Magic Russ

sharke
In addition to this, their presets are goddamn awful, let's face it. I have this beef with a lot of soft synth manufacturers but NI really seems to lead the pack in terms of unmusical, unusable presets that you're just never ever going to want to incorporate in a track, even if you're an EDM producer. I know presets are partly there to show off what the synth is capable of, but come on, you have to have a solid core of usable sounds that have stood the test of time and are useful as foundations to tweak into your own variations.

 
I don't agree, at least not for all of their synths.  For example on Monark, there are plenty of presets resembling classic tracks.  You've got a couple ELP ones, a "Follow You, Follow Me" one, a Funkadelic bass patch, and I think one for the saw lead from "Shine on You Crazy Diamond".
 
Likewise, I am impressed with some of the things they did with Massive.  In addition to all the EDM stuff the synth is known for, they have a few good patches for ambient sounds and a few good patches in the "Physical Modeling" category, which obviously aren't PM, but have a similar vibe.
 
On the other hand, I haven't heard the K11 instruments, so I can't comment on those.
 
 

 
I agree there are one or two good ones on Monark, in fact I love that synth, so easy to get a classic, authentic sound with such simple controls. But that's pretty much the exception. As much as I love Massive - and again it's very easy to get the sound you want via a very well designed interface that's intuitive and logical - the vast majority of the presets are horrible. Let's say you're looking for a modern plucked sound of the kind that's common in modern EDM. You have the MIDI part all programmed and playing on a loop and you dial up their "plucked" presets and start going through the list. There's almost nothing there resembling a simple, great sounding plucked synth sound that drops easily into a mix and sounds musical. Almost every preset is totally overdone, and all too often they have oscillators playing intervals that mess with the harmonic meaning of your music and/or way too much modulation going on. I just think every synth should have a clearly defined set of classic, elemental sounds from which to work from. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to use presets straight out of the box, but it helpful to have a few solid sounding building blocks from which to start from so that you don't have to spend a lot of time building things from scratch - setting up the oscillators, routing them to filters, getting the envelopes and LFO's in the ballpark etc. Like I said, I appreciate that they have to show off the synth by cramming a few "out there" presets into the package. But with NI that's like 95% of their sounds. And to be honest when I'm auditioning them I get the feeling that whomever programmed them doesn't spend a lot of time actually making music. 

Danny Danzi

sharke
I've updated Komplete Ultimate religiously since Komplete 8, albeit always when it was on sale. When I first started out in music production and pretty much knew that it wasn't going to be a short lived hobby, I figured it was the most bang for my buck in terms of what you get, and to be honest, I still think it's great value. But recently certain niggling annoyances about their stuff as a whole have come to a head with me. 
 
The problem I have with them in is their synth and effects products. Their sample libraries are great, I have no trouble with them. But so much of their synths and effects are just plain goofy, by which I mean stupidly over-complicated and terribly documented. The upshot is that unless you have a phd in physics you're very unlikely to understand what in the hell is going on, and you're never going to fully master them. 
 
In addition to this, their presets are goddamn awful, let's face it. I have this beef with a lot of soft synth manufacturers but NI really seems to lead the pack in terms of unmusical, unusable presets that you're just never ever going to want to incorporate in a track, even if you're an EDM producer. I know presets are partly there to show off what the synth is capable of, but come on, you have to have a solid core of usable sounds that have stood the test of time and are useful as foundations to tweak into your own variations. Going through the presets on most NI synths I'm just irritated as hell, and this really became clear to me when I installed Komplete Ultimate 10 and took synths like Rounds and Kontour for a test spin. The presets are just horrible, 99% of them have no musical use whatsoever and seem to be a demonstration of some synth nerd's technical skills more than anything. 
 
Which I wouldn't mind if these synths were intuitive, but they're not. I mean come on, does anyone really understand Prism? It's a great sounding synth (and actually has a handful of half decent sounding presets) but the fact that Groove3 (or anyone else) has never released a video course on it speaks volumes. Nobody knows what in the hell is going on! I once sat down with the manual, determined that I'd learn how it works no matter how long it took me. After a couple of readings I still didn't understand. Same thing with Spark - it's like some convoluted science project with a manual written by someone who hates people and doesn't get out much. No video course for that either. You'd think Native Instruments would release a good set of videos to go along with these instruments, but no - the most you'll ever get out of them is a cheesy 2 minute video with some irritating dubstep music which leaves you none the wiser. 
 
