Komplete 10 Overview

[starise]

Native instruments have a history of making fine software and have become a staple for both home musicians and for those who make music for epic movies.

 

All it takes is one look at what they have to offer and you can see why. With the advent of a program called Kontakt which is a sample player that doesn't really record samples things took off considerably. Since the release of Kontakt their product line has moved upward and onward. Today it is difficult to find any serious studio without one of their products. The largest heavyweight in their product line presently is a product called Komplete....Now they like to start things with "K" at Native Instruments. Not sure why..a German thing maybe, the main thing is they make killer instruments designed to fit inside your DAW and can be just as comfortable on stage as in your studio.

 

Enter Komplete 10 and Komplete 10 Ultimate. You will try hard to find a more full featured set of tools anywhere on the planet. Remember me metioning Kontakt? Kontakt is full to the brim with everything from orchestral instruments to pop,rock and techno sounds. Before I bought Komplete all I used was Kontakt and it usually filled all the gaps.

 

You get Kontakt when you buy Komplete.130 Gb of sheer music power in the Komplete basic version. Ultimate is even more than that.

 

No matter what kind of music you like there is sure to be a lot of usable sounds there for you.

 

Before I tell you a few things about Komplete I need to mention a requirement of it. You will want another hard drive to stream the sounds off of. Fortunately in the ultimate version a hard drive is provided. I have three seperate hard drives on my computer right now. Word of advice- Don't use "green" drives or anything that advertises power savings. All of those drives can hamper you getting the samples off of the drive. Get a straight 7200 rpm high performance drive before you ever think about Komplete.It isn't a matter of size. Two drives work better with one working the OS and another streaming the sound files. I

 

You have at least two drives? Ok we're ready. Komplete 10 is 13 dvds if you opted for the basic version. Set aside some time for the install, maybe have another task to do alongside this as there is no fast way to install 130 gb of data into a hard drive. The first disk has the installer on it and if you already have NI's factory update program on your hard drive from prior installations then it will recognize you and registration will be straightforward.If you don't have that program, no real problem either as it will install it for you. From then on it will offer updates when they become available.

 

Here are  some of few programs you get in Komplete 10-

 

Reaktor- It doesn't seem like much if you say it fast. What is Reaktor? Reaktor itself houses at least a half dozen synths ready to play complete with arpeggiators and effects. It's probably more than that, and they all sound good. In addition Reactor is programmable and is known for having a robust following of third party content creators on the web.You can program it yourself or look to see what others have done. Not necessarily intuitive, but once you get onto it you won't believe what you can do!

 

Guitar Rig Pro 5- A big contender and a top one in guitar software. With GR5 you can plug  your guitar into your audio interface and have that Fender or Marshall sound you always wanted. Deep and extensive don't begin to tell you all it is capable of. Chances are, if you can imagine a guitar tone of any kind..its in there Not just amps but tons of effects. Presets to play just about any guitar sound made in the last 40 years.

 

Scarbee Bass- If you need a really good bass in your mix this is it.

 

Various synths to fill any techo, electronic or soundscape desire- Monark,Rounds,Kontour, Ansynth and more lots more!

 

Pianos- Tons of them. Kontakt has a slew of them already but Komplete has even more and they all sound good. Of special mention is the "Giant" piano. A nice peasant full sounding piano that sits well in mixes and had presets for the more adventurous. Yamaha,Bosendorfers, Steinways, Uprights. If you play piano you get a lot of bang for your buck. And each can be adjusted to your liking. Electric piano -The FM synth has all of the tine bases covered in addition to others. Organs? Want that B-3 sound with lots of presets? There are some sweet organs in Komplete! 

 

Battery and DRUMLAB are a few of the drum players in Komplete 10. In Battery Pads can be drug to selected pads and played to midi rhythms in any way you want.Same with DRUMLAB.

 

Studio Drummer- A full featured and great sounding drum program competeing with the likes of Addctive Drums 2 and BFD 3. It has tended to me one of my go to drum programs many times because of the included loops and the sounds.

 

Orchestral Music?- It's covered well in Kontakt.

 

Its more than the sounds. Loops,patterns and presets abound in all of the different programs.

 

The only limitaion really is getting your head around all of it. Kind of like eating an elephant, One bite at a time. It's really not that bad, especially if you happen to take well to things technical. You don't need to learn all of it in a day.

