NI Massive

[Logic Circuit]

Hi,

I have been playing with Massive for about a week and it is fantastic.

Very flexible, easy to use and sounds great. Quite hard on your CPU though.

Slightly OT but last night my friend brought around his Thingamagoop, which you may want to Google!

It is a small analogue synth that has a light sensitive cell that modulates the sound. It is really good fun! We were shining a Maglite on it and routing it through the Virus C filters, Reaktor 5 FX, Spectral Delay etc. Fantastic!!

Dave.

[EoN]

Originally Posted by Logic Circuit

Quite hard on your CPU though.

Agreed - VERY Heavy on the CPU! I find that some sounds just holding a single note will redline the CPU under a second. Let alone more than one note.

[Hollowcell]

You know, I took a listen to the MP3s they have online for it, and I wasn't overly impressed. If any of you have a demo of it that I can install and really check out, I would very much appreciate it.

[Logic Circuit]

If any of you have a demo of it that I can install and really check out, I would very much appreciate it.

There used to be a demo on the NI website, I'll have a look later.

Remember it's only £200 so it is good for the money but it's nowhere near as good as a Virus C etc.

Dave.

[Doc Jones]

Hey Dave, just saw this post. Was thinking about adding Massive to my bag of goodies. Couple of questions -

1. now that you have had it for a couple of months, what are your overall thoughts of the sound compared to the virus? Are they different enough to purchase it in addition to the TI?

2. a couple of people have said that massive is a cpu hog, do you have any average statistics on what it is doing to your setup (and what your daws specs are)? I currently have a core 2 duo with cpus oc'd to 3.2ghz each and barely push them to 40% on larger projects.

thanks.

[Logic Circuit]

Hi,

I do like it a lot but it doesn't compare to a Virus, I have a Virus C so I can't compare to the wonderful TI.

I am contemplating getting a Sherman Filterbank 2 to run the output of soft synths, like Massive, through it.

The thing that I like is the endless modulation possibilities. Apply an envelope to a parameter you can then 'side-chain' modulate the envelope with an LFO etc etc.

It is a CPU hog but there are settings to change this at the expense of quality, which would be sound dependant. I have just started with the bare minimum and pressed a key and it jumped to 7% CPU usage.

My DAW is at least 3 years old so it is nowhere near cutting edge. It is an AMD Athlon XP 3200+, Abit NF-7S v2 motherboard, 1.5GB of Corsair memory and 2 x 160GB SATA drives.

For me it is the oscillators on the Virus that are fantastic. Oscillator sync, proper PWM just instantly more powerful but Massive is very cheap in comparison to a Virus and is really enjoyable to use because of the modulation choices and how visual and easy it is to use.

If I get a chance I will do some simple sound file comparisons and put them somewhere for download. For example, a simple waveform on both synths with a filter sweep to compare and contrast.

Dave.

[Doc Jones]

Originally Posted by Logic Circuit

If I get a chance I will do some simple sound file comparisons and put them somewhere for download. For example, a simple waveform on both synths with a filter sweep to compare and contrast.

sounds good. thanks.

[Khazul]

Tried the demo and just couldnt get into it - I think probably because it a soft synth rather than a hardware box with knobs on it and no latency and no computer reuqired.