And like any spoiled child, little wonder there are bunches of those people whining and crying and rolling around on the floor like a toddler who ate too much candy. Well… if you read message forums, which I try not to. Deep routing lets you path when you want to. Basically, the latest MASSIVE gives you this: it makes an argument for a semi-modular design by packing the oscillators with features, and then giving you ways of playing and modulating and inter-connecting all that depth easily. It walks that balance between complexity under the hood and legibility inside a coherent interface.
So while other people might easily dismiss adding another semi-modular plug-in when you could just patch, there is a fundamentally different method to constructing sounds based on this architecture:. All about those oscillators. Get weird without even patching. With a huge routing matrix and a unique approach to insert effects, you can swap all sorts of unique processors inside an individual sound — and recall all of those as presets. Any control output can be connected to any input; audio can go to and from anywhere you like.
Make uniquely playable instruments. Now, the company has released the widely anticipated successor to Massive, which it's deeming Massive X. The new plug-in isn't meant to be an update to Massive -- instead it's a complete redesign of the original.
There's no cross-compatibility between the two synths, meaning there's no way to open any of Massive's presets on the newer instrument. According to the description on the Native Instruments website, Massive X is "built for a new decade and designed to evolve. The latter has two primary wavetable oscillators the original has three , though you can add up to five by using the insert oscillators. A dedicated "Noise" section lets producers choose from more than different sounds.
This Browser is now a central part of all the new plug-ins, with the exception of Battery 3. The only difference between Kore's Browser and the Browser in the plug-ins themselves is that the latter can only search and display sounds for that particular instrument.
The unified preset management system is a great improvement in Absynth 4 and FM8 , which previously had banks of sounds that had to be loaded from files.
Both plug-ins now enjoy instant access to huge libraries consisting of new presets and the consolidated banks from previous versions.
It's obviously much more convenient to be able to list all your pads, for example, instead of having to wade through various banks trying to find the right sounds. In addition to the standard Browser, Massive , Absynth 4 and FM8 all have a Program List view, where you can drop any sounds from the library. With the arrival of Kore 1. A new subclass of the. This is a standard patch for one of the plug-ins and can be opened by both the plug-in and Kore. In Kore, opening a Singlesound inserts the parent plug-in, which is displayed as a simple, thin rack device.
You can make changes to the sound, and save it, and the patch can still be read by the plug-in on its own. However, an 'Extend Sound' button lets you turn the patch into a full Kore patch, complete with its own internal mixer. If you save a version of this patch, it will no longer be readable by the plug-in directly. As well as unifying the sound library, Kore 1. The biggest news was that NI have responded to the popular request to allow Kore to run when the hardware controller is not attached.
I happily got one of my top wishes, and you can now move knobs on the controller without a big value display obscuring the rest of the settings. Many of the controller mapping presets have been updated, and many third party plug-ins are now supported. Bewilderingly, though, despite NI having added eight Macros to Massive , they've mapped them across two Easy Access pages.
There's still a long way to go to reach its potential, but Kore is making progress. You may have noticed that none of the modules has any dedicated envelope or modulation controls, only small fields under each knob. These squares are the modulation 'slots' where Massive 's numerous envelopes, LFOs, step sequencers and controllers are assigned to parameters.
The blue '4' in the Amp Mod slot indicates that modulation source four is being used to create an amplitude envelope.
This is the only default modulation mapping on blank Massive sounds. If you need a filter envelope, you must assign one of the other three envelopes to one or both of the filter frequency controls. This is done by clicking the four-way arrow icon next to the envelope of your choice, and dragging it into the relevant slot. The mod amount is set by clicking in the assignment slot and dragging the mouse up or down. A coloured ring is drawn around the knob, starting at the current position and showing the exact range and direction over which the envelope affects the parameter.
LFOs modulation sources are assigned in exactly the same way, but are distinguished from the envelopes by colour-coding envelopes are blue, LFOs green. Manual control assignments appear in yellow, and include both playing characteristics velocity, aftertouch and eight 'Macros'. Macros are now a NI standard in the post-Kore climate, allowing hands-on control of the significant parameters of a sound when playing.
Infuriatingly, though, the default Massive template in Kore splits the Macros over two pages. Surely everyone would expect the Kore hardware controller's knobs to map straight to the eight Macros? Any modulation sources can be assigned to control parameters directly, or set to scale the depth of another modulator.
For example, you could assign a Macro to alter the filter envelope depth. This is done by dropping the desired control into the rightmost assignment slot of the parameter, then clicking the 'SC' label to declare it a side-chain. The small arrows under the other slots are used to choose which assignments are affected by the side-chain. Keyboard Tracking is included in the Macro section, although there are dedicated pages in the centre section for editing the keyboard tracking for pitch and filter frequency, both of which are hard-wired and don't need mapping with assignment slots.
