Komplete Select £89
Komplete 26 Standard £494
Komplete 26 Ultimate £1,124
Komplete 26 Collector’s Edition £1,754
Personalised upgrade pricing available
native-instruments.com

Native Instruments’ longstanding presence in the music software space means it has a remarkably wide range of instruments and tools in its catalogue, expanded even further thanks to its Kontakt and Reaktor platforms that allow third parties to build bespoke creations. For some years now the developer has offered a bundle of these collected under the Komplete banner, with four tiers – Select, Standard, Ultimate and Collector’s Edition. The latest version has been rebranded as 26 to reflect the year of release, just as Apple has done with its operating systems.

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Reviewing each product here would be impractical – even the Standard Edition has over 180 instruments and 315GB of content, while Ultimate has over 280 using 950GB of space, and the Collector’s Edition, a staggering 340+ instruments amassing over 1.6 terabytes of content. Rather, I’m going to assess who each of these collections best suits, and cover what’s new since the last Komplete. It’s worth mentioning that there are a large number of upgrade pricing routes available via your account, varying if you own earlier versions of Komplete or even if you already own flagship products like Guitar Rig or Kontakt. So the upgrade price will depend on what you already own.

An entry-level bundle—Komplete Select—is also available for £89 and comes in three flavours themed by content, each with a selection of instruments, effects and sound packs. The Beats edition has Battery 4, Massive X Player and Ozone 12 Elements and others, while the Band edition focuses on ‘real’ instruments, and Electronic on synth sounds. Select is an ideal entry point if you’re unsure about committing to a larger bundle and does qualify for some upgrade pricing, though the content is, of course, far more limited in scope.

After registering your serial in Native Access, the products in your bundle become available for download. You can set a default content location at this stage which is essential when downloading hundreds of gigabytes of sounds since you may not want them to fill up your boot drive. NI groups things into sections; the flagship platforms of Kontakt 8, Absynth 6, Massive X and Guitar Rig 7 Pro, and then the sampled and synth instruments that run in them as well as effects and sound packs, of which there are many. You also get Battery 4, NI’s powerful drum instrument in nearly all Editions.

The key differences between the collections are largely in the amount of content you get. All versions include the main tools mentioned above and while Kontakt is based around loading pre-created instruments for most users, the other three are organic sound generation and processing platforms in their own right. So you get the full synthesis experience even with the Standard Edition, but the number of instruments, presets and expansions increases with Ultimate and maxes out with the Collector’s Edition. An exhaustive comparison is available on the NI website.

New content is also spread across multiple categories. Absynth 6 is one of the newest additions to the bundle and in our review we welcomed its long-awaited return. It’s a powerful and unique synth capable of creating mind-bending sounds, brought up to date with MPE support and a new interface. Other new additions include Circular, Odes, Claire: Avant, Electric Keys Definitive Collection and Erosia. Otherwise the flagships were already in the previous version – though if you own one or more you will have got a discount on upgrading to 26.

The Standard Edition has a solid selection of instruments including the Play series, covering a range of keys, guitars, orchestral and other ‘real’ sources plus selected expansions, sound packs and synth patches. For most developers it would be almost their whole lineup. You also get a great core of effects plugins including new additions from iZotope and Brainworx, now part of the NI family. Slightly disappointingly though, all three bundles only include the Elements versions of Nectar, Neutron and Ozone – you don’t get the full versions even with the Collector’s Edition. Still, they are welcome inclusions and expand the toolset in an area where NI has not traditionally had a huge presence – mixing and mastering.

Stepping up to the Ultimate bundle is just over double the price but adds a lot of sample and instrument content as well as Essentials versions of the Classical Instruments series and practically all of the more conventional sampled instruments in the catalogue. The Collector’s Edition costs £630 more than this and adds the rest—this content is largely in the area of cinematic scoring tools— as well as over 150 expansion packs in a bewildering array of genres and styles. The largest bundle does have the Circular, Claire: Avant and Odes instruments as exclusives.

Looking at how NI has split the content, the conclusion is that the top tier version is to an extent aimed at composers who need the vast, cinema-focused scope of the acoustic and orchestral instruments on top of everything else. These would be overkill for most people not operating in the scoring world, but honestly if your job is scoring, £1,750 for a collection this vast is a pretty sensible investment considering the bases it covers.

NI’s ongoing development of its Kontakt platform has seen a number of powerful and exciting instruments added to Komplete, in a variety of categories. To name just a few, I am particularly impressed by Odes, Circular and Erosia from the cinematic collection, the Claire piano and 24K Keys hip hop instrument. Then there’s the enormous selection of existing sounds and instruments that aren’t technically new to Komplete, but will be to you if you are a new user. You can preview any of these on the website.

As you’d hope, any one of these bundles represents a huge saving over buying even a fraction of the content individually. NI should be applauded for not going down the subscription route here – while the company does offer a subscription option for a different set of products under the 360 umbrella, they have perhaps recognised that the approach isn’t popular especially with professional producers and composers, those most likely to buy the larger Komplete bundles and who prefer to own their software outright.

But starting at around £500, Komplete is still an investment. Including all the flagship products in the Standard Edition is a smart move, especially since most of them are sound design tools and not playback platforms like Kontakt is (as far as most people use it). The content you get with Standard is an excellent toolset for many musicians working in a range of styles. Ultimate ups the stakes in terms of size and price, and honestly gets you the majority of the stuff, barring some of the cinematic library instruments and every last expansion pack. It’s all compatible with the NKS control format; an added bonus if you have NI hardware or an NKS-compatible controller of another sort.

Komplete’s selection of sounds and instruments—especially with the two larger bundles—is all-encompassing, from world percussion to vintage keys, drums, pianos, electric guitars, vocals and horns to advanced synths, textures, classic analogue sounds and more or less anything else you could imagine. Throw in the sound design of Absynth and Reaktor, the processing of Guitar Rig and other effects and mastering, vocal and mix tools (though they are the Elements versions) and you are covered for more or less every musical eventuality.

Komplete 26 could genuinely be the only bundle you ever need.

Key features

• Up to 340 instruments and effects
• Up to 180,000 sounds; 1.6TB content
• Kontakt 8, Massive X, Absynth 6, Guitar Rig 7 Pro
• VST, AU and AAX plugin formats and standalone versions
• iZotope Elements mixing and mastering plugins
• Download and manage via Native Access
• 40 new products (Standard Edition)
• 69 new products (Collector’s Edition)
• 62 new products (Ultimate Edition)
• £22 e-voucher with each bundle (except Select)

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