 

Collectively speaking you get a LOT in Komplete. If you had to buy all of it seperately it would cost far more than the sum of its parts. If you already own an NI product you can get some kind of a discount to buy Komplete. Once you get into their system and own a product future buying is less painful.

 

Cheer!

 

Tim

Edited November 6, 2014 by starise

[starise]

Look for a review of Komplete 10 ultimate soon!!

[starise]

I have had Komplete 10 Ultimate now for several months. If you follow the upgrade path that I did it is far more compicated than simply buying Komplete 10 Ultimate. If you have the cash I recommend simply buying the big tamale....why only go part way with the lesser version? The additions to the ultimate version are more than well worth the expenditure involved.

 

Komplete 10 Ultimate offers many more tools for movie and cinematic productions. It comes delivered in it's own hard drive that's compliant with usb 2 and 3. It will take a very long time to get it all loaded up but once you do you have a toolkit like no other...sure you can buy similar products that closely mimic what these programs do, but nothing really has this package built in such a way as to be so easy to use. 

 

Any sound library in Komplete 10 Ulitmate is tied to the Native instruments library system. This means that all programs show up in a nice tidy row for easy access. This is where I need to make a clarification. Native instruments allows third party software manufacturers to build sound banks for their Kontakt engine, however, unless they pay a hefty license fee to NI they can't include their products in that nice browser in Kontakt with a pic of their software. NI will allow them to build programs but they are to be located in the regular file system. Fortunately NI has a nice file search browser and finding third party products isn't difficult. For instance, I have Kirk Hunter Strings, and Kirk Hunter didn't buy a license, so I simply look on the tree where it's installed and pull it into Kontakt.

 

Some inclusions worthy of mention in the new Komplete 10 Ultimate are Alicias Keys.Evolve and Evolve 2, which are cinematic backdrops. Cinematic hits is a killer drum program made especially for cinema.We're talking BIG drums here with pre programmed articulations. The prior versions of horns and strings are upgraded to the pro versions with more options and more sounds. The trumpets,trombones,french horns and saxes...they all sound just like the real deal. In short, if you plan to compose orchestra or cinematic music, buy this and don't look back.There are many more I didn't mention here.The selection is exhaustive.

 

You get all the drums NI makes in the ultimate version. Some have been negative about the drums. The only problem I had was trying to load them on a slow computer. The sounds are spot on and just like any NI instrument there are many ways to adjust the sounds.Each drum set has a mixer. Each channel has EQ, reverbs,compression. If you don't happen to like a sound, you have at least four different drum kits. I have never had a problem finding a good drum sound in Komplete. There are also world percussion sets included.

 

Although the synths in Komplete don't show up in the Kontakt tree, they are easy to reach and lauch inside your DAW vsti folder. 

 

This isn't a detailed review. I tried to highlight the things that I thought might interest a potential user. If you mainly compose simple songs and record instruments directly then this will be overkill for you, however, if you want to get into making larger music productions, then I would give Komplete 10 Ultimate a serious look. Chances are you already have some kind of a sample player in your DAW. Most DAW software now comes with a player of some sort that will let you use a midi keyboard to play the sounds in it and record them...so you may well be covered for those times when you want maybe just a half convincing violin sound or a bass. Komplete 10 will give you a lot more capability. It comes down to the user. A really good composer can make a great composition with bread and butter instruments. A so so composer might still have trouble with making something good in Komplete. If your new to composition, maybe give the rompler in your DAW a shot and see if that whets your appetite for more.

[Rudi]

If you dont record with a PC, can you use this with PC as an instrument?

Presumably with a keyboard attached.

[starise]

Yes you can do that with a sound card and a midi keyboard.

 

Here's a screen shot of a few I loaded up in stand alone mode. 

 

Notice they have a keyboard along the bottom to correspond to the keys on a real keyboard. When you play a midi controller hooked to a computer with one of these selected it plays sounds in the software instrument and outputs the sound to anything you want.

 

For someone just getting into this who doesn't want to spend a lot of money, there are free software instruments online and inexpensive ones. The Korg M-1 software keyboard is one example and it can be had for not a lot and it comes loaded with all kinds of sounds.