Live and NI Kore: what's the surplus?

John_TT · Post by **John_TT** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:42 pm

When the first news about Native Instruments Kore came out it really caught my attention. The idea of one environment to control VSTIs and VSTFXs is very tempting. I was planning to save up, check it out and possibly buy it. But I start to realize that Live enables me to access the parametres of (most) VSTIs and VSTFX. Since the little bugger isn't out to test yet (?) I was wondering what your opinions are on the combination of Live with NI Kore, based on the available info? My main concern is finding a surplus in NI Kore on top of Live.

Really looking forward to your reactions, thanks in advance!

John

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 5:00 pm

I don't find it redundant at all- especially for playing live.

Kore has a much higher resolution than the typical 128 steps of most controllers. The knobs themselves are touch sensitive. Any instrument or effect can have multiple control pages, so automation of any parameter is just a press of Kore's cursor button(s) away once you have it set up. Different instances of the same instrument can have different controller assignmets, and you can use multiple instances of an instrument on the same MIDI channel. Add to that the built in audio/MIDI interface and the combo of Kore/Live's a no-brainer for live work.

Then again I might be biased- I'm one of the Kore forum moderators

ew

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 7:08 pm

How would one get more resolution out a live plug in most of the live devices seem to handle 128 step resolution (don't know how accurate this is or if it even applies- just a hunch!)

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 7:54 pm

LOFA wrote:How would one get more resolution out a live plug in most of the live devices seem to handle 128 step resolution (don't know how accurate this is or if it even applies- just a hunch!)

I'm not talking about the Live devices per se- I'm talking plugins in general. There's a lot of controls on the average plugin that have more than 128 values, and using the 0-127 resolution of the normal MIDI controller is a compromise at best.

ew

John_TT · Post by **John_TT** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 8:50 pm

Well, from your forum:
Quote:
"The idea of having all your sounds categorized sounds inviting, until you discover that it only applies to the NI programs and ony the factory presets.....
"

Boinggg, major bummer...

I hope NI soon rethink their policy if this is true. Only factory presets? Not exactly what you would expect from a 'revolutionary software'.

John

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 9:21 pm

John_TT wrote:Well, from your forum:
Quote:
"The idea of having all your sounds categorized sounds inviting, until you discover that it only applies to the NI programs and ony the factory presets.....
"

Boinggg, major bummer... :( I hope NI soon rethink their policy if this is true. Only factory presets? Not exactly what you would expect from a 'revolutionary software'.

John

Those are the only ones that are categorized out of the box- true. There's nothing to stop you from categorizing the other plugins (or your own NI patches) yourself, or for the developer of your plugin to start supporting .ksd as an option.

Do you have any idea what a task it would be to categorize the presets of even the other major software manufacturers' plugins, not to mention the smaller ones? And, while some AI routines are fairly good, I've yet to see one that would take a preset from a synth at random and be able to assign such attributes as bright or pad or...

ew

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 4:10 am

Wow. I'm getting less and less interested every post. Just how much labor would it take to make one's own presets? I am interested in getting Reaktor one day.

Thanks!

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 4:42 am

LOFA wrote:Wow. I'm getting less and less interested every post. Just how much labor would it take to make one's own presets? I am interested in getting Reaktor one day.

Thanks!

Open up your plugin in Kore, assign the knobs to what you want them to control (controllers are per patch and not global), define your attributes (they're listed categories- just click on the proper terms) and save it as a .ksd. Done.

ew

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 4:46 am

And of course, you can add other instruments and/or effects to your base .ksd and save THAT as another .ksd.

ew

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 5:13 am

Thanks. ANd, this is not limited to NI software?

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 5:37 am

What I'm curious about is if it's possible to have a "user" preset section, with subcategories of your own making? I'm only interested in factory presets as starting points, and hardly ever use anything that hasn't been at least tweaked a bit. It would be nice to not have to sort through factory presets when browsing for my patches.

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 6:00 am

LOFA wrote:Thanks. ANd, this is not limited to NI software?

Not limited at all. In fact, it also serves the same function as the FXpansion wrappers do- for example on a Mac you can run VSTs in an AU host such as Logic (or AU plugs inside a VST host) or in PT without a wrapper. On Windows, you can run VSTs in either a DXi host or PT without a wrapper.

Needless to say, you can't go cross platform with your plugins- you won't get AU plugs to run on a Windows box; and you still can't run host-specific plugs outside of their host (you still can't use your Logic plugs in Live, for example).

Machinesworking wrote:What I'm curious about is if it's possible to have a "user" preset section, with subcategories of your own making? I'm only interested in factory presets as starting points, and hardly ever use anything that hasn't been at least tweaked a bit. It would be nice to not have to sort through factory presets when browsing for my patches.

You'll have to use NI's categories, but you can have them in their own subfolders and browse for them that way from the controller. If you're browsing by the attributes, you'll get NI stuff in there as well. I'd like to see that change myself- maybe later.

ew

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 6:26 am

ewistrand wrote:You'll have to use NI's categories, but you can have them in their own subfolders and browse for them that way from the controller. If you're browsing by the attributes, you'll get NI stuff in there as well. I'd like to see that change myself- maybe later.

ew

OK, so you could load a single category up with subfolders, say Bass with "user Bass" and then add you own patches to it? if this is the case then it's no too bad.
Besides, at some point it's always nice to streamline a category into sounds that you yourself would actually use in a song, not all patches are useful to all people, so being able to have a favorites folder would be good.

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 7:01 am

Yep, you can have user folders and subfolders.

ew

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 9:09 am

I'd be snapping up Kore in an instant if it had some DSP.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like a riced up midi controller that requires you to run a software package and/or VST instance while using Live.

BCR's and many other controllers can do hi-res, however they aren't touch sensitive. Also, why can't you just make a file structure on your computer called "Presets" and make folders containing your VST's presets? Apart from easy backup, it lets you use them on other computers and swap with your friends that don't have Kore.