{"id":123,"date":"2021-08-12T02:28:47","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T02:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=123"},"modified":"2021-08-21T06:39:01","modified_gmt":"2021-08-21T06:39:01","slug":"reaktor-6","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/reaktor-6\/","title":{"rendered":"NI Reaktor 6 \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A bit patchy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I remember when Reaktor<\/em> was in its heyday \u2013 I still have the printed paper manual. At the time there\u2019d been a long-standing community working with MaxMSP<\/em>, an ecosystem for people to code music things. Max<\/em> was (and still is) butt ugly in that \u2018we are for serious academics\u2019 way and refused to play with other children. So Native Instruments formed in the 90\u2019s to sell a friendlier tool called Generator<\/em> which eventually evolved into Reaktor<\/em>. It was a siren call to the coders \u2013 look! You can make things that look pretty and have a wide audience. There was an exodus of coders and the Reaktor<\/em> library grew quickly with unique and powerful gadgets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The decline came around 2010 when Ableton teamed up with Cycling74 to create Max for Live<\/em>. Live<\/em> had become the darling of the Serious Electronic Musician And\/Or DJ, and the same small pool of coders could plug into a sexier and even bigger ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reaktor<\/em> fought back with Blocks<\/em>, being a cooler looking reply to Max\u2019s BEAP<\/em> modular system \u2013 both attempts to gather up a bigger flock to their church. But both have been seriously challenged by new competitors, such as the free VCV modular<\/em> system. To sum it up there\u2019s a lot of choice now, and coders spread more thinly over competing camps. The reality is that Reaktor\u2019s<\/em> largest audience will always want completed tools that can\u2019t be found otherwise, but the sample manipulations and physical modelling that was once its selling point can now be found in plenty of other plug-ins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a plug-in that needs plug-ins (whereas Max for Live<\/em> slots into Live<\/em> as if was part of the DAW). Let\u2019s say you want to use Monark<\/em>, which is a fine emulation of a MOOG Model D. You load Reaktor<\/em> and then load Monark<\/em> into Reaktor<\/em>. That tiny little double step is sufficiently different to just loading a MOOG VST to make it less likely to happen. It\u2019s the same tiny little double step that is killing Reason<\/em> and Rewire<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Reaktor Library<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you scan through the Reaktor library, you\u2019ll find gems. You\u2019ll also find a hell of a lot of coal. Some things look like \u2018real instruments\u2019, others look like cardboard boxes. For every curious granular wonderland there\u2019s some guy\u2019s half-finished Jupiter 8 tribute that looks like a cybertruck and sounds worse. This is same problem that killed Atari\u2019s home gaming division and led Nintendo to deny any unauthorised development for their consoles (yes, Reaktor<\/em> works a lot like a game console.) When the only place you could get a grain sampler was Reaktor,<\/em> then OK, but everyone has a grain sampler now. Native Instruments have tried to guide the way with in-house instruments and the sub panel below is about the ones I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kontakt<\/em> probably came to you as part of the Komplete<\/em> collection. When you get tired of playing with Massive<\/em>, give it a spin. Try the library. This is why Native Instruments exists, and you now live in the future they wanted to create:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We started off as a bunch of freaks with new ideas of doing things, a bit anti-establishment. Generator was a product idea for liberating the synthesizer user from the big manufacturer. Before, it was a big company in Japan that made the chips and you could take it or leave it. Generator was empowerment for the musician: if you don’t like the synth, OK: change it, build your own and share it with other users.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you feel it? Or do you wish they sold their own instruments as plug-ins, not plugin-in-plug-ins?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As said before MONARK is a nice MOOG. Better than many of the other nice MOOGS, but not others. It’s a MAYBE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RAZOR \u2013 one of a very few additive synthesisers that allow the average user to know what they are doing when designing from scratch. Compared to LOOM2 you have less choices and the flow is constrained to a familiar subtractive synthesis pathway. For that reason, the sounds can often be near to traditional with some inharmonic features. But for anyone who likes the idea of additive without the pain it\u2019s a well-balanced compromise so YES.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPARK \u2013 I don\u2019t see why I\u2019d ever use this rather average subtractive synth plug-in-plug-in. NO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PRISM \u2013 a \u2018modal\u2019 synthesiser which is a bit like tapping a bowl with a spoon, or brushing a metal plate or undulating a wigwam, I made that last bit up, but it\u2019s really quite nice what it does which a shimmery metallic spacey thing that is a bit unique. YES.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SKANNER XT \u2013 scratches back and forth on samples, which is OK I guess but I never seem to say, \u2018wow I wish I could scratch like that again\u2019. MAYBE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE MOUTH, FLESH etc. \u2013 I use my fingers, sorry. NO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KONTOUR, ROUNDS \u2013 ok enough already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bit patchy I remember when Reaktor was in its heyday \u2013 I still have the printed paper manual. At the time there\u2019d been a long-standing community working with MaxMSP, an ecosystem for people to code music things. Max was (and still is) butt ugly in that \u2018we are for serious academics\u2019 way and refused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-123","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-modular"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}