NI Reaktor

[nyne]

I saw Reaktor at a friend's place last night and thought it was really cool. Definitely a learning curve involved but sounded really really good.

I don't see it mentioned much anymore. How do u guys feel about it ? Thinking of buying it so figured i'd ask around.
Thanks
F

[lowkey]

its my favourite and most used synth...its great. there are so many "ensembles" out there [synths, fx, sequencers] and if there isnt something that is exactly what you want you can tweak the synths yourself if you are that way inclined. i dont think you could ever outgrow it

[monomer]

Originally Posted by nyne

I saw Reaktor at a friend's place last night and thought it was really cool. Definitely a learning curve involved but sounded really really good.

I don't see it mentioned much anymore. How do u guys feel about it ? Thinking of buying it so figured i'd ask around.
Thanks
F

I guess it depends on your experience with synthesis and your expectations of how you will want to use it.

I have mixed feelings about reactor.
Editing can realy stop my creativity when i'm making music.
The process of creating can take up huge chunks of time (and then you need to arrange the UI components as well to make the patch usefull).

I realy like some of it's (rather cool) features so i'm still using it.
But it doesnt fit in my process of music making like a modular synth would.
You're either editing it of using it as an instrument.
When i'm editing, the 'logical' side of my brain takes over and i'm not very capable of thinking 'musicaly'.
Not that i don't like it, i do, but it's more like programming than making music.
So when i'm making music and i want to make a sound in reaktor i usually either use syths i already made or i restrict myself to simple constructions that i can make within 10 minutes or so (like a bass synth for a dance track) and using more complete elements.

OTOH, if i have some concrete idea of a synth i can completely dissolve in building it so it can be a nice workbench.

But there are alternatives.
MaxMSP can be nice too and has some unique features.
SynthMaker is another one that i'm revisiting recently.
And there are a few others.

So maybe download a demo and see if it finds a place in your music (or your heart).

[greggybud]

Monomer.....

I would guess you are a minority. I know some who build synths, design patches, then write and produce, but most I would guess do one or the other, but not both.

I gave up BUILDING in Reaktor years ago. A point in time came along where I had to admit music production was more important to myself than designing synthesizers and sounds.

So now I use the NI Factory ensembles plus about 100 more specialized user ensembles downloaded from the user library.

Even though Reaktor hasn't seen an update in a few years, it is a very deep, flexible and powerful beast. You can spend many years just exploring the possibilities.

[Silver Sonya]

Originally Posted by greggybud

Monomer.....

I would guess you are a minority.

Umm.. yeah.

In general: the scientist/tweaker-types make the instruments and the musicians use them. Rarely the twain will meet. That's pretty much the Reaktor story.

I'm in the latter camp.

- c

[deuc647]

Ok, i have a question, im itching to assemble a dotcom synth and am buying kore and komplete tomorrow, will reaktor suppress my itch for a while?

[darthtrader]

Originally Posted by deuc647

Ok, i have a question, im itching to assemble a dotcom synth and am buying kore and komplete tomorrow, will reaktor suppress my itch for a while?

As far as fresh sounds, of course...If there is a downside to reaktor at all its that there is almost too many presets that its daunting at this point.
Keep in mind though that reaktor is modular in the way a programming lanugage is modular with being able to make sub routines...if your itch is to randomly wire up modules then reaktor won't scratch that itch, it will probly just stop making any sound at all fairly quickly.

[Ben F]

I love the sound of Reaktor- it's still very unique. Some or the ensembles are really mind blowing. I do find many of the sounds very obscure, which is great for experimentation, but difficult to actually use in a track.

The synth drone stuff is inspiring.

[greggybud]

Originally Posted by Silver Sonya

Umm.. yeah.

In general: the scientist/tweaker-types make the instruments and the musicians use them. Rarely the twain will meet. That's pretty much the Reaktor story.

I'm in the latter camp.

- c

It wasn't always that way, but as Reaktor became bigger and better, it became more complex.

And more power to the scientist/tweakers because they have made some incredible specialized synthesizers not found anywhere else. I have much gratitude toward many of the contributors that have made the NI Reaktor user library a gold mine!

I suppose you can look at the KVR downloads and say the same as with Reaktor by finding soft synths that in my opinion could have been marketed such as Synth 1 and its gigantic patch library, but with Reaktor there is a bit more consistency.

Before Reaktor I was using Seer Systems Reality partly created by Dave Smith. It wasn't bad sounding at all, but when I heard Generator which later morphed into Reaktor around 1999 nothing else came close.

Reaktor isn't for everyone, but if you are looking for depth, flexability, and the chance to create new sounds and synth methods, it's definitely worth the money...actually many times over.

[pyvnd]

Reaktor 5 sounds decent and there is no reason for me to say anything bad about it. But I just don't like it and I don't use it much at all.

It's also far too much of a CPU hog.

