Native Instruments Komplete 11 Ultimate
Is Komplete 11 Ultimate the most fully-formed one-stop shop for composition and production today? Jono Buchanan konsiders…
Native Instruments occupy a unique position within our industry. They provide not only a wide range of their own instruments and effects libraries but they’re also the central linchpin for the content of many a third-party developer, as numerous manufacturers are reliant on Kontakt for sample playback and manipulation. Every year new titles are added to NI’s roster of products and, periodically, these are bundled up to become a new iteration of Komplete. The latest generation of Komplete bundles is now available – as Komplete 11 – in three separate packages. For more modest needs, Komplete 11 Select offers an introductory collection of instruments and sounds. The intermediate step is Komplete 11, which offers 45 products across 155GB of content. However, the subject of this review is Komplete 11 Ultimate, offering a gargantuan 500GB catalogue of instruments, effects and libraries aimed at composers, producers and sound designers alike.
The Komplete package
With 87 instruments and libraries included, it would be easy to use all our space here just listing each title, but NI provide a comprehensive guide to what’s included in each Komplete 11 collection. Before moving onto some of the more notable new releases below, let’s focus on a couple of titles which were previously ‘separately available’ but which are welcome inclusions.
The Una Corda felt piano Kontakt library, developed with Nils Frahm, is a composer’s dream, with an open, pure sound but, as significantly, an interface which allows you to introduce a pleasing array of sonic ‘extras’. These include the sound of the instrument’s mechanism, instant reverses, pedal noise and a range of tools to change the instrument’s virtual structure. Also welcome is the Strummed Acoustic Session Guitarist module which does a good job of bringing a virtual session acoustic guitar player to your sessions. With patterns and strums, this is great for mocking up arrangements and, with more careful programming, creating parts which make it all the way through to the mix too.
Alongside previously available content now bundled with Komplete 11, a brand new, Reaktor-hosted instrument arrives too: Form. New sounds here begin with drag and drop sample import. You can then select the area of the sample you want to make the core of your new sound but it’s at that moment that parallels with ‘regular’ sample-based instruments begin to blur. The main page of the interface provides you with a Speed function in the bottom left-hand corner. Selecting 0.00 (effectively ‘off’) means the selected area will play once but any value above this will begin to loop the sample, as will selecting a positive value in either the Hz or bpm speed modes instead. The Motion section then controls how looping will
behave, with a number of modes to select the direction of travel, as well as a curve editor which lets you choose the behaviour and shape of Envelopes which can be superimposed upon the sample.
The Sound tab at the top takes you into a more detailed Edit mode, with Form and Additive Oscillator modules, a central Osc FX section, which provides Frequency Modulation and Wave Shaping among its weapons, as well as an extensive Modulation section for introducing Envelope and LFO behaviour. The Effects tab introduces further Frequency Shaping tools, alongside a Warmth module for adding a range of Distortion types, plus Dynamics, Delay and Reverb.
Form is a fantastic instrument for proving that unexpected sounds can be moulded from almost any input source and it will appeal to a broad range of users, from Pop producers to creators of the more avant garde.
Could you repeat that?
Replika XT – NI’s flexible delay unit – is included as an effect plug-in in Komplete 11, joining an increasingly impressive array of effects dedicated to tone, dynamics and spatial manipulation. Replika XT offers five Echo algorithms – Modern, Analogue, Tape, Vintage Digital and Diffusion. Each provides a different (and appropriate) parameter set but, broadly, all offer Lo and Hi Cut filers, while the parameters you’d hope for and expect within each Delay type are included. Single and Dual delay options are available, as are Stereo and Mono modes. At the bottom, you can configure the Delay speed (or speeds with separate left and right channels), while the graphic at the top displays how your Delay choices will play out over time, with red and blue vertical lines showing the delay taps for each side. On the right you can further enhance your Delays with additional effects: Phaser, Flanger, Chorus, Frequency Shifter, Filter, Pitch Shifter and Micro Pitcher can be used at any time. Aside from its capability as a ‘regular’ Delay generator, Replika XT goes further, its Diffusion mode producing Dense reverb clouds which can then be additionally enhanced with Pitch or Tone offsets on the right-hand side.
The Komplete 11 bundles offer ridiculously good value for money if you’re buying from scratch and putting the cost of your bundle up against the price of each library or instrument included. That said, the upgrade price for Komplete 11 Ultimate looks steep, particularly if you’ve bought any of the collections now bundled (Una Corda, Reaktor 6, Replika XT etc) in the period since Komplete 10 Ultimate was released. There’s no doubt, however, that NI’s bundle is the real deal, offering a staggering range of tools to composers, producers and mix engineers alike.