native instruments KORE

what do you reckon

pros / cons?

is it a pile of shit?

looks like a bloody headache, barely got time to put ableton on these days and make some beats, let alone sit around programming interfaces to patch different intrusments together

I may be way off base here because Im not too familiar with NI software but... One thing I've always found confusing about this package is while it does seem to offer some 'unity' in bringing all of their applications together it still appears as though it doesn't offer any ending environment to assemble it all in...I'm assuming you'd still need Cubase/Pro Tools/etc in order to really make use of this unless you build your own environment in Reaktor. The only other thing that seems interesting about this is the hardware that comes with it. I guess I'm also assuming that if your using KORE your not using the NI tools as VSTi but as stand-alones which may be incorrect. If KORE makes tweaking/browsing/etc of VSTi's in other host applications more uniform that could be appealing. Looks to me that aside from the hardware tool and the money you save buying it as a full packade there are not many perks beyond the integrated browser which really never has impressed me.

you can do the same thing with a mouse for a whole lot cheaper.

I saw KORE as a great opportunity to improve on my current rig. I was using a Laptop->USB-MIDI->PC running Reaktor, but I missed my VSTs, so I used Kore for a while like this:

I had a laptop running Cubase SX3 that had all of my USB midi controllers hooked up to. That had a USB->MIDI out to my PC with the really nice DSP card in it. I'd run Kore on the PC and load up all of my VSTs, etc. and set it to the MIDI clock coming from Cubase.

I mapped my BCF2000 to control each of the volume/pan/mute/solo attributes for the mixer in KORE. I also ran my Korg MicroKontrol and programmed the different scenes to control the important parameters of each synth.

My goal was to make a rig that I could take live with me or keep in my bedroom, and still have maximum functionality in terms sound/tempo control while still keeping data management and loading at a minimum. This way I could either write continuous live sets, or I could belt out a 5 minute track without changing my hardware configuration.

The only thing I was giving up was the ability to "freeze" tracks like I could by loading things natively in Cubase saving the CPU use. Rendering at 96khz was complicated since I had to load KORE natively in cubase, load the .kps file, change all of the midi sends to KORE, make sure that there was nothing buggy (and boy fucking howdy there always was), then render.

Kore did a lot and had a lot of nice built in features, and I made some really cool tracks with Kore as the framework. Ultimately though it was an incredible pain in the ass making sure that each little thing had the right MIDI filters before I could get along with you know... writing music.

The one thing that made me switch back to Reaktor in place of Kore was the lack of paneling to MIDI. My BCF2000 and BCR2000 will reflect the current status of each knob even if they are changed by Cubase (into Reaktor), and I find that important when I'm listening to a song and want instant feedback on all of my instruments especially in a live scenario.

Now if I want to play live, I just bring my MicroKontrol and a laptop running Traktor 3. I can export each line to it's own .wav file and mix those together still pretty much having near complete control over my music with the stability of only having to deal with one computer and one program. I can also spin in my favorite Analord tracks!

All in all KORE is cool, but I love Reaktor more even without it's ability to run VSTs.

Also fair warning, I was trying to integrate KORE into kind of an odd environment, I'm sure there are better ways to use it.