Details
The Studio Producer pack is designed to give superior quality performance and control needed to get your laptop creating music, at an even better price!
A powerful beat making and performance instrument, the Aruba MIDI Pad Controller has 16 hyper-sensitive RGB illuminated pads, an on-board drum machine-style step sequencer with record, a flexible pad repeat engine and incredible plugin control. Add the Amber i1 24-bit/192kHz audio interface and eXtra 10 headphones, and you’ve got everything you need.
Aruba’s hardware is all about realtime access and performance: A host of controls ensures direct access to key features without any menu diving. At the center are 16 large RGB pads – they are velocity and pressure-sensitive and can be fine-tuned to match your personal playing style. ARUBA’s 8 heavy-duty 360-degree rotary pots are always assigned to control a selected feature’s parameters with their assignments shown on the color TFT display. 4 display buttons give access to additional settings, MIDI assignments or secondary menus. Dedicated buttons make it easy to switch between different modes: Internal MIDI controller, drum machine style sequencer, Pad Repeat or DAW Control are always just one button-press away.
The hardware Step Sequencer is programmed like a classic drum machine from the 16 small RGB buttons. Each pad can be programmed, or recorded in real-time, with its own independent sequence. You can solo, mute or trigger sequences simply by hitting a pad and control other parameters from the pots, which makes the Sequencer an excellent realtime performance tool. The MIDI Out on ARUBA’s back lets you sequence external MIDI gear and can also be used as a MIDI interface from the computer.
The included Nektarine software and drum library turns Aruba into a complete beat making solution that works in any DAW. Use your favorite drum instrument plugin (VST/VST3 or AU) or start creating with the built-in DP-1 drum player, K1 Kick, S1 Snare and T1 Tom synth instruments
Play your own library of audio samples or incorporate any combination of plugins with any other content, to create your own unique kits. All settings, including pad setups, are stored as part of your DAW song/project or Nektarine Multipatch for complete recall when you next start working.
Aruba and Nektarine put a complete beat creation powerhouse at your fingertips. Best of all, Nektarine runs in any DAW as a VST, VST3, AU or AAX plugin so you can load your kits in the environment you prefer.
The Amber i1 audio interface is a professional 24-bit/192kHz USB-C Audio Interface
Hardware loopback, USB-C, a completely newly designed LED display area, separate line inputs, advanced signal source selection and an exceptional audio quality in this class are just a few of the special features.
The eXtra 10 are lightweight headphones, providing a clear and accurate reproduction for monitoring purposes in the studio. They have been developed for musicians, providing truly high quality sound reproduction for use in any recording and monitoring environment.
WHAT IS NEKTARINE?
Of course you could load an instrument plugin onto a track in your DAW and play it right away – but ARUBA does so much more when paired with the included Nektarine software. Nektarine is a plugin host that itself can be loaded as an AU, VST, VST3 or AAX plugin (meaning it can run in virtually any current DAW).
Start with the simple task of loading your favorite drum plugin in Nektarine and map the pads to it’s sounds. From the Pad Setup menu on ARUBA, just move the pot that sets the MIDI IN note until you hear the sound you want the selected pad to play. With the pads set up, save a multipatch in Nektarine. Both pads and plugin settings are recalled next time you load it. But the fun really begins, when you make your own kits & sounds by combining multiple samples and plugins in Nektarine. Create kits with up to 16 different instrument plugins, 64 insert FX-plugins and an additional 4 send FX. All plugins instantly controlleable. directly from the hardware!
You can even import your sample library and play the samples in Nektarine’s DP-1 drum player. And before we forget: ARUBA includes a license for the Nektarine stand-alone application. This lets you create beats easily by sequencing your instrument plugins from ARUBA, drum-machine-style: get groovin’!
NEKTARINE’S DP-1 DRUM PLAYER
The Nektarine Drum Player DP-1 makes it beautifully simple to play audio samples from ARUBA. Use drag and drop in Nektarine or load samples directly from ARUBA while you work. This automatically launches the DP-1 Drum Player with your audio sample loaded and assigned to the correct pad, ready for action.
