What are your favorite Native Instruments plugins and why?

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yodaone902

New member
Had a search but couldn't find much. Seeing as this is such a broad topic, the answers should be all over the place?
Obviously everyone likes to tweak their sounds but what are your favorites for massive, battery, fm8, absynth etc?
 
I have the Native Instruments Komplete 7 package and it has served me very well over the years. I like all of the synths about the same, but I have never gotten on well with Battery 3 at all. I love the interface, works really well, but the standard drums kits are just not useful in any way. They just never seem to fit any project, especially synth/electronic music, it's just not usable enough out of the box for me. And I really hate to spend ages tweaking the kits just so that I can get something average sounding for a house music track, especially when I have a nagging feeling that there is another drum machine with a kit perfect for house music as a single preset.

But saying that, when you really get stuck in and actually get using the Native Instruments stuff it is very good, it's just sometimes a bit too much like hard work for me. Also the orchestral stuff in Kontakt, why such long attack times on the standard patches!? It might be more realistic but it just makes it so hard to actually use.
 
I'm still working with Komplete 6. I use pretty much everything except Reaktor (I know how to use it, but I have no patience for it yet). I tend to turn to FM8 for pads, massive for leads, Kontakt for strings and drum loops. I like Battery for the acoustic drum kits and 808. Oh, I DON'T use Absynth, why? I don't know...Maybe I'll get into it in the future.

My favorite has to be Guitar Rig tho...I've made some of the best sounds with that thing smh.
 
Absynth is by far my favorite out of any Native Instrument plugin. The reason being, it sounds absolutely delicious and weird, has to be one of the most unique plugins on the market. Such amazing textures and evolving synths!
 
Wallengard said:
Absynth is by far my favorite out of any Native Instrument plugin. The reason being, it sounds absolutely delicious and weird, has to be one of the most unique plugins on the market. Such amazing textures and evolving synths!
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Agreed, great for ambient textures. It's a pain to get used to though.
 
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yodaone902 said:
Agreed, great for ambient textures. It's a pain to get used to though.
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It's not that bad to be honest. It has some quite unique features and a little bit different way of doing things. But if you know your way around synthesis it's not something you can't pick up quite quickly!
 
TO be honest, none of them. I got ultimate 9 and heavyocity are the ones I use most but technically they aren't NI. Absynth to me is dull, uninspiring and impractical for electro, massive takes too long to program and you can use your DAW to modulate rhythmically in twice the speed, Razor doesn't have anywhere near enough presets to use on anything, FM8 is no different to Absynth..lacking in usable presets, scarbee funk guitar has no bite, Alicia keys has no punch, Battery doesn't work in Pro tools, am I missing anything? Oh yeah, Reaktor, arguably the worst synth Ive ever used, both in terms of sound quality and usability.

Strings are ok, vintage keys ok, Giant piano doesn't sound giant at all but thin, treblely and weak. Id recommend to anyone not buying ultimate and just go for Komplete9 then buying heavyocity aeon instead of damage and evolve, that way you save yourself $200 and you dont get a lot of useless padding you'll never use. Yeah, the solid mix compression series is useful but most daws come with compressors and eqs and if you're gonna master you should be using Ozone anyway.
If you're buying Komplete be prepared to buy patches or spend a lot of time under the hood. If you dig that sort of thing then great. If you just produce music then just get Omnisphere or something or Aeon.
 
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All i've got right now is Massive but I should be getting my Komplete 9 in today. With massive it takes a minute to program but the things you can do with it IMO are pretty incredible I spend alot of time on sound design and Massive lets me do pretty much anything.
 
tomkillsjerry said:
All i've got right now is Massive but I should be getting my Komplete 9 in today. With massive it takes a minute to program but the things you can do with it IMO are pretty incredible I spend alot of time on sound design and Massive lets me do pretty much anything.
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Massive is pretty cool that way, it's semi-modular so there are lots of possibilities there. You should also check out Zebra and SynthMaster if you're into sound design, lots and lots of possibilities there combined.
 
Ive been looking at getting zebra for a couple months i think its probably my next VST purchase. Never heard of Synthmaster i'll have to check it out. Thanks !
 
tomkillsjerry said:
Ive been looking at getting zebra for a couple months i think its probably my next VST purchase. Never heard of Synthmaster i'll have to check it out. Thanks !
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It's really a great synthesizer in a modular environment (basically anything can be modulated by anything) with some 64 available modular matrix slots.
The interface can throw you off at first glance, but really there is a beast inside it.

I think that this synth was voted the second best software synth in the world by musicradar as well. I know it doesn't count for much but.. anyway..



Also, it's very affordable. And they seem to have a 30% sale until the 1st of september. I'd look into that plugin now if I were you.
 
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i like kontakt (mostly with 3rd party libraries) for realistic or workstation type sounds, massive is my favorite synth in there along with fm8. i don't use reaktor, battery, and rarely use absynth. the various effects get some use, guitar rig is dope.

but ya even though i don't use half the stuff the stuff i use is easily worth $500.
 
Wallengard said:
I think that this synth was voted the second best software synth in the world by musicradar as well. I know it doesn't count for much but.. anyway..
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that list was kinda trash (lots of good synths but i didn't like the order they put them in) but regardless of that massive is in my top 5.
 
ego killer said:
that list was kinda trash (lots of good synths but i didn't like the order they put them in) but regardless of that massive is in my top 5.
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Yeah I agree but either way it's a great piece of engineering! :)

And it was a public vote that made the list in that order.. and I know that the majority of peoples opinion is not in anyway a guarantee for the better.
 
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havent used the instruments at length but i use the solid compressors or supercharger on just about everything

i like that you can hear them but you cant hear them if you know what i mean
 
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Battery. I just love it. It got all the drums I really need. It's tweakable plus a few non drum sounds to provide some inspiration
 
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