if I start from scratch, but dammit I do kind of rely on being given some usable sounds that I can start with. I really think that sound design wise, Native Instruments needs some fresh blood. It's like the same guy doing all the presets or something, lol. 
 
Flesh - again, an interesting idea, but something which seems like a gimmick more than anything else. Don't get me wrong I love playing around with this sort of stuff when I'm bored, but these days I'm really wise to the fact that a lot of it is exactly that - something to play around with, not something which really ends up as "your" sound, in your song. 
 
Seemingly nothing new in the Reaktor Factory library that I didn't have in Reaktor 5. You'd think they'd push the boat out a bit there. 
 
The Symphony Essentials stuff - seems like they've just stuck that in to pad Komplete out with a bunch of gigabytes of content, but of course it's severely pared down from the complete Symphony package and not something you'd really be able to score anything serious with. And I dunno, it doesn't sound very convincing to me. 
 
Session Guitar Strummed Acoustic: Pretty unexciting stuff. OK if you want to flesh out a mix with a bit of quick and easy percussive guitar I guess, but again it really doesn't sound convincing and the tone isn't that exciting either. I honestly think I can record a better sounding guitar track myself, even with my less than perfect recording conditions. 
 
Ho hum, I guess in the end I'll probably squeeze my $200's worth of use out of it, I always do. But dammit Native Instruments you have become very so-so over the last couple of years. 

Hi James
Thanks for this - I hesitated before upgrading this time - I thought this upgrade might be a little underwhelming - sounds from your comments above it is!!
So shall skip this one I think
Cheers
Nigel
 
 
 

From 9U to 11U, 4 pianos, 10 solo horns, a strummed guitar, Indian and Cuban instruments, 2 vintage drumkits, most of a passable lite orchestra, version 6 of the most famous synth maker type thingy in the world and other stuff. Seems OK to me...

bigcatt
From 9U to 11U, 4 pianos, 10 solo horns, a strummed guitar, Indian and Cuban instruments, 2 vintage drumkits, most of a passable lite orchestra, version 6 of the most famous synth maker type thingy in the world and other stuff. Seems OK to me...

Ah but you're coming from 9U. It's actually a good upgrade in that case because there was some pretty cool stuff introduced in 10U. But from 10U to 11U it's very underwhelming. 

Thanks for your feedback, especially since your posts indicate that you are way more into synth tweaking than I am.
 
I reckon with mature software packages the excitement factor will simply grow smaller over the years. Given that I maximize my returns by only upgrading every other year (K8u => K10u => K12u??) but just realized that this year NI also allow to upgrade for the same price even if you are 3 years out. This maximizes returns for investment and always caters for something exciting that I really want to have (like last time it was the Rickenbacker and the RC24, RC48) plus a few nice freebies considering package upgrade price vs. buying individual tools.
 
Interestingly, between K10u and K11u there is nothing that I would want to spend money on. For K12u there is currently only that THRILL thing which may suit me but is way overpriced to be bought by itself ...

I only have the "normal" Komplete and upgraded from 10 to 11, mostly because of Form. I LOVE that thing! Put your own samples into it and you are in for some sleepless nights But I mostly agree with what you are saying here. There's so much I haven't installed from my version of Komplete and I have no idea what I would use everything else that comes in Ultimate for.
 
But Form - and that Kinetic thing - to me it was totally worth it. And I got some cool stuff for Reaktor as well.

I was on Komplete 10 and after much deliberation I decided to upgrade to Komplete (not ultimate) 11. While there a lot more in ultimate nothing was compelling for me and in addition to the cost of the software I would have needed a new hard drive.
  
Of the new stuff;
  
I am not sure about Form, it will certainly require the time to dig beyond the presets if I am to find much use for it.
 
I was pleasantly surprised by Reaktor blocks, it certainly looks like something very useful and may be the for me to learn Reaktor properly. I had tried the free version a while ago but was not that impressed and uninstalled Reaktor 6 player as it hijacked Komplete Kontrol which would no longer associate ensembles with 5.
 
 
As I tend to browse presets from Komplete Kontrol I a less affected by any changes to preset management in Reaktor. I do wish however that NI's choice of attributes was a bit different.
  
The Jury is out on Una Corda, maybe it probably just needs the right project to come along. Kinetic Metal looks interesting, I have not dug into it yet but I can see uses for it. Strummed Acoustic was pretty much what I was expecting, It will get some use but it has its limitations for someone like me who uses odd time signatures a lot.  The India percussion has some nice sounds, but I suspect, like the West Africa one that was introduced in 10 it won't get much use.
  
I had Replika already, I think that gave it away at some stage.
 