Similarly, there are dedicated velocity and tracking settings for each of the envelopes. Strangely, there is no dedicated mod wheel source available in the Macro section. If you want to make a mod wheel assignment you need to use a Macro knob, which can then be mapped to your mod wheel via MIDI.
This is probably the least dramatic of all the NI upgrades, but there's still quite a lot in Absynth 4 to keep devotees happy. For me, the biggest improvement is the graphical overhaul. The graphics are sharper and brighter, and the plug-in window is larger, making all the modules less fiddly to use. The Envelope window can even be resized like a normal window, meaning that you'll spend less time hunting around with scroll bars.
The Effects page has benefited from the make-over and now sports graphical controls instead of a list of numbers. As Absynth now employs the standardised Sound Browser, the old Main view is gone. Replacing it is the multi-tabbed Perform page, which defaults to showing global parameters, 12 control Macros, a surround panner and the new Master Envelope.
This last module is a very welcome addition that scales all the Oscillator Amp envelopes simultaneously, giving you fast control over the amplitude envelope of the whole patch.
The results of the Master Envelope's delta values are superimposed on the Osc Amp graphs in the Envelope page. Talking of envelopes, any stage of an envelope can now be declared a 'step', which is displayed as a solid block and makes step-sequencing effects easier to create. A new oscillator mode, Sync Granular, has just two granular synthesis parameters Density and Scatter that do some really nice-sounding things with the stock library waveforms as opposed to samples.
It's particularly good at making natural sounds, such as bow scrapes and breath, as well as the eerie, spacious sounds that are Absynth 's speciality. The Wave editor now has a Morphing function, which lets you combine two waveforms in different ways. All the oscillators have access to an extra morph page in the wave selector. The Effects section has an improved Resonator and a cool Surround tool. This displays the the soundfield positions of the effect outputs, which can then be panned and spread in its entirety, and even rotated at a selected rate.
There is an entirely new addition called Audio Mod, which allows you to modulate or trigger other parameters based on the level of audio signals at various points in the plug-in's signal flow. The most obvious use for this is to create envelope-following effects, like a Moogerfooger pedal processor, but no doubt it will be put to much more twisted uses!
Massive has four assignable envelopes, all of which can themselves be modulated at various stages by each other, or by LFOs, and so on. These are just about the most flexible, programmable envelopes you could dream up. However, unlike Absynth 's multi-stage envelopes, that are drawn by hand using breakpoints, these take a much more useable approach. The envelopes loosely follow the tried and trusted ADSR formula, but with a large degree of precise control and a multi-shape looping stage.
The Loop stage defaults to off, and the Decay acts like a traditional Decay and Sustain combined. The Attack stage has a very welcome level control, making it possible to create smooth curves into the Decay stage, as well as traditional peaks. With Serum, you get a large high-resolution display in both a 2D and 3D mode, allowing you to see everything you need to know about your wavetables.
This can help you quickly skip wavetables that have too much harmonic content, understand why things sound the way they do, and it just looks damn cool, making it fun to use.
Whereas Massive X only features a tiny 2D wavetable preview in the centre of the knob. Better than nothing, but a shame. Once again, it seems a shame that Massive X has decided to axe one of their two filters from the original Massive, instead opting for a selection of creative, high-quality filters. Once again the Massive X filter lacks in the visual feedback department — the knobs you see are what you get.
In comparison, Serum actually has 2 filters, one of which lies in the FX section of the synth, without the same visual feedback. A redeeming factor for Massive X is the filter types. Serum still wins in this department, with over 50 filter types between standard low passes and high passes, all the way up to creative filter types like Reverb and Combs of which Steve Duda is always adding more.
On both synths, the controls change depending on the filter type selected, but Massive X has more obvious changes as the knobs move position when you change the type, whereas the knobs stay still in Serum. On each, you can select from the array of preset sounds, neatly organized into sections.
The main benefit is that all of the noises included with Massive X sound great. Some add great texture, some are random and inspire unique sound design. Not only that, but you can change the pitch, the start point, the keyboard tracking, whether the noise loops or not, random start points and a whole lot more.
Once again, the Noise Osc on Serum also has a direct out switch for bypassing FX, which you can do on the routing section of Massive X. Serum has 10 FX 11 if you count Hyper and Dimension as 2 , with each effect in its own unit that you can turn on and off as needed. Massive has 2 FX sections, each with 3 slots. While Massive X certainly seems to have a greater number of unique FX and Serum sticks to the basics , Massive X is limited in the number you can use.
In contrast, Serum has 3 fixed envelopes and 4 LFOs that expand up to 8 as you use them all.
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