Native Instruments Komplete 9

Solid Mix And Beyond

Now we turn our attention to dedicated effects plugins, a relatively new venture for NI. The Solid Mix Series is the big news here, consisting of three plugins – Solid Bus Comp, Solid Dynamics and Solid EQ – that aim to capture the sound and spirit of their famous Solid State Logic (SSL) hardware counterparts. NI are certainly not the first to do this, and I’m not going to claim that they sound exactly the same as the originals or even other emulations, but they do certainly capture their spirit, and make light work of core mixing tasks. Previously these plugins were only within a Guitar Rig shell, so the fact they now appear as standalone AU, VST, RTAS and AAX plugins is very welcome.

Komplete 9 Ultimate users also get the Premium Tube Series (two EQs and a compressor developed with Softube), Reverb Classics (emulations of a selection of Lexicon reverb favourites) and the Vintage Compressors bundle alongside existing Komplete effects – so nearly everything you’ll need in a mix session is covered, especially when you also get Guitar Rig 5 Pro and the FX-only versions of many of the included synths (even in the standard Komplete bundle).

Kontakt Content

By far the biggest hard-drive muncher in Komplete is the Kontakt sample content, supplied as individual multi-gigabyte libraries. Almost without exception these are sonically excellent and make use of Kontakt’s customisable interface and advanced low-level scripting.

Kontakt is now the go-to sampler for any serious third-party sampled instrument provider, and many of these libraries have been developed with outside assisstance, but don’t forget that even the basic factory content is over 40GB in size.

Two new premium libraries are included in Komplete 9 – Session Strings (a string ensemble with an ‘Animator’ section for automatically creating riffs and phrases in multiple styles) and The Giant (a detailed recreation of a Klavins Piano Model 370i – the world’s largest upright piano – that also includes unusual plucked, kicked and scratched techniques). Both of these are straightforward to use and capable of great results.

Komplete 9 Ultimate adds six other new libraries taking in horns, film scoring, bass and drums. For percussion purists Ultimate includes all five of the Abbey Road Drummer packs and all the Scarbee Bass libraries. Who needs ‘real’ musicians anyway?!

Everything you’ll ever need?

At €499 (about £425), Komplete 9 isn’t a pocket-money impulse buy, but when you take a close look at what is actually included in terms of both instruments and effects as well as raw content it increasingly appears as extremely good value. In fact, bought individually the components would value over £3,000. Remember also that existing users of Maschine, Kontakt and Reaktor get a favourable crossgrade discount on both versions of Komplete.

Komplete 9 Ultimate is double the price (but would weigh in at an eye-watering £7,600 in unbundled form) and is outstanding in terms of depth and scope. The hard-disk installation format is far less painful than feeding DVDs into your computer for hours on end, and allows this collection to be uncompromising in its kompleteness.

Whatever genre of music you work with you’d be hard pushed to find something here that doesn’t enhance your writing or production. Combined with you favourite DAW this package is almost unbeatable, though quite whether you will get around to using every element is another question entirely.