Native Instruments’ holiday haul
The German tech giant unleash a salvo of new goodies
Native Instruments have launched five new products, including the standalone Maschine+ groovebox, which we reported on last issue (so won’t go into again here), and the latest version of their value-packed Komplete bundle.
Komplete 13 arrives two years after Komplete 12, so there are a fair few new additions to its already enormous roster of instruments, effects and sample libraries. Chief among them are the Straylight and Pharlight granular Kontakt instruments, Super 8 vintage-style polysynth, Session Guitarist – Electric Sunburst Deluxe virtual guitar/guitarist, and Nils Frahm’s Noire concert piano for Kontakt; but there are a couple of completely new entrants, too.
The first of these is the long awaited Guitar Rig 6, updating the acclaimed virtual guitar effects rack almost a decade after the release of v5. The GUI and preset browser have been modernised to bring the plugin/ standalone app into line with its stablemates, and the new Chicago, Bass Invader and Fire Breather amps present new options for guitar and bass tone shaping. 16 new effects modules are also onboard, all of them imports from elsewhere in the NI catalogue (but certainly no less desirable because of it), including the Crush and Mod
Packs, Vintage Compressors, Solid Mix
Series and Transient Master.
The second completely new product in K13 is Cremona Quartet, which expands upon the excellent Stradivari Violin Kontakt library with the addition of Guarneri Violin, Amati Viola and Stradivari Cello. With each of the instruments weighing in at around 25GB compressed and featuring 20 chromatic articulations, this one is sure to find some favour with discerning orchestral and soundtrack composers.
Finally, there’s Maschine 2.12, a free update to NI’s legendary groove production system that introduces the new freeform Clips workflow, taking it another step towards ’full DAW’ status – whatever that means these days.
Komplete 13’s various editions cost between £169 and £1349, while Guitar Rig 6 and Cremona Quartet can be bought individually for £179 (£89 upgrade from v5) and £359 respectively.
native-instruments.com