Native Instruments vs. Live 9 ?

[jupebox]

Comparing the sound libraries, which would you say is better?

Native Instruments (Kontakt 4) or the Live 9 Suite

Does either sound better or work better?

[re8]

NI Komplete has much much more "sounds" if you will, but you are paying more for it. Suite9 comes with Max4Live, so that opens more "patches" (mostly effects, glitch-synths, & MIDI stuff). I would say M4L is def worth the $100 they used to ask for it, so consider that as part of your equation.

Personally, if I had semi-limited funds, I would actually use Reason with Live in ReWire mode, with Suite9 in close 2nd. Reason just sound more silky to me.

[schullermusik]

Live 9 Suite would be more "portable" if you plan to collaborate with other LIve 9 users. I have both, and honestly, I like to see what I can do with JUST Suite - I can always replace with the NI Komplete stuff if I want to or need to.

[Machinesworking]

IMO, and I realize a lot of people will disagree about this, Komplete is a more complete package.
The main things that interest me in Suite are Operator and Max for Live. The rest is OK, but overshadowed by third party plug ins in power, mostly you get ease of use with Suite plug ins. I ended up getting all the AAS plug ins that a good portion of Suite are based on and honestly I much prefer the AAS versions over the Live GUI'd versions. I prefer Kontakt, and recently Machfive 3 over Sampler. I have never understood the attraction to Sampler? it's one filter for the entire keyboard, no matter how varied the samples are, this just doesn't cut it for me at all.
Max for Live however gets you straight into granular synthesis, includes a convolution reverb and is ultimately more flexible than you probably need. Max/MSP which is it's stand alone version sold directly by Cycling 74 the developers of Max is a $500 piece of software, IMO max4live is worth the price of Suite.

Komplete is freaking huge, there's a ton of software and the basic synths and Sampler are great. Kontakt is an industry standard. Massive and Absynth are great, Reaktor is like the mainly synth and FX version of Max 4 Live. the main problem with Komplete is being overwhelmed and just not diving into developing your own sounds out of the package, or not using it to it's full potential. IMO you get more of a hyper modern slick digital music sound out of NI gear unless you start to really use the synths and samplers to sculpt your own sound.

I'm going to upgrade to Suite 9, but I will say that it's mainly because I already own a couple great soft synths outside of Suite, and Max4Live is included this time.

[login]

Suite + DIVA + Zebra Is the ultimate ITB stuff since live lacks a up to date analog emulation.

You may also consider all the effects you get with live which are of equal quality to NI stuff and more efficient.

[schullermusik]

You may also consider all the effects you get with live which are of equal quality to NI stuff and more efficient.

This. Very much this.

[antarktika]

Suite9 comes with Max4Live, so that opens more "patches" (mostly effects, glitch-synths, & MIDI stuff). I would say M4L is def worth the $100 they used to ask for it, so consider that as part of your equation.

and NI comes with Reaktor, which is another two thousand or so instruments and effects, so you should probably consider that as a counterbalance in that equation!

[glitchrock-buddha]

You may also consider all the effects you get with live which are of equal quality to NI stuff and more efficient.

Strongly disagree here. NI effects are far superior to Live effects in pretty much every category. Though I have nothing against Live's EQ and compressors.

[glitchrock-buddha]

One thing to note though. The poster seems to comparing to Kontakt, not Komplete. The Ableton suite can not compare to Komplete. At all. However Kontakt 4 is a comparable in terms of sample content, but of course doesn't give you all the synthesizers as suite. And not nearly as much drum content, which is quite good in Suite 9. If it's a choice between Kontakt 4 or Live Suite, definitely get Live Suite. However I'd never Kontakt alone, even though it's my main sampler. You want to go for Komplete for sure. Komplete 9 was just announced which blows Live suite out of the water.

[yur2die4]

Even though this is about Kontakt, which I won't bother comparing,

Komplete is absolutely ready to take on any and every situation where you need a sound or an effect.... And NI stuff seems to work quite fast and even solidly from my experience.

But, USING Live is the best music/audio experience that I can imagine to this day.**

**until Push comes out!!!

[Evengy]

Suite + DIVA + Zebra Is the ultimate ITB stuff since live lacks a up to date analog emulation.

You may also consider all the effects you get with live which are of equal quality to NI stuff and more efficient.

same setup here i don´t wanna use so much 3rd party stuff so i decided to buy suite 2 years ago

[pencilrocket]

hilarious comparison

[2klo]

Wait, why are we comparing Kontakt 4 to Live 9? Kontakt 5 has been out for a while and Komplete 9 is around the corner.
A comparison with Komplete 9 would be fair or at least Komplete 8.
If all we are talking about is sound quality of the libraries, it seems you would use Live 9 to shape the whole song then replace the sounds that are not so good sounding with more powerful ones from Komplete.

As far as the orchestral sounds go, NI beats Live any day with its articulations and sound quality. The strings in Live sound way too fake.

Of course, if you factor in Max for Live vs Reaktor, M4L beats the hell out of Reaktor. M4L alone is worth the price of Live.

Operator is real close to FM8 but the beauty of FM8 is the ability to import the factory sounds from its hardware counterparts i.e DX7, DX100, TX81z, etc...Also FM8 sounds huge and rich. However, programming Operator is a breeze and if you don't need all the bells and whistles of glorious Yamaha FM synthesis programming in FM8, you can get by just fine with Operator.

Sampler is nice but filter wise it is no comparison to Kontakt's advanced multi filters.

There is no equivalent of Absynth in Live and I can't do without it. Absynth is my green fairy.

Battery used to be awesome when it was first developed by the same guy who created Loopazoid a while back. Now it's like an MPC 30 sitting in the corner staring at Maschine doing all the work. Drum Rack is a beast and way quicker and efficient than Battery but the drum sounds in my opinion are weak in Live. For more punch and grit I'd go for the NI sounds especially the selection from Maschine included in Komplete. The Abbey Road drum series are pretty darn nice and let you a lot of control of mic bleed,

Amp is a quick fix but Guitar Rig is a beast.

Grand Piano sounds in Live are meh. Any of the Berlin, New York, Vienna or The Giant sound more expressive to me.

Visually, NI is pretty but Live's simplicity is more powerful as everything is laid out in front of you. This might not be related to sound by if my eyes can't find anything in the 10 deep menus of Kontakt I lose focus which should be on music.

Controller assignments in Live take split seconds. Live lets you set a controller or a keyboard shortcut to every darn thing on the screen. I don't think I ever use NI synth controller functions directly any more. I always control them via Live.

Finally, despite the higher quality of NI's sounds, one thing that will always kill Komplete in this comparison is that everything is so accesible in Live. Live is like a workstation synthesizer all self contained. With Komplete there's just too much stuff everywhere. The've tried to unify all that in Kore but that failed miserably and then got discontinued.

Ah, if only I could transfer all the NI sounds and the separate instruments to the Sounds and Instruments folders in Live instead of fighting VST this and Audio Units that.

[The Carpet Cleaner]

To unify all the komplete Sounds and instrument, You can use Mashine.

[Leon Tricker]

No one seems to have mentioned that Suite comes with this thing called, erm..., 'Ableton Live'.

Komplete doesn't include a DAW.