I'm Willing To Admit (sorta) That I Was Wrong (sorta)...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Yes, it’s true that I’ve said nasty things about NI’s Kore product line in the past, but having labored through the tutorial videos (the which are hosted by the single most uninspiring person in the music industry) and played with the free Kore Player that came available this week, I now kind of understand what Kore 2 is all about, and I even might maybe kind of want one a little bit.
It is, I think, fair to say that this bad boy isn’t for everyone. It wasn’t for me not five hours ago. (Note the extravagant use of the double negative there. English is such a versatile language. You can say just about anything.) But I’ve seen the light, I think. Maybe. As far as I can tell, this would be useful if you (a) owned a lot of NI products (which I do), and (b) didn’t much like programming them (which I don’t.) It is true that I’m an unrepentant preset tweaker, and I’ll not apologize for it. I’m not sure about making the jump, though. Any NI Kore 2 users want to talk me off the ledge before I throw good money after bad?
10 comments
sure. Kore 2 is great.
I kinda liked Kore 1, but I was one of the rare few who had it running stably.
Kore 2 has been improved in every way, really. The best part is how quickly and easily you can organize 3rd party effects and synths. All you have to do is right click an effect and say "add all presets to library". It will then take you to a tagging menu so you can sort them farther. All AD effects have their own meta-category and color designation. Some of my favorite presets have even more tag data.
I think that's pretty much the best part of kore 2. a lot of people talk about how the more ni products you have the better, but I think that's more or less from a tweaker's perspective, as you get the benefit of all the koresounds. kore 2 + massive is a treat, as the 8 macros in massive map nicely to the 8 knobs on the controller. the navigation on the controller is much better now too. you don't really have to look at your monitor at all.
I guess my only problem with it is that it (sometimes) takes a while to load. once you load one instance, any instance you open after that goes much quicker, though. it's very stable, though.
We bought Kore 1. We were one of the foolish early adopters. It made us totally miserable and proved utterly useless. We sold it. The whole notion now gives me a headache. I'm sure it's better now, but... I'm still recovering from PTSD tremors.
- c
I find that Kore 2 (only 2, the original version kind of sucked a little) makes for quicker sound design, at least for me. However, I traditionally have stayed away from "knob boxes" because I hated working to get mappings set up everywhere only to be rewarded with midi resolution controllers. Kore's automating, easy customizable pages, and hardware navigator make for a much better hands on experience. I will say however, from my experience with a Kore 1 controller and the Kore 2 software, that the interface on the device can be very confusing at first.
As a Logic user Kore provides some extra benefit by supplementing some lacking areas. First, you can build up complex routings and multi-instrument/output or fancy buss processing setups on a single track, meaning that you can freeze them. Second, Kore will load VST plug-ins, giving it the added bonus of not needing additional wrappers. And finally, the arpeggiator in Kore provides more functionality and is more easily set up and manipulated than Logic's built-in variation.
I do have one major complaint though. They do not handle delay compensation inside their plugin. It's understandable, as the delay reported to the host would change as the instruments and effects in a performance are changed. I'm guessing many hosts wouldn't handle the randomly changing delay well. This causes many very useful plug-ins (e.g. all my UAD-1 based plugs, and many other compressors, etc. ) to be less useful, unless you want to play the manual delay adjustment game. In a situation with multiple delays to be compensated for on multiple busses the manual methods get pretty tricky.
Ok, so I have another feature request. Implement delay compensation in Kore, but give me a setting where I can enter a max latency to be reported to the host. If I can stay under that latency with my patch, then everything is good (with Kore compensating for the unused delay time allotment). If I run over, let me deal with it (but maybe warn me that it's happening).
I've been looking for some synth with many many many sounds and active preset community. Was thinking about nexus for a while, but that is ruled out for various reasons.
I quickly jumped and downloaded that player, and being a bit disappointed that not all the presets work it kind of bummed me out. I've now uninstalled it, totally wrecked my trust in it's stability.
Kore 1 was a disaster.
Kore 2 is pretty amazing.
I am a layerer (is that a word?) - most of my synth parts are comprised of 2-4 different plugs layered, and my greateat annoyance was having to create and edit similar automation for all of them - Now, if I use Kore, I can assign multiple parameters to one knob (i.e. if I've got 4 synths layered, I can assign all of their individiual releases to one easy to automate knob) and the multiple synths behave like one. Brilliant.
Plus, the controller is very easy to use. And very easy to customise. I can create pages of knob and button assignments labeled exactly what I want, and with useful ranges without having to hit bizarre impossible to remember key combinations (my M-Audio Axiom is a nightmare).
Downside? Yes. It takes longer than to set up. And it adds CPU to the equation. But having what used to amount to 4 instrument tracks, and several buses on one easy to manipulate track saves me some sanity.
I should also mention that some non-NI plugs work great in Kore (I use my Korg Legacy Collection in there daily) and some crash the thing faster than fast. It shines with NI plugs, everything else should be approached with caution.
It's interesting that they have changed their biz model from selling individual engines to giving away engines and selling presets.
I've always wondered if the CPU load different? My laptop could use a break. Is 8 Absynth sounds on Kore better that 8 instantiations of Absynth?
NI didn't change their biz model at all - they are reselling their content over and over and over again ...
Yo. I decided to give KorePlayer a shot last night too. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to like my otherwise stable setup and their Service Center app for registration is pretty annoying on a Mac. Maybe I'll reinstall cause some of the features sound useful. Zzzz.
I recently sold my Komplete5, thus I am not keen for Kore Player if it's not stable with 3rd party products. It is a bit draconian to require service center for the free Kore Player IMO.
One reason I sold K5 was the copy protection scheme. When SC worked, it was great and saved a lot of time but when it did not it was a massive headache. During some of the transitions/upgrades (owner since K3) I had issues with SC and even though NI eventually sorted my problems it took much longer than I had hoped for/expected from such a large company.
Since eschewing the entire NI line (except for my old trusty copy of FM7 - pre-komplete) it frightens me to become reliant on the NI kore player so readily; especially considering the alleged stability issues with 3rd party plug-ins. What stability issues are there? How severe are they?
Obviously I am not a target user though. If 3rd party support grows and stabilizes in the future I may reconsider. Glad the KLC stuff works well definitely proves that well made plug-ins are compatible.
Comments are closed on this post.