DP-1 is compatible with WAV and AIFF files, playing back sample rates from 16kHz to pristine 192kHz and supports 12 to 24bit resolutions. But you won’t have to down-sample your sounds manually to get that gritty 8 bit-crunch sound. Simply press the “1982” button and DP-1’s real time sample rate converter takes you right back to when 8 bit sampling was the best technology could deliver! We’ve actually gone as far as emulating the circuitry found in those classic machines – including the µ-law algorithm. But on DP-1 you can tweak that sound : Change the sample rate (from 4kHz to 16kHz) or the circuits’ internal filter in realtime and make it as rough or smooth as you want!
DP-1’s user interface has been created for control from ARUBA’s 8 knobs and display buttons, so the experience is like working with a hardware sample player! The main parameters are grouped into 3 sections of 8 parameters each:
The Sample Parameters give you access to the typical sound parameters, starting with Pitch: Designed exclusively as a drum player, DP-1 plays the sample at its root pitch so it always sounds as intended, regardless of what MIDI note is sent to DP-1. Pitch can be adjusted to any value over 4 octaves (-/+ 24 semitones). Attack, Decay, Decay Slope and a one-shot switch let you control a sample’s amplitude envelope, from short sharp attacks to longer sustain kick drums. Using the ENV>FILT knob, you can use this envelope to modulate the also included synth-style 2 pole filter. It has Drive, Cutoff and Resonance control to let you create anything from subtle low end kicks to screaming distorted snare drums.
The FX Section features 3 onboard tools for further sound shaping. First off are 1982 mode’s Sample Rate and Filter parameters: Simply by playing with these controls, you can turn a soft Jazz Brush Snare into a slamming crunchy 8-Bit HipHop snare. And if that’s not enough punch yet, kick in the One Knob Compressor: The higher you set the Amount, the more you’ll squash your samples’ dynamics. And the Gain knob lets you finetune the behaviour by driving the compressor softer or harder. The 2-band Equalizer has also been designed with drum sounds in mind: The Low band controls the bass, the semi-parametric Hi band lets you shape the upper part of the frequency spectrum. You’ll be surprised, how effective this EQ-section is!
The Modulation Section lets you assign Velocity to up to 3 different modulation targets at the same time and Pad Pressure to a fourth target. You can route modulation to pitch, envelope parameters, the filter and volume for very dynamic and lively sounds.
And the best is, that you can control each section’s parameters simultaneously from Aura’s 8 knobs, which makes sound creation and editing extremely intuitive.
K1, S1 and T1 drum synth instruments
Nektarine software’s latest update adds 3 new drum synth instruments: K1 Kick Synth, S1 Snare Synth and T1 Tom Synth. Each drum synth combines a harmonics oscillator, tailored to deliver the body of the instrument drum sound, with other sound elements. This enables a sound pallet covering acoustic inspired to outright electronic or experimental drum sounds.
K1 Kick Synth
S1 Snare Synth
T1 Tom Synth
For example, the K1 Kick Synth combines open and closed beater options with body, pitch and transient parameters along with a bend parameter that can deliver a sharp electronic pitch thud or longer glide.
The S1 Snare Synth includes Wire options and noise sources with Body and Transient parameters. Each instrument is optimized for the purpose its designed for.
All instruments have control of pitch, decay, slope and a cutoff filter with saturation. The shared effects section contains important tools for production-ready sounds including overshoot distortion which adds grit and zap to any sound, a one control compressor optimized for drum sounds and a 2 band EQ. Velocity as well as pressure can be routed to many of the instrument parameters to create dynamic and well playing sounds.
The new suite of drum synth instruments compliments the existing DP-1 drum sample player which already comes with a factory sound library of acoustic and electric sampled kits. The factory sound library has been expanded with new K1, S1 and T1 drum synth patches, taking the total to over 600 individual drum sounds and 45 kits.
