So I nearly went all in on Native Instruments way back in the big fallout of M1 chips a few years back. I’m kinda happy I went with Ableton and a select couple of plugins for VSTs. What I have enjoyed on the side of this approach, is that it’s a pretty lightweight footprint and I have a few drum samples and synths to work with.
One thing that drew me to NI initially was some of the dramatic and ethereal instruments they have for creating atmosphere in a track. Although I don’t see myself getting a Komplete bundle now, I’d still like to check out some of those ethereal and slightly random playable Kontakt instruments that can bring a bit of spice to things.
I guess the tricky thing is (unlike a lot of VST makers) you can’t really trial it (or at least I don’t think you can.) Some options I’ve thought of are:
- Ignore NI bundles completely and choose a couple of select Kontakt (Player) Instruments on sale eg: something from Heavyocity, as this will be considerably cheaper than any of the Komplete or Kontakt bundles.
- Consider Kontakt 7 as a standalone buy for the bundled content.
- Use Komplete Now as a quick and easy way to trial Kontakt, but also to get access to a rotating library of randomness without it all sitting unused on the hard drive. (Alternative here is Output Arcade which I am currently trialling.)
- Get Komplete Start (I mean, it is free) and just download the Kontakt bits to see if it’s any good.
Is anyone playing with mostly Kontakt (as a pose to the main NI bundle) and if you do use it, any words of wisdom about creating a useful little library of playable instruments?