[PeteJames]

I can not be arsed making my own instruments! Software like max and reactor make me feel like i should be writing software but I don't want to make the tools, i just want to use them. Magazines I read say things like 'all the cutting edge techno producers use reactor', 'you need this to be original'....I shall leave the geekery to those who enjoy it.

[plaid_emu]

If I had to pick one musical tool for a deserted island trip it would have to be Reaktor. I don't know if there's another instrument that covers so much ground effectively. Subtractive, additive, FM, sampling, percussion, effects and every other technique you can imagine for making electronic music.

It's so powerful and versatile that I sold most of my hardware synths and drum machines to streamline my workflow and put some more focus on Reaktor. I'm quite confident that I could dump every other sound source in my setup and make great music with only Reaktor (and the few pieces of outboard I own).

[tribeofenki]

Reaktor is a whole environment... users have emulated tons of hardware, you can - as an engineer - connect low level elements as OSC, frequency, filters, math functions to get ANYTHING. Native Instruments leading software...

To me the germans (NI) should give it a multitrack GUI and attack a good hardware soundcard. Could be a killer buy IMHO

[kasprouch]

highly recommend making your own synth. apart from being extremely streamlined in Reaktor, it really boosted my synthesis skills just by knowing what was under the hood...


nevermind the 'how bout I add another 6 oscillators here' freedom you get

[fragletrollet]

What are your favourite Reaktor Ensemble and why?

[kasprouch]

EIXT2... why? cause its brilliant

limelite & fastfx especially

[PeteJames]

Originally Posted by fragletrollet

What are your favourite Reaktor Ensemble and why?

This could make a really good thread on its own

[Silver Sonya]

To be clear, my post wasn't meant to be derisive. I love Reaktor and I'm enormously grateful to the ensemble-building community. So many brilliant people.

- c

[clorax hurd]

Originally Posted by nyne

I saw Reaktor at a friend's place last night and thought it was really cool. Definitely a learning curve involved but sounded really really good.

I don't see it mentioned much anymore. How do u guys feel about it ? Thinking of buying it so figured i'd ask around.
Thanks
F

for me, buying reaktor was probably the best invested money into software, because it's very versatile and i rarely need any other effects.

for example few months back, i demoed the UAD Roland Dimension D and liked it, but had no money at the moment to buy it, so day before the demo expired, i just started thinking about how that thing works and made my own, very similar thing in reaktor. it's not an exact copy but i don't care, while it works as good as the UAD one, which would cost me 150$. it saved me so much money this way. effect plugins are usually limited in some ways, so i would always have to buy some more just because of some different features. but in reaktor i have almost anything i want. (i say almost, because there are things that you cannot do. for such things i use pure data or csound (free/opensource software. very good also, but not very user friendly).

and it can really sound very good / as good as any digital plugin/hw, if the patch is done well and if you set reasonable oversampling (and if it doesn't overload your CPU - but that's the same for all software)

after 10 years working with it (it used to be called Generator back than), i am able to do almost anything with it. don't use the finished ensembles/instruments much anymore. and it fits my workflow very well. its true what was said above, that it's hard to make musick and edit the patches at the same time, but i usually don't need to do this at the same time. i just make music, and when i have an idea of sound, which i cannot find anywhere, i just stop playing for a while, run the reaktor, sculpt the sound (using just the basic modules very often) and continue playing the music.
i can do this very quickly now, but sure it needs experience.
also it's harder to do this when i rehearse with band, because other members could get bored while i'm patching, but often i just leave them to play and have fun, while i patch and test my sounds on headphones.

but maybe even if you're not experienced with patching, much of the finished instruments and ensebles that come with it are very good (but that's the more boring thing you can do with it in my opinion. but can be fun (and good way to learn) if you start going into structures of it and adjusting it for your purpose).
+ much more good things can be downloaded from shared user's library on native instruments web...

i think that the most important thing while working with software like this, is having a vision of what are you want to do. it can be fun to turn it on and just play with the presets, but that way you usually only get lost in all the possibilities, waste your time and end up without any output/results...

good luck!

[clorax hurd]

Originally Posted by i604

Reaktor is a whole environment... users have emulated tons of hardware, you can - as an engineer - connect low level elements as OSC, frequency, filters, math functions to get ANYTHING.

i agree, but just to be accurate, you can NOT do ANYTHING in reaktor.
for example there is no fast fourier transformation in it.
there things that you are not able to there, and also things that can be done, but not in any elegant way (hard to patch, because there are no ways to generate patches. you need to use mouse for everything. or some things are possible to do, but would be killing 777x more resources than the algorithm would really need, because in reaktor you can set oversampling for whole patch/ensemble only. cannot have oversampling only in some macros/subpatches...)...

for such things it's better just to make it in pure data, supercollider, csound, max/msp, ... ... there are many other modular enviroments for audio. i value reaktor mainly because it's very user-friendly.
once i had things in puredata prepared for whole concert. took me week to patch all those things and prepare them, and when i got into the city where i was going to play i found that i forgot all the patches at home (copied wrong directory). had to redo all of it, and did that in 2 days in reaktor (the same thing that took me week in pure data)...since then i think twice before starting doing anything, and use reaktor almost for everthing, and use the other software only when needed. . . it saves me time...

