If you are not familiar with the Native Instrument Kore Player, maybe it is time you took a look. The Kore Player is unique because it contains the "engine" from REAKTOR, MASSIVE, ABSYNTH, FM8, KONTAKT and GUITAR RIG. So you can select one patch and it's a spacey Absynth patch, call up the preset next to it, and it's a map with 50 cool drum samples played thru the Kontakt Sampler engine while the next sound is a very unique ensemble from Reaktor that starts playing when called up. It's a cool concept that is unique in the world of virtual instruments. No other company could do this because, quite frankly, no other company has this many powerful, unique virtual instruments to choose from in the first place. When you download the player (for free) it installs 50 patches that are in many cases, quite useful. Since the release of the Kore Player in early 2008, Native Instruments has been putting a ton of energy into new Soundpacks and currently have over 15 different Soundpacks available for purchase with names like Massive Expansion Vol. 1, Absynth Twilights, Kontakt Retro Machines and even Urban Arsenal. Prices range from 59.00 up to 229.00 with most of them well under 100.00 per soundpack.
To celebrate the holiday season and frankly just to get people to consider buying these soundpacks, N.I. have release Compliation Vol 1. which contains 100 patches from 11 of these Soundpacks for FREE. There are some very useful sounds included. Junkie XL created 5 of the patches including a sample menu with over 60 drum samples. The Urban Arsenal patches are really quite useful with an acoustic piano with record noise in the samples and 4 Hit Hop Sample Kits which have 1 octave of samples (C1 - B1) followed by 1 octave of sequenced patterns that use the included samples. The Sequences are locked to your DAW tempo.
The patches from the Reaktor Animated Circuits are also worth mentioning since they immediately come to life when you call them up and then you can dive into serious Sound Design Nirvana by playing with the 8 way Vector pad or by simply moving knobs that have names like Flow, FrqShift, Grain, Reverb Time.
The only drawback in my opinion is the lack of in-depth editing. Many of you reading this won't want to go there, but there are sounds where changing elements other than the 8 pre-assigned knobs would be nice. But for calling up a sound and using it in a track, then this is a very slick system. CPU usage is minimal, compatibility with all plug-in formats is there. Plus it's FREE.....
If you don't have the Native Instruments Kore Player,
Go Here and Download it first. This Compilation pack won't work unless you have the plug-in.
Once you have the Kore Player installed,
Go Here to get Compilation Vol. 1. This might be a limited time offer, if the link dies, please let me know.
