Native Instruments Announces Komplete 8 & Komplete 8 Ultimate

Native Instruments has announced Komplete 8 and Komplete 8 Ultimate, the latest versions of its monster-sized software bundle.

While Komplete 8 has been expanded to include 27 individual products at an unchanged price, the new Komplete 8 Ultimate combines the full arsenal of Native Instruments’ Komplete Instruments and Effects at the same substantial discount, with 50 individual products provided on a dedicated external hard drive.

Komplete 8 includes the latest Kontakt 5 and Guitar Rig 5 versions, and adds the West Africa percussion instrument. It also incorporates the versatile new Studio Drummer drum production instrument and the upcoming Transient Master dynamic processing effect.

Komplete 8 also includes over 1,300 additional presets for Abysnth, FM8 and Massive, derived from several soundpacks, previously available as individual products.

The new Komplete 8 Ultimate includes the full content of the regular Komplete 8 bundle and more, combining the full range of all currently available Komplete Instruments and Effects on a dedicated USB 2.0 hard drive. The resulting collection comprises 50 individual products with over 13,000 sounds and 240 GB of sample content, at a discount of over 80%, compared to the individual prices. The hard drive enables a fast and convenient installation process, and also constitutes a compact and robust backup medium for the software.

Both new Komplete versions are optimized for Native Instruments’ groove production system Maschine, offering direct browser integration with attribute-based preset search as well as convenient automatic parameter mapping for the rotary knobs on the hardware controller.

Komplete 8 will be available in September 2011 for a suggested retail price of US $559 / 499 EUR, with an update for owners of previous Komplete versions available for $229 USD / 199 EUR.

Komplete 8 Ultimate will be available at the same date for US $1,099 / 999 EUR, with an upgrade for owners of any version of the regular Komplete bundle available for $559 USD / 499 EUR.

17 thoughts on “Native Instruments Announces Komplete 8 & Komplete 8 Ultimate

  1. I think there can be hardly any denial that N.I. provides awesome sound libraries and that their instruments and effects are both very versatile as well as extensive. For example, without anything negative on either product (I own & love both) there is no denying that although Ableton's Guhzeng partner instrument (from Soniccouture) has a pretty awesome sound if you're into Asian "string sounds"; N.I. takes the whole thing one step further when looking (and listening) at their North India Kore soundpack.

    ….which to my surprise seems to have been discontinued. Quite a shame IMO; but I'm now very happy that I got it in time myself.

    However, I wonder what their plans are for their Komplete Elements product. It recently got cut down pretty bad (and the price reduced by 50%) yet when looking at Komplete 8 you'll notice that it this product has been made quite bigger.

    So; will people who only want a fraction of Komplete be redirected to the free players which can then be expanded with individual instruments and effects or will we also see a new revamped Elements (or 'Essentials' perhaps?) ?

  2. Komplete takes to long to install and with no bluray on mac it means it's just going to be a 5 hour dvd swapping affair like in years past. This looks ok but I'm not going to upgrade till I get a new mac, just too much trouble for not that much new, and they didn't even include Razor in Komplete regular? Come on when was the last time they added a new synth? I'm not hatin', I like NI but I'm not going to rush out to get this. Reason 6 on the other hand, definitely buying it first day.

  3. NI apparently decided some time ago that updating Komplete 8 to work with Kore would be too much work. Instead, they milked Kore sales until the very last minute, discontinuing one month before announcing K8. A fast buck is a fast buck, after all. Screw the customers.

    This will be the first version of Komplete I don't upgrade to. I'm done with NI.

  4. I agree with ldb. Over the past couple of years NI have been using leech marketing to drain extra profit from their long term customers. They should offer the patrons Komplete 8 Ultimate sans HD for about $300.00.

    I still don't see full 64-bit support for Mac OSX Lion.