The manuals are so bad I would consider it grounds for a refund. Take Molekular, the "revolutionary" new modular effect unit they rave so much about. It has a lot of wacky effect modules that you'll probably never, ever want to use in a track because they just don't seem to produce anything approaching a musical sound. So why would you ever want to chain 4 of them together, cross modulating everything in their path? Let's say you want to learn about the "Plagiarism" effect. Here's NI's explanation in the manual: 
 

"The input signal’s amplitude is measured using an envelope follower. The measured RMS data
is used to trigger 16 envelopes, which in turn are used to play back 16 “voices.” The voices
are commonly switched between bandpass, sine-wave, or pulse-wave modes. The pitch or center
frequency of each voice is generated from a base pitch plus per-voice offset that is read
from a look-up table with various interval sequences. For example, the 16 voices can be configured
to play the base pitch and its first 15 harmonics as sine waves. In pulse-wave mode,
the envelope is additionally used to modulate pulse width."
 

Totally understandable right? You totally know where you are from that. 
 
But this is how all of their manuals are written. If you want to learn Spark, or Kontour, or Rounds, that's the kind of blurb you're going to have to slog through - page after page of it. I consider myself reasonably intelligent and know the basics of synthesis and even like a challenge - but come on Native Instruments, have you ever thought about getting a normal, socially functioning person to write your manuals? 
 
Rounds is an interesting sounding synth but the interface seems badly designed and NOT conducive to creativity. Very convoluted workflow and functionality. Now FM8, that's a great synth with a great interface. Monark - can't go wrong with what are basically MiniMoog controls. But this is Native Instruments emulating classic synths that have already been designed for them, and giving them a modern interface. Their other stuff is starting to get on my nerves, and I'm starting to wonder why in the hell I'm paying for so much stuff which is ultimately unmusical and baffling. Rant over! I'll probably give it all another go tomorrow like I always do 
 
 

Well said Sharke, and I agree. I've complained several times that NI is and will always be my least favorite software synth. Not because of their sounds, but because of how complex they DON'T need to be, yet remain. Their presets are cpu hogs, the interface is a mess and I've had more crashes with their stuff than any plug I own. And....God help you if you own the full version of Kontakt. I was better off when I just had the player. Once I updated to the full version....I was overwhelmed with stuff that in my opinion, made little to no difference while forcing me to read up on a bunch of nothing.
 
Most software, I can really get into it without reading a bible. Ok, some stuff you need to read about to use it in depth. I get that and do it. But some of that NI stuff.....totally uncalled for and it needs to be simplified or removed. Their support is pretty bogus too. But...they do have some good libraries, which is why I keep them around.
 
-Danny

Yes Danny I share the same view of Kontakt - I know it's an incredibly powerful sampler but it has a steep learning curve and always seemed to me to be an "all or nothing" kind of thing - either you learn the whole thing properly or you're always going to be confused by what's going on. Doesn't help that the GUI has all these itty bitty controls and labels either. I've read most of the Kontakt manual and to be honest by the time I'm done I've completely forgotten the stuff I learned at the start, lol....same thing when I watched the Groove3 course, which admittedly is great but there's only so much you can do to make it simple, even if you're Eli Krantzberg. 
 
I mean to say, when your average young'un hears the word "sampler," they're invariably going to imagine themselves chopping samples and putting beats together, the kind of stuff you'd traditionally do on an Akai. Imagine their surprise when confronted with the "industry standard sampler" Kontakt and they find out that it's actually a pretty big ass deal to get a beat chopped and loaded into it. The learning curve is what they get wrong. Look at Geist, so easy to import a drum loop, get it chopped up perfectly and loaded onto a set of pads. A couple of clicks and you're away! There's a ton more depth if you're up for it, but you're eased into it gently and you don't have to take a freaking course just to get something simple up and running. I love software that has an easy learning curve but tons of hidden depth. That's what being user friendly is all about. 

azslow3

sharke

"The input signal’s amplitude is measured using an envelope follower. The measured RMS data
is used to trigger 16 envelopes, which in turn are used to play back 16 “voices.” The voices
are commonly switched between bandpass, sine-wave, or pulse-wave modes. The pitch or center
frequency of each voice is generated from a base pitch plus per-voice offset that is read
from a look-up table with various interval sequences. For example, the 16 voices can be configured
to play the base pitch and its first 15 harmonics as sine waves. In pulse-wave mode,
the envelope is additionally used to modulate pulse width."
 

Totally understandable right? You totally know where you are from that. 
 

