Native Instruments Massive X Rush, Pulse & Scene Expansion Packs Review
Long-Term Test
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When Native Instruments announced Massive X in 2018, the music community went haywire. The original Massive had been such an overwhelming hit, that expectations for the sequel were through the roof.
The original Massive, which debuted in 2006 and was developed by Mike Daliot of Reaktor fame, became a pivotal synth that inspired new music genres and shoved Dubstep out of the underground UK garage scene into popular culture. Massive wasn’t for the feint of heart. The wavetable and subtractive synthesizer was daunting to program and it took a “massive” hit to your computer’s CPU. However, the synth matured beautifully and if you had the patience to get deep under the hood, it rewarded you with a sound character like no other. Musicians, producers and sound designers eventually flocked to the software as computer processing advanced and the synth came into its own.
It took NI over a decade to put out the sequel. The original code was scraped in favor of a new paradigm and the German company really wanted to up the ante in terms of sonic capabilities, fidelity and programming. When it finally bowed in 2019, users where taken back that it only had two wavetable oscillators, instead of Massive’s three and other beloved features were either dropped or replaced. Although, delving deeper, users eventually found that there were more oscillators available via insert effects and other initial complaints were tapered, but the one criticism that remained was it was quite buggy.
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Some felt that it was rushed out to take advantage of the holiday buying season and were quite harsh in their assessment of the synth, letting the small deficits taint what NI had achieved. The interface was simply gorgeous with shades of beige and splashes of color. Keeping the one screen interface methodology, Massive X divided the interface into a top and bottom with sound generators above and routing, voicing and modulation below. It’s still a complex and deep synth (170 wavetables!), but Native Instruments obviously spent considerable time and energy into making everything as usable and intuitive as possible. Native dedicated a development task force to squash the bugs and released several updates to smooth out the issues and provide more visual feedback. Today’s Massive X is stable and battle hardened.
Showcase What Massive X Can Achieve On The Low End
Which makes it a great time for Native Instruments to debut three new preset packs, or what they call Expansions, for the softsynth. All three of the Expansions, Pulse, Rush and Scene, contain 150 presets. Pulse is their Big Room bass pack with what they describe as “deep-sea subs, corrosive and distorted lines, talkative formants, and futuristic takes on low-end classics.” Our reviewers found Pulse to “really showcase all sides of what Massive X can achieve on the low end” and “even if a preset doesn’t knock your socks off, it only takes a few tweaks to dial in something you can make your own.”
Rush, which was our evaluators overwhelming favorite of the Expansions, is geared towards leads and big melody sounds. There is a ton of diversity here with many of the sounds lending themselves to atmospheric pads and bass lines as well. “Rush’s sounds have a clarity and detail to them, which makes them great for combining with other instances of Massive X in your DAW for a melodic signature that few other synths can deliver,” stated one reviewer. Other testers found Rush to contain “a ton of useable and fun sounds that beg to be automated over time…for evolving, textured runs.”
Finally, Scene is for more cinematic excursions with ambient and organically complex pads that continually morph. NI describes these as “magical, dark and arcane” and our evaluators found them very useful as beds for tense, soundtracks and disturbing breakdowns. “I like to drop my listeners off a cliff into the abyss with my breakdowns, and many of Scene’s presets allow me to layer in weight and pressure.” Again, Massive X’s sonic clarity means that many big sounds don’t sponge up huge swaths of frequency spectrum allowing to stack sounds for even more mayhem.
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Some of the more “uneventful” presets of the three new Expansion packs have a tendency to fall into a “retro 80’s vibe” with a “FM-y” and “video game” character. This is due to Massive X’s inherent structure, but if you are a fan of these types of sounds, there are plenty to explore. In addition, there are also some Trance and even Acid patches to explore in these sets. As usual, there are a few duds. “Rattler” from the Rush Expansion is one of those presets that just make you say: “why?” There are also what one of our reviewers felt was an overabundance of “vowel presets” with nonsensical vocalizations dominating the patch. Again, it will come down to personal preference whether or not vowel driven sounds float your boat, but it should be mentioned. One other slight that all three of our testers mentioned was the “uncreative,” “non-descriptive” and “uninspiring” nomenclature of the presets. The “We Walk” patch name from Pulse was targeted as just “lazy and dumb.”
Conclusion
All in all, these Massive X Expansion packs will certainly inspire your music making and are a small price to pay for bolstering your investment in Massive X. Highly recommended.
Cheers:
+ Inspiring
+ Value
+ Clarity & Detail
+ Sound Quality
+ Great For Layering
+ Showcase What Massive X Is Capable Of
Jeers:
– Patch Names
– Some “Filler” patches
Each of Native Instruments’ Expansion packs cost $29.00 and are available now.
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The Future:
It would be great if you could buy presets from NI “A La Carte.” A sophisticated company like Native Instruments could certainly pull this off by offering consumers the ability to pick a choose exactly what patches they want in a predefined bundle of 1, 5,10, 20, 50,100 patches. This would allow users to buy precisely what they want, eliminating the duds, and also give NI insights into what patches are actually desired.
