Native Instruments releases Reaktor 6

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  • The company's modular music creation software, one of its longest-running products, has just gotten a revamp.
  • Native Instruments releases Reaktor 6 image
  • Reaktor 6 has just been released. It's hard to sum up Reaktor succinctly—Native Instruments, who's had a version of it on the market since 1996, calls it a "modular DSP environment"—but it's effectively an open-ended tool for sound design and music-making. It predated the sort of software synths that NI and other companies now release in droves, and Native still uses the software in-house for sound design and prototyping. The biggest new addition to Reaktor 6 is Blocks, which work like the modules of a hardware modular synth. The software ships with 30 of them, and they divide into categories like Bento Blocks ("the core components of a modular synth setup"), Boutique Blocks (which "take inspiration from custom hardware that bring advanced sound shaping to the world of modular synthesis") and Digilog Blocks (for creating "complex rhythms, process notes, and provide structure in patches"), and there are also blocks that incorporate sounds from NI synths like Monark and Rounds. The online Reaktor User Library will make user-created Blocks available for free as they land. There are some other tweaks in the new release as well, aimed at workflow efficiency, sampling power, keeping patches better organized and improving connectivity throughout the structure of patches. Reaktor 6 is now available from Native Instruments for $199 or $99 for an upgrade.
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