I always enjoy reading interviews with musicians I enjoy, especially when they talk about gear. Native Instruments, the makers of my favorite soft synth package, Reaktor, have just posted an interview with Trent Reznor that talks about his infatuation with their products. Not surprisingly, it comes across as an advertisement at times, but there’s some insight into his songwriting process and his thoughts on his recent experiment with remixable tracks.

The tech talk section at N.I. has tons of other interviews including The Crystal Method, Deepsky, and Junkie XL.

Version 5.0 of my favorite music software, Native Instruments Reaktor, is now shipping, and I just received my upgrade package. Reaktor is an amazing virtual synthesizer engine that lets you create just about any synth, sound generator, or effect.

Reaktor’s greatest strength is its incredible depth and complexity—ensembles can contain one or more instruments, which can contain macros and modules, all of which can be wired any way you choose. Unfortunately this complexity also means a very steep learning curve, and it’s going to take me a while to get up to speed on the new version.

Volumes could be written about this software, and I’ll be writing a great deal more myself. For starters, here are some first impressions after a few hours fiddling with the new version:

• Price: The upgrade from Reaktor 3.x or 4.x is $169. The full version is a hefty $569.
• Copy Protection: Reaktor 5 uses the same authorize-it-online copy protection as previous versions, and you can have two computers authorized at a time. I had no trouble getting version 4 to work on my PC and iBook concurrently, and 5.0 should be no different. If your music computer isn’t online you’ll have to jump through some hoops to authorize it, but otherwise it’s unobtrusive.
• Core Technology: Reaktor 5’s biggest new feature is probably the hardest to comprehend. The new core system adds another level of complexity to Reaktor, allowing you to create lower level modules. More importantly, it allows other people to create them so you and I can enjoy them. The interface between core and “old” modules is bound to cause a headache or two, but I’m sure I’ll be very happy about this once I figure it out.
• The New Library: Once again Reaktor comes with a library of great pre-made instruments, and they’re more professional than ever—many use core features to create better sounds at lower CPU usage, and most have a great graphical interface. Reaktor would be worth it just for these virtual instruments, but you can also take them apart and customize them.
• User Interface: In the old days, Reaktor instruments could do amazing things internally, but they all looked about the same on the surface, with identical knobs, buttons, and meters. Now the UI is more customizable than ever, and the library includes some very stylized synths. I’m especially excited about the new feature that lets you share an area of the screen between different macros and toggle between them—this will help with my tendency to create instrument panels that grow too large for my screen. This feature appears in many of the new library instruments to great effect.
• Manuals: It somehow feels better to pay this much for software when I get a nice pile of reference manuals. Reaktor 5 includes an expanded Operation Manual, an Instrument Guide for the library (yes, the stock ensembles are complex enough to need their own instructions) and a new Core Tutorial that provides an introduction and reference for the new type of modules. All told, nearly 800 pages of actual paper.
• Stability: Reaktor 2.0 and 3.0 were programs I had to be careful with—close everything before running, save frequently. Reaktor 4.0 rarely crashed, and 5.0 is the most stable version yet—I’m already getting casual about running it, and it hasn’t disappointed me yet.

There’s a detailed list of new features at the Native Instruments site.

One of the most important aspects of computer music production is a sound card to get sounds into and out of the computer. If you use software synthesizers, you also need something better than a typical SoundBlaster to get the latency down to reasonable levels so you can play with the instrument live. I’ve been using an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 for this purpose for a few months, and it’s a great card for the $99 price.

Now M-Audio and Digidesign have collaborated to produce Pro Tools M-Powered, a specialized version of Pro Tools that works with M-Audio’s hardware, including the economical 2496.

I’ve never been a Pro Tools user, originally because I couldn’t afford the dedicated hardware and now because I have way too much invested in Cubase. I’m still not planning on switching platforms, but it’s nice to know that the barrier to entry for Pro Tools systems has come way down.

I’m a software junkie, and I’ve downloaded, bought, or played with hundreds of obscure bits of music software. Nonetheless, there are a few programs I consider essential: Software I’ve owned for years, can spend hours using comfortably, and can count on to fulfill my needs. Here’s my list of music software I couldn’t do without:

• Native Instruments Reaktor 4: Reaktor is a virtual synthesizer and effects construction kit and much more. I’ve made entire songs out of Reaktor sounds, and I love creating new instruments and effects. (Reaktor 5 is coming this month, can’t wait.)
• FL Studio 5: Formerly known embarrassingly as “Fruityloops”, this is the ultimate virtual drum machine and loop synthesizer. Most of my songs start out in FL Studio, and with the nice synthesizer plug-ins they’re often nearly done before I use anything else. I just wish it was available for Macintosh, since I’m using an iBook as my portable machine. I paid for an ancient version of FruityLoops and have received free upgrades ever since.
• Cubase SX 3: The best sequencer I’ve ever used. I don’t use much MIDI these days, so I use Cubase primarily to mix together loops and audio files that came from Reaktor, FL Studio, and occasionally a real piece of hardware.
• Sound Forge: Sometimes I need an audio editor to process and mixdown final tracks, on those rare occasions when I finish something. I’m not too picky about audio editors—Sound Forge is just the one I paid for a while back. It’s not the latest version, but it works.

I’ll write about each of these in much more detail in future posts, but since I’m just starting this site and so much of music production today depends on the software you use, I thought I should let you know where I’m coming from.

I use these mostly on Windows. Reaktor and Cubase are available for OSX as well, and both allow me to use the product on both my PC and my iBook, which is nice.