ShelLuser

I'm your classic Synth geek

Around 2010 I had made up my mind: I was going to get a synthesizer. Of course at that time a synthesizer in my idea was a keyboard with dozens of knobs. As I always do I studied before purchasing and decided that I really liked the idea of having a soft synth vs. hardware. Also because my keyboard (a Casio CTK4000) supported MIDI over USB.

I bought into Ableton Live 'suite' (because of the instruments), an APC40 Live controller and even though I had no clue what it could do I also bought a Max for Live license as well. Then I learned the issue of sound engines and that made me decide that I should add another engine to my setup for expansion purposes. The general consensus in the Ableton 'camp' was to go Komplete but because I never focus on "commonly done" stuff I decided to go with Reason 4 instead. I did add an Akai MPD24 MIDI drumpad controller because I didn't liked the idea of banging on my keyboard for percussion.

Of course that's not saying that I didn't recognize the potential that Native Instruments had to offer, heck no, and it didn't take long before I bought into Komplete Elements 7, long before it got nerfed (from 5 or 7 Gb library to 3 iirc). I still have the box today but I'm too lazy to check

This setup did wonders for me.

Fast forward to 2019...

I did a few upgrades over time, I got to appreciate the NI players and then I had a nice break which allowed me to upgrade all my stuff. I replaced the APC40 with Ableton Push, I upgraded all my major environments (Live went 10, Reason went 10 & Max (stand alone) went 8) and then Reason 11 happened....

Reason 11 drops ReWire support (which is/was a huge part of my setup) and instead provides a "Rack VST" which you can use in other DAWs. Just too bad that it doesn't come close to providing the regular Reason workflow (at the time of writing, 15/10/2019).

That made me decide to look into alternatives which would be more reliable in the future.

And then I remembered N.I. & Komplete....

I bought into Komplete 12 to expand on both my Live & Reason setups and consider me impressed. I then replaced my Akai MPD24 with the Maschine Mk3 and also upgraded Komplete to Ultimate. And to top things off my gear will be using the Komplete Audio 6 as of today.

Then in 2019 N.I. had an XXL Holiday sale which allowed me to do the unthinkable: getting the Ultimate 'collectors edition' of Komplete 12. It is the 19th of January 2020 when I added this update and I'm still discovering bits and pieces in March 2020

And that's where I am.. Ableton 10 Suite (including Max for Live + Push), Max 8, Reason 10 and my NI gear: the Maschine Mk3 backed by Komplete 12 Ultimate (Collectors) and all powered by the Komplete Audio 6. I couldn't be happier.