 

sharke
I guess I always had it in the back of my mind that once the Komplete Ultimate 11 upgrade hit the sales, I'd update it as I have every version of Komplete since 8. More of a reflex thing really. But having already seen what was in it, I had never been that excited about upgrading. Took the opportunity to upgrade today. Wish I'd saved my money to be honest. 
 
I think it's been slowly dawning on me that Native Instruments has shot its bolt and is unlikely to do anything really exciting again. 
 
I really wanted to upgrade to Reaktor 6 since I love Reaktor and use it all the time, and admittedly Blocks looks like a lot of fun so I'm happy about that. Apart from the new preset functionality - it's such a PITA to navigate around those presets as opposed to using the menu to fire up snapshots. There doesn't seem to be any way to just skip to the next one, and each time you load a preset the browser skips back up to the top so you have to remember where you were and scroll down. That just seems like a giant step backward to me, although I'm sure someone will tell me I'm doing it wrong. But what else is there Reaktor wise in Ultimate 11? 
 
Well, there's Forms. Sure there's a few interesting sounds in there, but going through the presets to get an idea what it does, I couldn't help thinking that I'm just listening to the same old boilerplate, plastic sounding Native Instruments crud. I felt like I could be navigating through the presets in Kontour, Spark or Skannar XT, they sounded that similar. It's all very unmusical and unusable. I know, I'll probably come up with something interesting if I start from scratch, but dammit I do kind of rely on being given some usable sounds that I can start with. I really think that sound design wise, Native Instruments needs some fresh blood. It's like the same guy doing all the presets or something, lol. 
 
Flesh - again, an interesting idea, but something which seems like a gimmick more than anything else. Don't get me wrong I love playing around with this sort of stuff when I'm bored, but these days I'm really wise to the fact that a lot of it is exactly that - something to play around with, not something which really ends up as "your" sound, in your song. 
 
Seemingly nothing new in the Reaktor Factory library that I didn't have in Reaktor 5. You'd think they'd push the boat out a bit there. 
 
The Symphony Essentials stuff - seems like they've just stuck that in to pad Komplete out with a bunch of gigabytes of content, but of course it's severely pared down from the complete Symphony package and not something you'd really be able to score anything serious with. And I dunno, it doesn't sound very convincing to me. 
 
Session Guitar Strummed Acoustic: Pretty unexciting stuff. OK if you want to flesh out a mix with a bit of quick and easy percussive guitar I guess, but again it really doesn't sound convincing and the tone isn't that exciting either. I honestly think I can record a better sounding guitar track myself, even with my less than perfect recording conditions. 
 
Ho hum, I guess in the end I'll probably squeeze my $200's worth of use out of it, I always do. But dammit Native Instruments you have become very so-so over the last couple of years. 

Sadly I've done what you have but don't have it in my hands yet. (Bought and paid for not received yet). I'm looking to get the 88 note keyboard at the end of the month when stock is available again in Australia. I wanted the whole intergrated experience.

No complaints from me.
I upgraded from 10U to 11U and for $200 I think it's great.   I am still going through it all but the Strumming Acoustic Guitar and Flesh have certainly wasted a lot of my time (and I mean that in the best way!).   I've dabbled with the Orchestral Brass Ensemble and found it quite nice.  And India and Una Corda both will have some good uses for future tunes.  And there's LOTS more that I have not yet examined.
For me, this upgrade from Native Instruments is on par with the best weekly deals that VST Buzz and AudioPlugInDeals have ever offered.

So far upgrading from K10U to K11U has been nothing but pain and anguish for moi.
 
I decided to both upgrade and re-organize all my NI Komplete and third party Kontakt libraries on to a single fast drive.  So...I also got a new Terrabyte usb 3.0 drive...installed K11U on it and moved all my third party stuff there as well.  About 800 gigs total.  Then I opened up Kontakt in standalone mode, deleted all the old paths to the various drives the NI and third party libraries were on and pointed K5 to the new drive/folders and rescanned.  K5 found all the new stuff and everything seemed peachy.  Only problem was Sonar wouldn't scan K5 and when I went back and tried to open it again in standalone mode.  No love.  K5 will not open and cannot be scanned by Sonar.  Despite many uninstalls/reinstalls and restarts/reboots.  And K11U is not showing up (like K10U, K10, K9, etc...) in my programs/features so I cannot uninstall the whole thing and start again.  PLUS...because of the new Native Access thingy I cannot simply download a separate K5 and manually install it.  So...I'm dead in the water as of now.  I've started a support ticket with NI but I might as well have written a letter to Santa Claus.  My experience with their email support is pretty dismal.  If anyone here as any suggestions or has been down this rutted road before, I'd sure appreciate any help I could get.