NI KOMPAKT
Aug 1, 2004 12:00 PM, BY JOHN McJUNKIN
Not a lot of people are running around with hardware samplers in their racks these days. With the proliferation of powerful host-based sampling available, it just doesn't make that much sense anymore. And the soft samplers continue to get more and more sophisticated, providing features that transcend anything that ever existed in the hardware world. One issue that has arisen with the increasing complexity of software samplers is exactly that: complexity. Although it's nice to have myriad bells and whistles at your disposal, it would also be nice to have a no-muss, no-fuss sampler that allows you to sit down and quickly knock out your work without requiring a doctorate in nuclear physics. Enter Kompakt. The latest offering from Native Instruments, this is a kinder, gentler little sibling of NI's world-class Kontakt sampler. Kontakt provides anything and everything you could ask for in a sampler and then some whereas Kompakt is the simpler, sit-down-and-get-it-done-quickly version. Don't presume that Kompakt isn't powerful in its own right, though. You can still do some damage with it, albeit with less menu diving and microtweaking.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Kompakt can be used as a stand-alone application or as a plug-in with most popular host applications. (Check the company's Website for the latest list of supported drivers and plug-in formats.) I test-drove the program as a stand-alone on both Mac (dual G4/1GHz with 1 GB of RAM) and Windows (Athlon/1.5GHz with 500 MB of RAM) computers. Kompakt grants you the ability to have as many as eight different instruments open at once, each of which can be individually addressed with its own MIDI channel. Alternatively, the eight instruments can be layered together into a multi-instrument (a piano layered with strings, for example). You can import numerous sound-file formats such as Battery, Akai S1000/S3000, EXS, HALion, SF2, LM4, GigaSampler, AIFF, WAV and SDII. The program supports resolution ranges from 8 to 32 bits.
The browser window gives you a look at all of the drives on your machine and enables you to import your samples. In the browser, you can Shift-click to import noncontiguous samples or drag a box around contiguous samples to import more than one at a time. Drag-and-drop importing is also implemented here, and if you drop the sample in the top part of a “key” in Kompakt's visually represented keyboard, it will map to the entire range of keys. Drop it in the middle, and it maps to a smaller range, and if you drop it at the bottom, it maps to that key only. Samples can be auditioned from the browser, and the browser view can be filtered to display specific file types. This can be handy if you have a large library of samples. The browser can be refreshed without exiting the application if you add new samples to a drive while you're working.
CHECKIN' OUT THE GUI
A window to the left of the instrument list in the Multi section of the interface displays information about the currently selected instrument. There are M and S buttons for mute and solo, respectively, along with a display of the sample size; a polyphony display shows the maximum number of notes available on the right and the number of notes playing at any given moment on the left (5/8, for instance). Each instrument can be individually transposed, and the amount of transposition is displayed in half steps. Likewise, the MIDI channel assigned to the selected instrument is displayed here. Finally, the output of each instrument can be routed to the individual outputs of your sound hardware, which is also controlled and displayed in this area.
In the DFD section of the Preferences menu, you can activate direct-from-disk streaming. Otherwise, samples are played back from RAM. If you don't have a lot of RAM but you have speedy hard drives, this is an appealing option because Kompakt can be a serious RAM hog. The amount of RAM devoted to each sampler voice is displayed here, too. It is also possible to “protect” a specific number of voices with the buffer. There is a display of total memory utilized by the voice buffer, as well.
Another button in the Multi area enables Group Edit and allows for simultaneous and global changes in all of the instruments selected together as a group. In Edit All mode, any edit affects all instruments in the group. A Group drop-down menu allows selection of the group to be edited. Pressing the Group Edit button also opens the Group Amp section in the Instrument window, revealing volume, pan and tuning controls, each with an associated LFO control. The Volume section also sports a Velocity knob, which determines how velocity affects volume.
The Instrument window contains a Sampler subsection that features Microtuning, which grants you 19 different tuning structures — more than most users will ever need. The Velocity Curve control is a welcome addition that enables adjustment of your playing touch. Glide gives you easily accessed portamento, as well, albeit without multitudes of controls. Also contained within the Instrument window is the Filter section, which sports six different kinds of filters: single-pole lowpass, 2-pole lowpass, 4-pole lowpass, highpass, notch and bandpass. There are cutoff and resonance controls, and cutoff can be modulated by envelope, key tracking, velocity and a dedicated LFO.
The Instrument Amp section features controls for volume, panning and tuning. A stereo multisegment meter also shows the output of Kompakt. The metering here is quite important, because blending multiple instruments in a multi can sum together enough level to distort. It's nice to have a visual of what's happening there. Holding the Shift key while tweaking panning and tuning enables precise control.
