Considering Reaktor because Ableton Suite leaves me cold...

[Punky921]

While I didn't find much in Operator or Analog that I liked, I do admit that I liked Operator more. It seemed more immediately flexible.

When another poster mentioned that you should think of Operator and Analog presets as building blocks and starting points that should have effects slapped on them, I think that really helped change my perspective a bit.

[leedsquietman]

Reaktor is a very deep instrument, while having lots of great downloadable sounds, it's not the most user friendly 'point and shoot' type synth. It is a very special device, but (not comparing it directly) like Tassman and M4L, it is aimed more at sound designers who like to tweak and twiddle, rather than musicians who want to select a pad or a lead sound, do a minimal amount of tweaking and just play. Massive and Absynth are better if you just want to get to the sounds and play without having the depth to drastically morph.

General purpose synths which would give you immediate preset gratification and are not so difficult to tweak would include U-HE Zebra 2.5, Native Instruments Massive, Spectrasonics Omnisphere or even stuff like Korg's Legacy collections.

However, Angstrom pretty much nails it for me with his response - I don't regard racking Operators etc as cheating, as many of the virtual synths stack multiple elements and add FX. Waldorf's Largo is a good example of this, apart from a few simple basses, the presets are stacked in multi element, multi-oscillator, multi FX laden sounds - This can seem more impressive to someone who just wants to hit up a few sounds and play, but it can also be a nuisance if you like to tweak sounds because there's so much going on, and sometimes processing all this afterwards can be a pain (everything is super wide stereo, super FX laden, multi elements, that in the context of a song, you find yourself having to mess around with lots of EQing and stereo narrowing etc). With Operator you can rack up a couple, four or whatever, you decide and can keep it under control and it's not hard to build up and set macro controls.

[nylarch]

wouldn't it be easier to redo the GUI so you're personally familiar with it?
I mean the sampling takes a lot of time and isn't as flexible in the end..

I don't know...I think sampling is just a mindset and I feel like as soon as you get a sound inside your go-to sampler (NNXT, EXS, Kontakt etc.) you're master of your domain. You might lose a little sound flexibility, maybe a touch of sound quality, but IMO you more than make up for it with knowledge of the parameters, consistent midi mappings, etc.

What I really want is for Redmatica AutoSampler to support Sampler. For $129 you can sample any soft synth in seconds. Plus hard drive space is cheap but CPU is precious so sampling is good on that front as well. Kind of wondering if the same end result could be possible with the Live Python API....

[3dot...]

try it.. only real way to know

[nylarch]

try it.. only real way to know

would love to just need a week off work

seriously I think a $30 paypal type version of AutoSampler done with the Live API would be really useful for people.

[evon]

try to test reaktor before you buy,

Reaktor is dope, but reaktor is really COMPLEX, and it may not fit everyone's need / workflow.

I was ready to buy it for cheap last year, then I decided to test it a bit furthermore before purchasing, then I realised it was not for me.

no time to spend into such a big learning curve...

but really brilliant software, indeed

+1

[tylenol]

I futzed about last night with both of those actually, and finally found a bass sound I liked with Analog. It just felt like I was compensating for something that shouldn't have to be compensated for.

You may want to keep in mind that nearly all synth plugins (and most factory presets) have built-in effects, and that the ableton synths don't. Even the independent AAS plugins do, I think. This is exactly because you can chain ableton effects after the synth. Picking a synth at random, I opened up cameleon and looked at the "Leads-Hard" category. 37/42 (if I counted correctly) presets in that category have the built-in chorus on, and 25 have distortion on. I didn't count but quite a few also have reverb & delay on, and there wasn't a single preset in this category that lacked all four of these effects. I'm pretty sure this is representative of factory presets in all the synths I have that have built-in effects.

Also, I would personally recommend something like Zebra2 as a fallback rather than reaktor, since the learning curve is only synth programming.

[mholloway]

Try the suite presets under "Instrument Racks" rather than under the instruments themselves-- they are, in fact, the same presets, but racked up with FX. As many replies have noted, comparing totally dry patches to FX-beefed up patches from other synths is no fair, and I honestly don't know of any softsynths besides D-CAM synths that don't use FX on everything, all the time.

Analog and Operator are two of my favorite synths, and Analog is the one I do the most from-scratch programming on these days. Throw the rack-ing ability in there, and you never run out of stuff to do. I love the streamlined (but feature rich) GUI of both synths.

That said, Reaktor is incredible. But I think it's important for you to realize that you've short-changed the Suite much too quickly (hell, it's also got Sampler, which is a fantastic instrument in its own right, just as fun and useful as the other two....) and if you get Reaktor, get it for the right reasons -- e.g. not because "suite leaves you cold." It's a deep product, just keep digging in.

-M

[HeadrickProductions]

Try the suite presets under "Instrument Racks" rather than under the instruments themselves-- they are, in fact, the same presets, but racked up with FX. As many replies have noted, comparing totally dry patches to FX-beefed up patches from other synths is no fair, and I honestly don't know of any softsynths besides D-CAM synths that don't use FX on everything, all the time.