[feyshay]

It is hard enough to design a good patch. Designing a synth is something I wanted to do, but I'm too busy doing other things (playing instruments, etc.)
Reaktor seems pretty limitless and has a huge database of really interesting stuff on NI. It is the penultimate software synth IMO if you get thru the learning curve.

I like some predictability and familiarity. I tend to drift toward Zebra 2, Alchemy (I"m really loving that), Massive and the Ableton Live suite synths/instruments.

[casiosk1]

Definitely a desert island synth...have NI's Reaktor library bookmarked in my browser's menu bar for quick grabbage of the newest, coolest ENS. There are so many talented designers, that I feed off their creativity, and have no intention of ever "rolling my own," as it were, since the sounds I make with Reaktor are a little "dyfferent."

[tribeofenki]

Being a long-time NI fan and Modular hardware admirer...

I ask here if someone has used this...

Der Modular Projekte by Herw aus Dortmund.
He's moderator here (Deutsch):

Deutsches Reaktor Forum • Thema anzeigen - der MODULAR

[djugel]

Dumb question.. . can you buy Reaktor seperately anymore? All I ever see is the KOMPLETE box set. I don't want any of that other stuff..

[Konketsu]

Originally Posted by djugel

Dumb question.. . can you buy Reaktor seperately anymore? All I ever see is the KOMPLETE box set. I don't want any of that other stuff..

Not a dumb question at all, because I felt exactly the same way. You can buy Reaktor separately at the Native Instruments online shop.

You know you wanna...

Reaktor

[djugel]

Pretty pricey .. seems like they are forcing you to get the box set,..

[bigbongo]

Reaktor is incredible but it's so huge it's too big.

I love it, dip in every now and then and always come out inspired; for weird for soundtrack stuff or sound design yes, it's excellent.

[cane creek]

Originally Posted by greggybud

Even though Reaktor hasn't seen an update in a few years, it is a very deep, flexible and powerful beast. You can spend many years just exploring the possibilities.

Massive and FM8 are currently in 64bit Beta so I assume Reaktor will get a revamp pretty soon.

[Yoozer]

Originally Posted by djugel

Pretty pricey .. seems like they are forcing you to get the box set,..

It hurts to jump in but the upgrades are pretty cheap and convenient. I got in at Komplete 4 - best decision I've ever made

[gentleclockdivid]

Originally Posted by clorax hurd

i agree, but just to be accurate, you can NOT do ANYTHING in reaktor.
for example there is no fast fourier transformation in it.
there things that you are not able to there, and also things that can be done, but not in any elegant way (hard to patch, because there are no ways to generate patches. you need to use mouse for everything. or some things are possible to do, but would be killing 777x more resources than the algorithm would really need, because in reaktor you can set oversampling for whole patch/ensemble only. cannot have oversampling only in some macros/subpatches...)...

for such things it's better just to make it in pure data, supercollider, csound, max/msp, ... ... there are many other modular enviroments for audio. i value reaktor mainly because it's very user-friendly.
once i had things in puredata prepared for whole concert. took me week to patch all those things and prepare them, and when i got into the city where i was going to play i found that i forgot all the patches at home (copied wrong directory). had to redo all of it, and did that in 2 days in reaktor (the same thing that took me week in pure data)...since then i think twice before starting doing anything, and use reaktor almost for everthing, and use the other software only when needed. . . it saves me time...

Yes you can do fft ...made with the core modules ....the pack includes a 256 band fft vocoder and phase vocoder ( similar to prosoniq morph )etc..
https://co.native-instruments.com/in...l&patchid=5722


About reaktor , I'v just recently bought a used license for a good price , Altough I am verry happy with reaktor it is verry difificult for me to integrate it in my workflow .
There are tons of drummachines in the user library but I hardly ever use them because I do my programming /arranging in renoise ...at least that works much better for me , ...there are some drummachines that use synthesis instead of samples ..I prefer those and just delete the sequencer engine and use it as a soundsource sequenced from within renoise .
Because loading reaktor as a vst with somesequencer ( drummachines) can cause some sync problems with the host .also they consume way more cpu than an optimised vst
The reaktor based synths can sound from mediocre to excellent depending on the developer ...there are a few reaktor creators out there that are really pure genius , sonic twist , lazyfish , martin brinkmann , programchild , martijn zwartjes to name a few .
I just wish N.I. solved the sync problem and/or added rewire suport
OOh yeah chech these out
https://co.native-instruments.com/in...&patchid=10074
https://co.native-instruments.com/in...&patchid=10075
these are 2 ensembles by Tom Butnner , they really sound amazing