MODULATION PRESENTATION
Next up is the Modulation section, which sports three envelopes and four LFOs. First is the Volume envelope, Native Instruments' simplified nomenclature for a VCA envelope. There, I would expect NI to simplify by offering only attack and release. In reality, however, attack, hold, decay, sustain and release controls are offered. It's not just a nice AHDSR envelope; the “curve” of the attack is adjustable, as well, yielding control of the shape of the attack in addition to its speed. Many full-featured synths and samplers out there don't go this deep, and this is more than adequate. There's also a useful graphic of the envelope. The Retrigger button causes the envelope to commence from the beginning with every new MIDI Note On message. When off, the envelope does not retrigger when a second note is played before the first is released, for legato-style playing. By clicking on the Filter Envelope button to the right of the volume envelope, you can use the same type of AHDSR envelope to control the cutoff frequency of the filter. The third envelope is the Free envelope, which can be used to modulate a number of parameters, including panning, tuning, filter resonance, and both amount and speed of the four LFOs. An Amount slider determines how much the envelope will modulate the parameter.
The LFO section lives directly to the right of the Envelope section. There are LFOs for volume, panning, tuning and filter. Each has a control for frequency, which can be displayed in hertz or in clock divisions if Kompakt is synched to a host application. A Key knob allows key tracking to determine LFO speed, which increases progressively from left to right across the keyboard. Sine, sawtooth and square-wave LFO shapes are available. A Retrigger button causes the LFO to start from the beginning of its cycle with every new MIDI Note On message. When it's off, the LFO runs free. The filter LFO has one added feature: the ability to control either cutoff frequency or resonance.
Kompakt also sports an effects section, which gives you reverb, chorus, delay and a master filter. Here, as it is throughout the entire product, a simpler-is-better design ethic prevails. There are presets for each, as well as a bit of tweakability. The reverb is as basic as it gets: A Size knob determines room size, Dam controls damping (or absorption), and a slider determines wet/dry balance. Although this seems an impossibly inadequate suite of controls to the seasoned reverb programmer, it is shockingly effective. The same is true for the chorus, delay and master filter.
The final stage of Kompakt's effects section is the master filter, which offers a 4-pole resonant lowpass filter, a resonant highpass filter, a resonant bandpass filter or a 3-band fully parametric EQ. The three filters are most useful if you're using Kompakt as a single instrument, and the EQ is best used when you use Kompakt as a “virtual rack” with multiple instruments playing a piece of music. The filters and EQ sound great and add a useful extra level of control of the final mix. I really liked having this available.
OFF TO THE LIBRARY
It would take most of the space available in the magazine to get into detail about the library that ships with Kompakt, so I will try to keep it concise here. The library's samples are available either as individual instruments or as multis. There are basses, including acoustic, electric and synth varieties. Also included is a massive collection of drums and percussion featuring acoustic, electronic, orchestral and percussion sections. An Ethno folder contains many world-music samples (including a great suite of uilleann pipes). Quite a few different acoustic guitars are present, as well as a lot of great loops — particularly of acoustic drum kits. In addition to all of the individual instruments, there are preconstructed multis, which quickly had me inspired to sit down and play. And that's the point: I didn't have to engage in a whole lot of technical activity to get down to just plain old playing.
Kompakt is not intended for use by the experts who need deep control of multitudes of parameters; rather, it is intended for the musicians who want to quickly accomplish their goals. The goal of Native Instruments here is to simplify for the benefit of non-engineers. The terminology is decidedly downplayed for the home user — the graphical user interface, for instance, describes level as “volume”; portamento is described as “glide.” The control of effects is limited to two or three key parameters, eliminating confusion for neophytes or musicians who only want to play. The master filter is controlled graphically, enabling even a first-timer to easily accomplish a useful curve.
Native Instruments has had the reputation from the outset of developing products that are long on features and deep in tweakability. It's refreshing to see a product that delivers the goods for musicians while not requiring an advanced degree. Also, it would be an oversimplification to describe Kompakt as watered-down, because it produces high-quality results, irrespective of its lack of deep parametric controls. The bottom line: It's easy to use, but it's not sophomoric. Overall, if you need a powerful compositional tool, Kompakt is where it's at.
Product Summary
NATIVE INSTRUMENTS
KOMPAKT > $229
Pros: Incredibly easy to use. Inexpensive. Comprehensive library.
Cons: CPU- and RAM-intensive.
Contact: tel. (866) 556-6487; e-mail info@native-instruments.com; Web www.native-instruments.com
System Requirements
MAC: G3/500; Mac OS 9.2 or higher; 256 MB RAM; 2.2 GB free hard-disk space
PC: Pentium III or Athlon/500; Windows 98/2000/ME/XP; 256 MB RAM; 2.2 GB free hard-disk space
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