  5. How many fu*king versions of Komplete are they going to trot out without upgrades to Battery, Massive and Reaktor? Don't get me wrong, I love NI but shoving a bunch of sound packs in the package while leaving most of the main programs unchanged is wearing thin for me given the programs I'm most interested in keep being ignored. (And yes, 5.6 of Reaktor is an update in a sense, but not the major version update I'm looking for)

  6. You know it's gotten stupid when the product comes with it's own hard drive!

    This is ridiculous pricing. I don't want all that stuff, even though it's all high quality. No human being can reasonably use all that. It's just d^*k waving. What I want to see is tiered "pick what you want" pricing, like this:
    $200 – Any 3 instruments
    $350 – Any 5 instruments
    … etc.

    I got Reaktor on a 50% off sale. All I want is FM8 and Kontakt, but to buy them alone is nearly as expensive as getting the whole bundle. They clearly want to force people into a once a year subscription fee, and that sucks. At least they could make the free version of Kontakt play all the third party instruments. All those companies have lost a lot of sales because of that.

  7. Kore was the only way to make using the entire komplete bundle manageable.. now I guess they expect everyone to buy Maschine.. what a load of crap.

    FWIW, I owned Maschine previously and sold it because it was junk..

  8. Not to nitpick (yet I am) but… The external HD is actually used to prevent having to swap all those dvd's in and out.

    Which IMO provides a new argument in its own: why do you need to /install/ all of this stuff if you now have get an external HD with the product? Why can't Komplete reduce space by using this USB HD ?

  9. Can anyone clarify if you can install only the instruments you want? Eg. I really only want to install Kontakt and Fm8 at this stage, but as i get a Maschine cross grade price it's cheaper to buy Komplete than the individual instruments.

  10. My experience is only with the (previous) Komplete Elements but still; that allowed you to install the instruments separately.

    I also had an "alternative" version of Komplete 7 once and I noticed that all the installer basically did was fire up the separate installer programs of each product (which were all located in a sub directory).

    While this doesn't say anything about Komplete 8 I'm pretty sure that NI hasn't changed this installation procedure. SO I'm pretty certain that even when the installer may not support separate installs (which IMO it does) you can always manually install the products individually.

  11. I just bought the Komplete 7 upgrade one month ago. The box is still sitting in a desk, as I had to run on K5 + K6 for a current production and did not want to loose time in DAW configuration. So, i will ionstall K7 in september at best… Why NI does not offer a discount for customers who recently bought the last update? We've seen that policy from other companies very often. Also, when upgrading from 5 to 6, I kept the libraries but there is alot of redundancy in the 7 and 8 upgrades… Can I uninstall the K5 + K6 BEFORE updating? Could I skip the K7 upgrade and go direct to K8 standard or ultimate without having the previous installations on this computer? Never tried it… In that case, I could sell my K7 upgrade as it has not been registered and recoup a few bucks from it. Thanks for the answer.

  12. As a brand new NI customer, I am appalled that they won’t offer any kind of grace period for those who bought the previous version within the past 30 days. Ridiculous. And they say that this is because it would be too complicated. Such a lie… Just give a store credit to those who qualify and they can buy the upgrade, easy. The way they are choosing to go about things is just making their customers suspicious and paranoid about giving gem any more money. Companies that treat heir customers this way should not be surprised when people use “alternative” versions of their product. Sad.

  13. I agree with a few of the posters here, Kore was the only thing that made all these sounds and effects even halfway manageable. It really makes no sense for them to discontinue it because these days I find myself turning to synths like Nexus more and more just because it's so much easier to get to all the sounds you have available.

    As far as Komplete 8 goes, I'm still trying to figure out what the difference is between it and Komplete 7, and if it's worth the upgrade fee. With no updates (that I can see at this point) to the synths I use the most, I don't think I can justify it.

  14. I’m new to the Komplete series & i’m looking to buy a product that delivers an engine which is capable of creating sounds that are most used in “Trance” is this new product by NI worth getting? & is there more sounds available to me if i purchase the edition with the external hard drive which i can use to create the music i like?

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