![]() ![]() It also features a fully-fledged mixer with effects sends to boot. I can now load individual 3rd party plug-ins per pad, instruments, or drums. ![]() Upon initial exploration, it became clear that Nektar Tech has gotten the plug-in host thing right inside Nektarine, being 100 times more intuitive. First impressions once opening the new Nektarine Software were a breath of fresh air! This is a completely different beast. I found myself looking forward to exploring their work and quickly updated my hardware as soon as I heard. The Nektar Tech team reached out to me earlier this year to inform me that they had recently finished a new Nektarine software update – version 2.5.34. Luckily, this didn’t last for long as the latest software update tackled these concerns. I need ease of use when getting creative with music, otherwise my creative flow is killed. ![]() Some people loved it and found workarounds, but unfortunately, this wasn’t for me. I couldn’t, for the life of me, add samples to individual drum pads or even add various plug-in instruments to playback on the Aura – even though I had scanned all of my plug-ins into Nektarine. However, even with the fantastic hardware of the Aura and its beautifully tight integration with Reason, I was let down by its software. And as I found out later, Nektar Tech and Reason Studios have a close relationship thus this integration being a rock solid one. If you are a Reason user, the Nektar Aura makes for an amazing companion, allowing for quick pull-up of instruments, drum racks, and transport control straight out of the box. One thing I did immediately appreciate, though, was the tight integration between Nektar Aura and the Reason DAW from Reason Studios. That said, this thought process was prior to the latest software update that now drives – and has drastically improved – the Aura. I felt as if I needed a coding degree to add a sample to a pad, especially when comparing this user experience to the ease of use I had with the Maschine environment – a common theme to which I kept returning. The Nektar Aura connected with Cypher 2 from fxpansion.Īs spectacular as the Aura may be on the hardware front, I was initially turned off by its software integration. However, I’d argue that these are some of the best drum pads I’ve ever played. Later Maschine users may argue that you can change the sensitivity per pad and adjust to get that same feel as those of the Nektar Auras drum pads. The Nektar Aura can properly capture your expressive performances as a finger drummer. It’s one of those just feels right flows to play the pads with speed, confidence, and different velocities. With sensitive pressure, you can achieve awesome drum rolls without turning on the repeat function. The harder you press, the more confident a click you’ll get through – right to the base of the pad. The membrane of the pad is soft to touch with light pressure. I couldn’t ever quite put my finger on it (no pun intended) as to why, but the pads have a better tactile feel than those of any Maschine unit I’ve used ( MK3, Studio & Maschine Plus). The pads on the Nektar Aura are by far the stand-out feature for me. The Nektar Aura and its “hyper-sensitive” drums pads. Nektarine’s latest update truly brought this unit to life and seemed to realize its full capabilities as I’m sure the developers at Nektar Tech intended. The hardware, on the other hand, was another story – I felt there was still some life left in this unit yet. It was quite unintuitive, especially for gear of this caliber. The downside here: I initially wrote this unit off due to its poor integration with the platform’s software, Nektarine. I was one of the first to get my hands on the Aura, two weeks prior to launch for a review on my YouTube channel. Beyond that, though, it features a few Swiss army knife features like a DAW integration and a built-in sequencer. If you’re not familiar, the Nektar Aura is a 16-pad beat-composer that runs as a software-integrated affair much like Maschine. However, the Aura is a beast all of its own – one worth experiencing with a fresh user perspective in mind. Viewing it through the perspective of an avid Native Instruments Maschine user, my expectations were limited by my references back to the Maschine user environment. Since its 2020 release, I’ve seen the Nektar Aura as a controversial piece of hardware. ![]()
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