M+ standalone optimized Reaktor content from the community

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  • tetsuneko
    tetsuneko Member Posts: 776 Expert
    edited April 2022

    Hold up. There already exists a flavour of OTT for Reaktor:

    Built by no other than Jonathan Tremblay, the guy behind VHS Suite's Impulse Response module and one of the expert Reaktor builders.

    I have no illusions about being able to outdo him. Maybe we'll just optimize this ens for M+ and call it a day? 😎

  • tetsuneko
    tetsuneko Member Posts: 776 Expert
    edited April 2022

    Here's a mono version - let me know if this is what you were looking for, I can optimize the stereo version as well.

    EDIT: Whoah, this is a fun one! I'll do the stereo version for sure. Combined with Maschine Saturator and VHS.A.D.S, this is a brilliant loop mangling processing chain. Surprisingly enough, Running OTT & VHS ADS together only results in a CPU load of ~20% (Does Reaktor recognize mono signals and reduces CPU load of Stereo ensembles? weird..)

    EDIT2: And here's the Stereo version


  • Dstep ATL
    Dstep ATL Member Posts: 95 Helper

    Thank you for all of your hard work. Downloading this and the VHS now. Will report back!

  • Dstep ATL
    Dstep ATL Member Posts: 95 Helper
    edited April 2022

    Your implementation of VHS is amazing. It’s like putting an Sp404 or RC-20 directly into Maschine. Very easy to get the sounds I’m looking for, and it’s only taking 17-21% of cpu while running. If I add OTT on top, it still runs at 23%. Thank you.

  • Trevor Meier
    Trevor Meier Member Posts: 70 Advisor

    @tetsuneko You deserve an award for your work on these. Thanks so much for sharing with all of us!

  • tetsuneko
    tetsuneko Member Posts: 776 Expert
    edited April 2022

    Glad you are enjoying these! But the most credits should really go to the original Reaktor builders.

    OTT was a great find, thanks for suggesting it! I just auditioned some factory kits through it and found plenty of cool riff/loop ideas. I've always been a fan of 1176-style parallel limiting, this reminds me of that but in an even more exreme way.

    All in all, this has been a very good learning excercise for me. I've had Reaktor for years, and am only now starting to learn building with it. Still at the stage where I'm more comfortable analyzing and modifying existing designs, but I feel like I've already learned plenty.

    I'm thinking of checking out that vocoder next, starting tomorrow. I'm hoping to be able to make it so that you just slap it to the group level, pan the synth sound(s) in the group all the way to the right, and then pan the voice/vocal/drums/whatnot sound(s) all the way to the left. The group level vocoder fx will then produce a vocoded dual mono output, which you can then stereoize and apply further fx to as you see fit. This offers most flexibility, as you can use any synth sound, or anything really, for vocoding with.

  • nuromantix
    nuromantix Member Posts: 29 Member

    It's great to see more people getting their heads around this. It really is the killer feature of M+ but sadly not being marketed or supported at all. I have had a bit of help privately from some people at NI with working it out. Still need to get my head around the "removing extra unused parameters" thing, I have never used Maschine software.

    I have a made a few of my own utility effects and a few simple subtractive & 4-op FM synths for M+ that all work nicely, as well as a very simplistic rompler. It's such a game-changer to have all the parameters accessible and never have to browse presets again.

    My suggestion is to make a range of simple ensembles rather than a few big, complex ensembles, because the 8 parameters per page limit of M+ gets really frustrating if you are looking for one parameter among 15 pages.

    So I have identical polyphonic & monophonic versions of each synth for example, and load the one I need for the part. Also saves on CPU. If I want (for example) a choice of filters in my synth, I just save a new ensemble of the same synth with a different filter, which again simplifies the M+ interface and reduces CPU usage. Similarly, I make chains of simple effects with 16 or less parameters rather than creating complex effects ensembles that make it hard to find the paramater you want. The idea is to keep each individual ensemble as simple as possible so it's eay to find parameters on M+.

    Just my thoughts :)


    Tetsuneko: it's exciting isn't it? But don't forget to stop and make some music!

  • Dstep ATL
    Dstep ATL Member Posts: 95 Helper

    Share them!


    I’m going to try to find or learn how to program something like Cable Guys Half Time. I think it is the last thing really missing from the +. From the research I’ve gathered, the most basic form of it (half speed half pitch), is very simple. I think learning Reaktor may be a fun challenge, but need to find a good video series if it exists. Reading it in a manual wouldn’t help the way my brain operates.

    This gives basic instructions for how it could be started

    https://www.adsrsounds.com/reaktor-tutorials/building-effects-in-reaktor-part-ii-reverse-and-scratch/

  • Astralbeats_225
    Astralbeats_225 Member Posts: 42 Helper

    You are amazing and so is everyone else building/converting/porting these reaktor ensembles. I'm currently on a business trip with my M+ and can't wait until I get home so I can try these ensembles and mod some. 🤙🏾 I've just been studying this thread hourly in anticipation 🤣

  • tetsuneko
    tetsuneko Member Posts: 776 Expert
    edited April 2022

    If you already haven't read this thread, I recommend doing so. Plenty of info there about getting Reaktor ensembles to play well in Maschine+:

    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/1836/user-reaktor-ensembles-on-maschine-standalone

    I agree, simple ensembles are better suited to the M+ UI, although you can cram in a reasonable amount of complexity as long as you plan out your parameter pages, group them out and label them properly. We have to currently deal with a 100 parameter limit anyways, I'd say anything beyond 40-50 parameters or so could start getting tedious to navigate.. Unless you plan out the UI very elegantly so that the user only needs to jump between a few parameter pages in order to access most of the frequently used controls.

