NI Komplete 10 pre-announcement information leaked

[mhschmieder]

I saw a LOT of details (and pictures, including descriptions) of Komplete 10 on GS today, and it's a HUGE disappointment.

This seems to be the first time that NONE of the flagship products are being updated, as well as most of the major releases from the past year NOT being included (e.g. the Pro version of Session Horns, the Cuba library, and a couple of others that were the main reason I did NOT participate in the Komplete 9 upgrade special recently).

Now that I see what it includes, the better move would have been to upgrade to K9 on special, and use a voucher for one of the "missing" products not included in K10.

The main selling point seems to be a re-branding of the old piano libraries. The non-pro version of Session Horns is also now included.

There are also a few third-party effects included, that are new new as opposed to new to Komplete, and Drumlab is included, along with two effects that were added over the past year.

They seem to be accentuating the new controller keyboards, which have no screens and only eight knobs (and nothing that could satisfy an organ player, for example). They seem under-competitive, like Yamaha's brief foray with the KX series a few years back.

[Michael Canavan]

This seems to be the first time that NONE of the flagship products are being updated

We don't really know that yet. Just saying.
What we saw was pre release .jpgs sent out and on to the web too soon.

[billf]

If (and that is a big IF because we don't know yet), that ends up being the extent of K10, then yes, it looks awful. But there is no official info out yet, so there may be more to come.

[Michael Canavan]

m Yeah that's my point, Kontakt, Massive and Reaktor are all over due for revamps. Not to mention FM8 etc.
I really don't need anything new from them though, except to keep on improving Guitar Rig.

[kgdrum]

Something about the info that's appearing seems weird to me, re:content, pricing & the pictures,it almost looks like a hack to me.lol
I'm waiting to see NI's official announcement before I make up my mind about this,time will tell........

[SixStringGeek]

I just got the K9 ultimate - there's enough there to keep me busy for a couple years. I see no reason to go looking for more stuff to learn.

FWIW, I thought K8 was a big nothing too.

[mhschmieder]

Well, just in case they've been pulled, I'll make it clear that the pictures I'm talking about are super-detailed high resolution and larger than a screen, and in the NI style as well as being nothing particularly like existing product font-wise etc. so it's an unlikely outsider hack job. I'm not referring to the vendor ads that had prices and showed close-ups of a boxed version of Komplete.

Has NI ever prepared material before and changed it later? That would seem odd, unless they don't know themselves what will be in it until they have done more testing and are confident of what's ready and safe to include, so maybe they prepared the stuff they know has passed testing just to have the main ad layout work done. But that makes little sense either, given the exclusion of major products from the past year (Abbey Road 50's or whichever is new, Session Horns Pro, Cuba, etc.).

I suppose we'll know soon enough anyway, as NI tends to release in mid-September.

[kgdrum]

Well, just in case they've been pulled, I'll make it clear that the pictures I'm talking about are super-detailed high resolution and larger than a screen, and in the NI style as well as being nothing particularly like existing product font-wise etc. so it's an unlikely outsider hack job. I'm not referring to the vendor ads that had prices and showed close-ups of a boxed version of Komplete.

Has NI ever prepared material before and changed it later? That would seem odd, unless they don't know themselves what will be in it until they have done more testing and are confident of what's ready and safe to include, so maybe they prepared the stuff they know has passed testing just to have the main ad layout work done. But that makes little sense either, given the exclusion of major products from the past year (Abbey Road 50's or whichever is new, Session Horns Pro, Cuba, etc.).



I suppose we'll know soon enough anyway, as NI tends to release in mid-September.

yeah what I saw was the vendor ad w/prices,that to me looks a bit odd.......and the pricing seemed off from previous versions of Komplete.

[philbrown]

Please excuse my throwing in a curiosity question, but why do you suppose NI has dropped so many beloved products like Pro-53, Spektral Delay, B4-II, Vokator, etc? From a strictly business standpoint it makes no sense as the products already existed - is it that hard to keep them updated? I'm curious if there's an actual reason that I can grasp because it's totally baffling (and annoying) to me as a long time NI customer.

As for as Komplete 10 have they simply run out of ideas at this point? If so, all they'd have to do is resurrect some of these older well-loved products to win some of us back over.

[bayswater]

Please excuse my throwing in a curiosity question, but why do you suppose NI has dropped so many beloved products

I think there was an earlier thread where someone suggested that NI didn't own these products and was selling them under an agreement that had lapsed.

[dewdman42]

I recently upgraded my kontakt4 license to Komplete9 on 50% sale and I'm not sorry, it was super good value, got a number of synths I have always wanted(Absynth, Massive, FM8), Kontakt5 which I needed, Reaktor which I can finally use to play OP-X on my mac, Guitar Rig. All of that for the small upgrade price was a bargain.

All that being said, what I can say about NI, is that Komplete has become increasingly a kontakt library dumping ground more than anything. Personally I already owned all the Scarbee stuff that I bought from Scarbee before he sold it to NI. (That stuff is tremendous value too, but just not for me), I already owned B4II and don't like the new sampled organs. I don't like the NI pianos at all. I don't like the string sample libs, etc.. most of that stuff is out dated fluff. The synths are awesome, but let's face it they are getting long in the tooth also. NI hasn't really developed or purchased any new awesome synths in quite a while. Those synths are phenomenally awesome and some would say there is no reason to make anything new there, you can make a lot of good music with them. But...the truth is, komplete is a bit of a dumping ground for a large collection of stuff, most of which is not revolutionary, not cutting edge, not new, not fresh....but a lot of it very solid stuff and if you can score a deal on it, then great. I would never pay full price for it, its not fresh enough. At the 50% sale that comes up at least once or twice a year then why not, its tremendous value for very well crafted synths which are still used by many, even if a little long in the tooth.

If all they do is add a few sample libs in order to call it komplete10, then it has hardly been worth the wait, nor will it be worth it to upgrade from K9 to K10 for someone like me. On the other hand, maybe there will be more. for my bucks, I can't imagine concerning myself with K10 unless it includes Kontakt6, Reaktor6, GuitarRig6, B4III (modeled) and maybe some brand new synth to blow everyone way or something.. Otherwise, IMHO most of the sample libs in Komplete are kind of ho hum and I don't expect them to be updated in K10, but perhaps new ones added, thought K9 is already way too damn big in terms of file sizes.

[philbrown]

Please excuse my throwing in a curiosity question, but why do you suppose NI has dropped so many beloved products

I think there was an earlier thread where someone suggested that NI didn't own these products and was selling them under an agreement that had lapsed.

Thanks. That theory makes more sense than I've ever been able to make of it. I'm with Dewdman on modeled vs sampled organs.

[BobK]

I don't like the NI pianos at all.

Maybe the saddest example of this is 'The Giant', which has many out-of-tune unisons. To release such an out-of-tune piano library, NI and the library developer are either clueless or shameless (or both). Too bad - in tune, that piano would sound good.

[bayswater]

I'm disappointed too, but in Kontakt, and NI in general. I avoided it for a long time, but finally succumbed early in the summer to a heavily discounted upgrade offer to V5 (from Garriton V1) so I could get access to loads of free or cheap libraries that won't play on the free player, or convert to Mach Five.

The player is very sophisticated, way more than I'll ever use, but the included sounds and patches are mediocre IMO. About the same time, I updated to SampleTank3, and although it's nowhere near Kontakt in functionality, I'm finding a lot more usable stuff there.

[frankf]

Kontakt 5 lost the User Tags feature, which was huge if one had a lot of custom instruments, etc. I keep K4 in my template for these.


Frank Ferrucci