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Massive X + 13 Expansions for $99


Larry Shelby

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36 minutes ago, Promidi said:

Something to consider when and if Phase Plant goes on sale.

Phase Plant 2 was just on sale for $99 (half price) until June 13th ($89 at Every Plugin... although it's $176.87 now).

Likewise, Arturia Pigments occasionally goes on sale for $99 (half price). Another very good one!

Edited by abacab
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2 hours ago, abacab said:

Phase Plant 2 was just on sale for $99 (half price) until June 13th ($89 at Every Plugin... although it's $176.87 now).

Likewise, Arturia Pigments occasionally goes on sale for $99 (half price). Another very good one!

Yes, I have pigments 3 (excellent synth this one).  However, it is good to know that PhasePlant goes sale from time to time.

For PhasePlant, it's a case of Patience Grasshopper........

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9 hours ago, Promidi said:

Yes, I have pigments 3 (excellent synth this one).  However, it is good to know that PhasePlant goes sale from time to time.

For PhasePlant, it's a case of Patience Grasshopper........

What I should say is that I have all 3 synths, and they MSRP for $199. However, all can all be had occasionally for $99, or less.

I got Pigments and Phase Plant on sale. I really enjoy them, and those were no-brainer sales!

I had tried the demo of Massive X when it was first released almost 3 years ago and had thought, "well maybe someday". But I recently got Massive X included with a discounted crossgrade to Komplete 13. I was excited at first, but then after a while it dawned on me that I enjoyed Pigments and Phase Plant much more!

And while it has great sound producing ability, Massive X users still have some grievances with NI, as Massive X was perceived to have been released in a rather "unfinished" state. In fact, NI has only recently added a proper preset browser to it with an update this year!

Other Massive X annoyances:

  • No way to create custom user preset folders. All saves go to a main folder "User". Sound designers really hate this one.
  • No wavetable or sample import.
  • Limited visual feedback (real-time UI animations - this one is likely a personal preference, some love 'em, some hate 'em).
  • No MIDI learn.
Edited by abacab
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4 minutes ago, Promidi said:

One issue I have with Massive X is, currently, it has no MIDI learn - maybe a future update will fix this.

Oh yeah, that too, and it's a fairly big deal! Forgot about that one...added to my post! :)

NI will need a few more future updates to get the thing "finished". Maybe another year or two?

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My biggest complaint with Massive X is that while I own it as part of Komplete 13, it’s the only VST out of over 1000 on my rig that I can’t run. Because it requires some instruction set extensions that showed up a few gens after my i7 CPU was made, rather than quietly falling back to generic x64 code and slightly worse performance.

So, happy to hear it’s not all that. Pigments 3 (and this Phase Plant, presumably) run just peachy for my purposes.

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3 minutes ago, John Bradley said:

My biggest complaint with Massive X is that while I own it as part of Komplete 13, it’s the only VST out of over 1000 on my rig that I can’t run. Because it requires some instruction set extensions that showed up a few gens after my i7 CPU was made, rather than quietly falling back to generic x64 code and slightly worse performance.

So, happy to hear it’s not all that. Pigments 3 (and this Phase Plant, presumably) run just peachy for my purposes.

Yep, that would be the Intel AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions). Glad you are happy with the other two synths! :)

"MASSIVE X requires an AVX compatible processor to provide increased performance. Its audio engine provides advanced wavetable oscillators, unison voicing, a flexible audio router, and other features which make the use of AVX necessary."

The installation of MASSIVE X will be blocked on non-AVX-compatible systems."

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001544678-MASSIVE-X-Requires-AVX-Compatible-Processor?_ga=2.175307490.1551320537.1655905680-1578022517.1647909391

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6 minutes ago, John Bradley said:

Because it requires some instruction set extensions that showed up a few gens after my i7 CPU was made, rather than quietly falling back to generic x64 code and slightly worse performance.

I am assuming it’s the AVX requirement

What i7 are you using? My i5 4576 (released 2013) runs Massive X  (This CPU does has AVX support)

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1 minute ago, cclarry said:

You'd be much farther ahead just getting Komplete 13 while it's on sale....

Yep, and the the disillusionment with Massive X will just be a bittersweet afterthought as you install the other gigabytes of content in Komplete 13! :)

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3 minutes ago, Promidi said:

I am assuming it’s the AVX requirement

Massive X is the only instrument that I'm aware of that has a hard requirement for AVX.

Other developers may make their software AVX or AVX2 "aware", in order to take advantage of that instruction set when available, but can still run on older CPU architectures.

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8 minutes ago, John Bradley said:

Those would be known as “good developers”. ?

Which applications are most likely to benefit from recompilation for Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX)?

"The performance benefit from recompiling an application for Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX, Intel® AVX2 and/or Intel® AVX-512) may vary greatly from one application to another.
Applications containing floating-point loops that can already be vectorized using Intel® SSE instructions are likely to see significant gains just by recompiling for Intel AVX due to the greater width of the SIMD floating-point Intel AVX instructions."

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/which-applications-are-most-likely-to-benefit-from-recompilation-for-intel-advanced-vector-extensions-intel-avx.html

Edited by abacab
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I have Massive X and a bunch of expansions I bought on sale last year. I have yet to really use it. Massive X was one of those things that enticed me to get Komplete a few years ago. I just have not been able to get into it at all. Who knows, maybe in 5 years time, Massive X will become as big as Massive and have a huge following. But so far, I get the feeling its a hard steep acceptance curve for a lot of people. I think the issue NI have with Massive X is, there is just a lot more very strong competition in that category than there was when they originally released the old Massive.

and once again, my theory that the magic number is about $100 and every company wants around $100 from you and are re-arranging offers and presenting them in such a way to get $100. ?

Edited by telecode 101
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6 hours ago, telecode 101 said:

I think the issue NI have with Massive X is, there is just a lot more very strong competition in that category than there was when they originally released the old Massive.

The original Massive became the de facto industry standard soft synth at the time (2007). But NI unwisely decided to replace it with a completely new synth called Massive X rather than improving the old one, and that disillusioned a lot of loyal Massive fans. No backwards compatibility...

Not a very smart move by NI. ?

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/native-instruments-massive

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