Komplete 13 October launch announced – features new Guitar Rig 6 Pro
3 min read
Native Instruments have announced that Komplete 13 – their plugin and sample bundle – is launching on October 1 2020.
Upgrading from Komplete 12 Ultimate to Komplete 13 Ultimate will come at a cost of £339, something which users have been quick to gripe about given a lacklustre list of new features.
With only a small handful of additions in this update, there is very little that sets it apart from Komplete 12, and our advice today is don’t jump to upgrade unless you desperately need one or more of the new additions.
The Lowdown
A narrow list of new features hinders the appeal of Native Instruments’ latest bundle package. Only a narrow demographic of people will see their productions transformed with this offering. That said, the main selling point – Guitar Rig 6 Pro – will be a big selling point for some, and Komplete 13’s success will likely hang on it.
READ MORE: How you can save money on buying Native Instruments Komplete
Cinematic
The latest version will include new cinematic Kontakt instruments, such as Straylight, Pharlight, Mysteria, and Mallet Flux. It will also come with many of the newer Kontakt libraries which you may not own, including Stradivari Violin, and Komplete 12 Ultimate instruments.
Synths
In terms of synths, NI are offering all their heavyweights, as well as new addition Super 8. But in terms of standalone synth, you are only getting that one new plugin.
Sampled Instruments
For sampled Kontakt instruments, NI are including new libraries such as the Session Guitarist series and, perhaps most enticingly, Noire – “The signature sound of Nils Frahm’s evocative concert grand [piano]. Captured in its native habitat in Saal 3 of Berlin’s Funkhaus complex.“
For electric musicians, one highlight might be Cloud Supply. NI describes this as: “The special ingredient for trappy melodies, hazy hooks, plucks, and resampled pads for hip hop, grime, drill, and more.“
Lo-Fi Glow and Modular Icons also may stand out to synth-heads, each with their own unique characters and electronic music applications. The only other addition in this “section” is the Butch Vig Drums, which offers heavily processed drum samples.
Guitar Rig 6 Pro
Perhaps the flagship addition to Komplete 13, Guitar Rig 6 looks amazing – so much so that it will probably be the deciding factor for most people upgrading.
Bringing in a cleaner looks and lots of revamped effects, Guitar Rig 6 is by far the most impressive feature of the latest Komplete.
Native Instruments completely rebuilt the interface and have brought in “new modelling hardware” for this version, as well as three new amps.
Their circuit modelling process uses “cutting-edge machine learning technology to reproduce the behaviour of hardware devices from the ground up”, something which will hopefully take Guitar Rig up to current standards.
It remains to be seen however, how much it will be able to compete with more dedicated amp sims, such as those made by Brainworx.
A lot of the new features in Guitar Rig Pro 6 are actually just the same effects that have been standard in previous Komplete versions, only redesigned for the rack look.
Effects (or lack thereof)
a new reverb (I won’t even properly punctuate this sentence to demonstrate how underwhelmed I am)
Expansions
On the brighter side, those who use Maschine Expansions will be in for a bit of a treat with a fairly hefty new selection.
11 new expansions await, including a healthy selection of Massive X presets for a wide range of genres.
Verdict
If you’ve recently purchased Komplete 12, you are probably not going to be needing Komplete 13 urgently. The narrow range of additions is nice, but upgrade costs are pretty expensive.
Komplete 13 may be more transformative for producers still using older versions of Komplete, such as Komplete 11 and back. This will grant you all the features of the upgrades since you last bought the bundle.
That said, if you are thinking about buying just one or two of the features, the upgrade price is compelling enough (or the individual instrument prices are steep enough) to justify the whole bundle.