    And hey, no worries about having time for beatmaking! Using M+ is so fast the beats practically write themselves.. seriously, it feels like cheating at times 🤗

    If you already didn't check the youtube Reaktor tutorial video series I linked to in the beginning of this thread, I recommend checking it out. That guy has great pedagogy skills and watching them helped me to make sense of a lot (relearning) of the basics.

    Halftime? So that's like a pitch shifter or something? Maybe kind of what you can do with an Elektron Octatrack, by microtiming a recorder trig one tick before tha playback trig and pitching down? Or does it just do the same as what you can do to audioloops already in Maschine (in repitch mode), but just to realtime input?

  • tetsuneko
    tetsuneko Member Posts: 776 Expert
    edited April 2022

    Yes. Here it is. Tested just now running my hardware monosynth into Right channel and a headset mic into Left channel, working like a charm!

    Takes about 20-25% of M+ CPU. It's currently set to 10-band mode - I thought since the famous Roland VP-330 used 10 bands, it should be a good starting point. The original ensemble defaulted to 24 bands, but I reckon that would kill the M+ CPU..

    So the way you use this is as follows:

    Place the ensemble at the group level. Inside the group, pan your vocal sample / live mic input / etc to L50 on the M+ mixer, then pan your synth sample / softsynth / live HW synth to R50. You need to keep levels quite hot but when you get them sorted it works fine.

    For a classic vocoder sound, use a monosynth with a buzzy saw wave (Monark should work nicely if you can keep CPU load in check). But feel free to experiment with anything! I'll be testing with some drum loops myself 😜

    Big Ups to Andrew Aronson for the original ensemble:

    https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/14053/

  • Dstep ATL
    Dstep ATL Member Posts: 95 Helper

    Will check out the videos today and tomorrow, I have some time.


    here is half time



    It is originally based off of a preset in Imagineline (FL studio)’s Gross Beat plug-in. It is very popular in hiphop production for mangling loops. Akai has a version in the MPC/Force now as well. I’m going to see if I can eventually approximate it in Reaktor for Maschine.

  • djneural
    djneural Member Posts: 35 Helper

    Many thanks Tetsuneko for the share, as well as original author for the original work. A native vocoder feature would be cool but in the meantime it's so great to already have the option !

    A few questions before I give it a try :

    • is this legal/free to share ?
    • I have no idea on how installing it, I guess a specific folder of my content sdcard/USB key ?
    • why do we need the pan left/right hack ? Is that a limit of Reaktor ensembles, receiving only one stereo channel as input, so we need to split it to route carrier on one side and voice on the other ?
  • tetsuneko
    tetsuneko Member Posts: 776 Expert
    edited April 2022

    • AFAIK, all content from the Reaktor User Library should be free to use, as long as you can run the ensembles. I would think NI would already have stopped me from sharing these if it wasn't legal, or violated some use guidelines. I am crediting the original Ens builders in every effect I have ported, and if you open up the ensemble in Reaktor editor, you can find a URL to the original ensemble page in the User Library.

    • Installation instructions for all the ensembles in this thread can be found from the first post in this thread. Basically you just copy the ens file(s) to a specific folder in your M+'s SD card. Then they should show up in the browser under EFFECTS - REAKTOR - USER

    • This is not in fact a limitation of Reaktor as such, but more a limitation in Maschine. A Reaktor instrument in Maschine can only ever receive MIDI data from machine, and a Reaktor effect can only ever receive 2 channels of audio from Maschine; both types of Reaktor Ensembles can only output 2 channels of audio. 2 Channels = one stereo channel (or two mono channels) in this case.

    While panning the sounds might not sound like an ideal way to use a vocoder, it's actually quite straightforward in practice, and also mimics how Hardware Vocoders (ones without a built-in synth anyway) work IRL - you send them the mic as a mono signal and the synth as another mono signal. Such things are not hacks, but actual practices in many studio situations, it's simple and it works as intended (Academically speaking, grouping audio into bundles of 2 channels like in stereo, is a much younger practice, it was all mono before that). Besides, what would be a more elegant method? Some sort of dropdown menu for both signal sources (like on Maschine's sidechain)?

  • tetsuneko
    tetsuneko Member Posts: 776 Expert
    edited April 2022

    So it's just a resampler, which samples your loop and plays it X octaves lower as a sample? And you can mix the original into the X octaves lower sample with wet/dry? And then you have an lpf/hpf for filtering the X oct samples?

    You can do all of this and much more with Maschine already..

    Sorry but I'm having a hard time understanding the benefits of this plugin.. 🤔

    ..unless you want to be flipping the samples like crazy, Octatrack-style.. in those cases I could see this as saving some time.. But still, I would personally just do all that in Maschine and use lock states for moving between the flips. Far more control, you can use individual EQ/processing/fx for each octal layer etc

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