Analog and Operator are two of my favorite synths, and Analog is the one I do the most from-scratch programming on these days. Throw the rack-ing ability in there, and you never run out of stuff to do. I love the streamlined (but feature rich) GUI of both synths.

That said, Reaktor is incredible. But I think it's important for you to realize that you've short-changed the Suite much too quickly (hell, it's also got Sampler, which is a fantastic instrument in its own right, just as fun and useful as the other two....) and if you get Reaktor, get it for the right reasons -- e.g. not because "suite leaves you cold." It's a deep product, just keep digging in.

-M

when you get stuff like this for free it is hard to beat this

and this is just the tip of the iceberg

http://www.radiansoundlab.com/ I just did the demo of suite 8 but I could not get things to sound like this or massive

http://devinesound.net/ the grain cube (this thing is nasty)

http://twistedtools.com/ (there stuff is free in the user library)

[Isturite-]

i would have to agree, you can do almost anything you would ever need in ableton suite, with the exception of a few...

i had the same issue, i didnt want to use the instruments in suite so went out and got Komplete 6... got really good with massive/fm8/absynth/battery, still havent used reaktor and kontakt as much as i should... but once i got good with those synths, analog and operator seems a LOT better... which they were always really good... you just gotta know your synthesizers

go to nickstutorials.com

he does AWESOME sound design tutorials with operator, analog, sampler and simpler... if you watch his stuff you will realize you can do just about anything you need to with the stuff in suite, just bite your lip and learn how to use it all really well... some of the heaviest kick drums i've made were with operator because the harmonic chart thing allowed me to draw the harmonics on the 5ths

instrument racks, and effect racks were also a thing i'd overlooked for a long time, now i realize that they KILL

[abluesky]

i would have to agree, you can do almost anything you would ever need in ableton suite, with the exception of a few...

... you just gotta know your synthesizers

go to nickstutorials.com

he does AWESOME sound design tutorials with operator, analog, sampler and simpler... if you watch his stuff you will realize you can do just about anything you need to with the stuff in suite, just bite your lip and learn how to use it all really well... some of the heaviest kick drums i've made were with operator because the harmonic chart thing allowed me to draw the harmonics on the 5ths

instrument racks, and effect racks were also a thing i'd overlooked for a long time, now i realize that they KILL

This response really says it all. You absolutely do not *need* any other plugins or instruments besides those that come in Live. I would even go so far as to include dynamics plugins, although personally I do use 3rd party plugins in addition to Live's for different "character" or "tone." Just start programming and practice.

[dum]

I'm a bit of an Ableton newbie still, but I can't say I'm into Analog or Operator. I don't really like the presets (they sound tinny and... cheap to me somehow - the Casio electric piano sounds bore me to tears).

I'm thinking about getting Reaktor because there are some really good used deals flying around right now. What do you guys think?

I think you should offer 3dot $129 for the reaktor5 license he's selling..

Honestly though, reaktor is only complex if you intend to make your own instruments. Otherwise, the included synths/fx and the user library are easily worth the price of admission and will keep you going for years. It's literally impossible to go wrong by adding reaktor to your arsenal.

[3dot...]

considering all the synths and pre-built modules (macros in reaktor talk) you get with Reaktor...
you'll hardly 'need' to build stuff from scratch if you don't want to...
Reaktor is as deep as you want it to be,, and frankly there are so many great pre-built instrument/fx/midi-utilities..(ensembles..)
that one could get lost..
basically ..purchasing Reaktor is to buy a "ticket" to Reaktor-Land

[sschall]

i would have to agree, you can do almost anything you would ever need in ableton suite, with the exception of a few...

... you just gotta know your synthesizers

go to nickstutorials.com

he does AWESOME sound design tutorials with operator, analog, sampler and simpler... if you watch his stuff you will realize you can do just about anything you need to with the stuff in suite, just bite your lip and learn how to use it all really well... some of the heaviest kick drums i've made were with operator because the harmonic chart thing allowed me to draw the harmonics on the 5ths

instrument racks, and effect racks were also a thing i'd overlooked for a long time, now i realize that they KILL

This response really says it all. You absolutely do not *need* any other plugins or instruments besides those that come in Live. I would even go so far as to include dynamics plugins, although personally I do use 3rd party plugins in addition to Live's for different "character" or "tone." Just start programming and practice.

+1

[PLacidBasilisk]

considering all the synths and pre-built modules (macros in reaktor talk) you get with Reaktor...
you'll hardly 'need' to build stuff from scratch if you don't want to...
Reaktor is as deep as you want it to be,, and frankly there are so many great pre-built instrument/fx/midi-utilities..(ensembles..)
that one could get lost..
basically ..purchasing Reaktor is to buy a "ticket" to Reaktor-Land

+ 1