I do not have NI and I am not an expert in synths. But that explanation make sense for me, I can imagine what sound it is going to produce (without a prove). So it seems like you are right about targeted audience, I am working 20 years close to physics and I have quite some DSP background

I'm actually not knocking that paragraph in isolation because I agree it makes sense technically - but come on, that's their introductory blurb about the effect. Someone who was better with words would find a way to describe the kind of sound it makes before reeling off the math. 

sharke
...
The manuals are so bad I would consider it grounds for a refund. Take Molekular, the "revolutionary" new modular effect unit they rave so much about. It has a lot of wacky effect modules that you'll probably never, ever want to use in a track because they just don't seem to produce anything approaching a musical sound. So why would you ever want to chain 4 of them together, cross modulating everything in their path? Let's say you want to learn about the "Plagiarism" effect. Here's NI's explanation in the manual: 
 

"The input signal’s amplitude is measured using an envelope follower. The measured RMS data
is used to trigger 16 envelopes, which in turn are used to play back 16 “voices.” The voices
are commonly switched between bandpass, sine-wave, or pulse-wave modes. The pitch or center
frequency of each voice is generated from a base pitch plus per-voice offset that is read
from a look-up table with various interval sequences. For example, the 16 voices can be configured
to play the base pitch and its first 15 harmonics as sine waves. In pulse-wave mode,
the envelope is additionally used to modulate pulse width."
 

Totally understandable right? You totally know where you are from that. 
 
But this is how all of their manuals are written. ...

Molekular is not a very good example and it is not a typical manual from NI by any means.
 
It was based on a Kore series of software called Deep Freq and Deep Transformations by Denis Gökdag from SSFX (now with Zynaptiq). 
 
In that original manual Denis describes 3 presets in great detail and then concludes that to describe them all would take a 150 page manual that would leave the reader brain-dead.
 
The presets that came with Molekular are not very good in my opinion. Simon Stockhausen has a much better set on his patchpool web site.
 
I made a few presets for the user library and, having spent a few weeks, decided that it was way too much work - I would just make a preset whenever I thought I needed one. Getting a bunch of stuff to morph properly is very difficult, far more difficult in Molekular than Skanner (which also has dynamic morphing). But just making a single preset is much easier.
 
No matter what instrument or effect I buy, I usually am lucky to find 5 or 10 useful presets that fit my taste. The rest are just starting points for my own preset.
 
To get back to Molekular. I've found that knowing how some effect, like Plagiarism, is designed, MIGHT help you use it. But in my experience, nothing beats twiddling the knobs, fooling around, and discovering for oneself how to make it work for them.
 
 Here is one of Denis' patch description for a Plagiarism patch. I put in only the image, not the text description as an example.

 
Later in the manual there is a description of the design of Plagiarism that is over 5 pages long. I looked at it once - I'd never read it.
 
Also, in my opinion, you tend to get the best advice by asking questions on the Reaktor (or other NI) User Forum. From the various types of questions we see there it appears that very few ever crack open a manual.
 

I still have Deep Freq and Deep Trans from Kore and that's very interesting they are related to the newer Molekular. Thanks for getting that info out.

BassDaddy
I still have Deep Freq and Deep Trans from Kore and that's very interesting they are related to the newer Molekular. Thanks for getting that info out.

Not just related, all the DEEP XXX Reaktor parts were extracted and optimized in Reaktor Core and a few newer ones were added. Since the original Deep presets used parts of Guitar Rig and Kore instruments, it is not possible to make exact emulations in Reaktor alone, but the idea is the same - make the ultimate effects synthesizer with morphing presets.
 
I started a thread about Molekular a while back in the NI forums:
 
https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/molekular-compared-to-kore-deep-series.218096/
 
and I asked Denis about the development of it on muffwigglers:
 
https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1528713
 
In 2011 when Kore was Killed, I asked Denis:
 
"
Denis,

I have used your 3 Kore Deep xxx packages for a long time. It is a shame that your product can no longer be sold through NI.

I was wondering about the Reaktor ensembles. Do you intend to make them available for purchase separately?

If not, would you consider making them available for use in the Reaktor User Library?

I would be willing to help you (or do it for you).

Best wishes,
"
 
And he replied in a longish note which I won't repeat, but he ended with this cryptic hint about Molekular:
 
"Please don't post them to the user lib btw, I have considered that myself but decided that I don't want to do that at this point. There may yet be life in them in some incarnation ;-)"
 

If you have the NI fx and haven't used them, you're really missing out on some really good plugs.

I forget to use them as they just don't seem mainstream, but then I remember I have them and am pleasantly surprised by their quality emulations.

mudgel
If you have the NI fx and haven't used them, you're really missing out on some really good plugs.

I forget to use them as they just don't seem mainstream, but then I remember I have them and am pleasantly surprised by their quality emulations.

They're done by Softube...which should speak for itself...

Are we talking about the FX in regular or Ultimate?   I have regular K9 so am curious what to look for next time around. 

cclarry

mudgel
If you have the NI fx and haven't used them, you're really missing out on some really good plugs.

I forget to use them as they just don't seem mainstream, but then I remember I have them and am pleasantly surprised by their quality emulations.

They're done by Softube...which should speak for itself...

That makes sense, they are the only plugins where I can't move the user presets to another location (setting via the registry).