£269 / $299 / € 299
Upgrade price £89 / $99 / €99
native-instruments.com

As one of music production’s most ubiquitous and long-running pieces of software, few were expecting surprises from the eighth iteration of Native Instruments’ Kontakt, but that’s just what they got.

In a series of firsts, the acclaimed sample player has introduced new ways of handling MIDI, performing with samples, and synthesising sounds. Together with a modernised user interface, it would seem that a new vision for Kontakt is emerging. No longer is this just a creative facilitator, it’s now also an idea generator.

• READ MORE: Why Komplete 15 is Native Instruments’ most creative sound library ever

The first major addition to Kontakt is Tools. Billed as a rapid-fire solution to writer’s block, Tools is a set of creative MIDI effects, currently with two offerings – Chords and Phrases. Chords will trigger stacked harmonies from just a single root note, while Phrases will do the same but for melodic passages.

In essence, these are the same MIDI transformation functions you might already use in your DAW but baked into Komplete. By itself this is not that exciting, but what sets Tools apart is just how fast and straightforward it makes the process – not to mention the massive library of preset MIDI patterns it draws from. Phrases arrives with 181 melody presets, while Chords gets 130 harmonic progressions. For users trying to kick off an idea, or overcome a creative roadblock, this is a significant store of musical material to build upon.

Tools is instrument-agnostic and so can be used on any sample instrument loaded in Kontakt. Annoyingly, however, when auditioning Tools presets you’ll hear Kontakt’s new Piano Uno instrument, and not the sound of the sample instrument you currently have loaded. This can lead to a frustrating back-and-forth, as patterns and chords you thought were on point may actually sound naff when played with your instrument of choice.

With the ability to randomise parts, to invert the voicing and change the starting position of melodic passages, to add nuanced humanisation functions to chords, and to drag all of this out as MIDI regions for further editing, there’s enough depth here to make Chords and Phrases genuinely useful in the right context. Can Tools go toe-to-toe with the generative MIDI magic of something like Plugin Boutique’s Scalar 2? No, but there’s still plenty to like.

Leap is the next newcomer to Kontakt. A performance-focused sampler, it turns the white notes on your keyboard into triggers that fire off one-shot samples and tempo-synced loops. There are 12 Leap-specific expansion packs that ship with the full version of Kontakt, but you can also bring in samples from any Maschine expansion packs you own, or drag in audio files from your computer.

Leap lends itself to improvisational writing, with a highly intuitive interface that largely stays out of your way if you just want to jam through the 16 available sample slots without too much thought. The black notes of the keyboard are given over to performance effects. It’s simple to slap on pitch and time shifts, stutter, granulation, and other sonic modifications without breaking your stride.

For those who do want to dive deeper, Leap offers a surprisingly extensive set of sample editing tools and this adds real scope for building up custom kits that pull samples from multiple sources. Similarly, most performance effects come with additional parameters for fine-tuning how they’re executed – the exceptions are the pitch and tempo effects, which are locked to an octave, and halftime or double time, respectively.

Unfortunately, all performance effects are applied to the entire track, and there is no ability to assign performance effects to individual samples. Leap is also limited to a stereo output, so if you want to record out multiple stems for further processing and mixing, then no dice. These are shortcomings that feel minor at first but grow the longer you live with them. As a performance-focused sampling platform it’s fun and genuinely useful for starting ideas. But as a serious creative workhorse, Leap stumbles.

That said, there is a strong foundation here, and, much the same as Tools, it significantly extends Kontakt’s creative capabilities and has the potential to grow into a real powerhouse.

Speaking of power and potential, Kontakt has supercharged its existing wavetable synthesis engine to now include FM, and phase and ring modulation. The first instrument to take advantage of all this is Conflux, an abundantly capable hybrid that pairs sampling with synthesis and throws in a welcome range of modulation options and audio effects. In use, it excels at evolving textures, big swamping bass swells, and cinematic sound design.

Alongside these flashy additions, there are a number of bread-and-butter improvements across the board – including a new user interface, and expanded preset search, and audition functions. For those who’ve built an established workflow around Kontakt, an interface refresh can spell major disruptions or major benefits. Luckily, Kontakt 8’s new lick of paint mostly falls into the latter category.

The most notable improvement is the new Side Panel, which gives an overview of the instrument rack, quick access for loading and unloading libraries or Tools, and, best of all, the ability to search through and demo presets from any instrument in your library. In Kontakt 7 this required flicking into Library View, so being able to manage all this without leaving the Performance View is a small yet vastly-appreciated advancement.

On the other hand, we seem to have lost the ability to hide an instrument’s user interface. If you stack up multiple libraries into a combined instrument, you’re forced to scroll through all the pretty Performance View pictures in order to find the one setting you want to tweak. This is a frustrating, and time-consuming oversight, and hopefully one that Native Instruments will address in future updates.

You can still switch things back to Classic View, so, with a bit of leg work, it’s possible to get the best of both worlds.

All in all, this is the most significant update to Kontakt in quite some time. For users of the free Kontakt Player, the addition of Tools and Leap – albeit with only one expansion library – is the very definition of added value. However, the full version, at £269 for new users, hits a price point that’s hard to recommend as a standalone purchase. The obvious and intended upsell is Komplete 15 Standard. It comes with Kontakt 8 bundled in (as do higher Komplete tiers), plus 95-plus excellent sample instruments for £538, or less if you catch it on sale.

There was a time when Kontakt felt completely indispensable for anyone making music with sample instruments. This is no longer the case. EastWest’s OPUS player offers an excellent workflow for orchestral scoring, UVI’s Falcon 3 has serious synthesis capabilities alongside a streamlined sampling workflow, while the spectral oscillator in Steinberg’s HALion 7 turns samples into easy fodder for sound designers.

Ultimately, the biggest drawcard for Kontakt 8 is the same as always: access to the richest ecosystem for samples on the market. The ease with which it hosts third-party instruments remains industry-leading and, when paired with Komplete, it becomes a truly formidable musical force.

Tools, Leap, and the new wavetable engine are certainly all intriguing steps forward, showing a desire and potential to move Kontakt beyond its traditional supporting role In their current form though, these new creative features are simply ‘nice to have’ rather than being ‘must-haves’.

Key features

• Standalone player and VST3 / AU / AAX plugin
• Tools and Leap included in both free and full version
• New hybrid wavetable instrument, Conflux, included in full version
• 12 Leap expansion libraries included in full version
• Factory Library includes an expansive set of band, orchestral, and electronic instruments
• Refreshed interface
• Support for third-party developers
• Rich ecosystem when integrated with Komplete

The post Native Instruments Kontakt 8: A leap forward or a stumble sideways? appeared first on MusicTech.