NEKTAR TECHNOLOGY AURA | Beat Composer Pad Controller W/16 Pads,step Sequencer & Plug-in Control

Nektar AURA is a powerful beat creation and performance instrument. This MIDI Pad Controller has 16 hyper-sensitive RGB illuminated pads, an on-board step sequencer, a flexible pad repeat engine and incredible plugin control. AURA brings an exciting drum-machine-style workflow to any DAW or external MIDI setup.

PLAY GROOVES

AURA’s 16 RGB-illuminated pads are great for finger drumming and trigger at the lightest touch. Even better, everything is set up for you already when running AURA with Nektarine – including mapping for many VST®, VST3® and AU™ drum instruments.

The pads are also highly customizable: Tweak pad sensitivity to your needs and playing style by choosing one of 4 different velocity curves with adjustable bias parameter. Pad pressure is assignable to Aftertouch, Pitch Bend or other MIDI CCs. And you can not only set a dedicated MIDI channel for each pad, you can even route the MIDI In note to a different MIDI note (eg. when playing a multi-sound plugin, and wanting to browse the sounds in that patch from one pad). 

AURA’s on-board Pad Repeat engine is directly accessible, offering a dedicated on/off button and settings menu. Use Repeat to create rolls or other percussive lines, that would be hard to play by hand. The repeat settings are highly customizable with realtime parameters for groove and speed control – all right under your fingertips on AURA’s 8 potentiometers.

Looking for some instant Trap-style hihat lines? The first 6 RGB LED buttons right above the display switch repeat rates in realtime. Create truly dynamic rolls by using pad pressure to control velocity while changing the repeat rates with the LED buttons. Other parameters include Repeat Rate, Gate, Accent Interval, Accent Velocity Offset, Swing, Trigger Mode and Clock Source.

CREATE BEATS

Realtime editing: Change the Play Rate, dial in a fixed Velocity and Accent Level Offset, set a Length for the events or add Swing for an extra-helping of groove. Many of these features go all the way down to step level. Last Step allows you to adjust the step length for each of a pattern’s parts independently. 

Power user features: Dive as deep as you like – many parameters can be edited with up to step level precision. Simply select the pattern, part and steps you want and change the values for one or multiple selections at the same time. Group editing of Velocity, Play Rate or Gate Length across 4 parts or patterns  in groups of 8 patterns at the same time is also possible. A great way to check and edit values across multiple steps without having to select them first. 

Synchronization: Internal and external clock modes ensure perfect sync with the outside world. AURA and the sequencer may also be used stand-alone with external MIDI instruments connected directly to the MIDI Out jack.

BUILD KITS

Of course you can load an instrument plugin onto a track in your DAW and play it right away – but the fun really begins when you make your own kits & sounds by combining multiple plugins with the help of Nektarine: Create kits with up to 16 different instrument plugins, 64 insert FX-plugins and an additional 4 send FX. All of this on one track in your DAW. And we are talking any VST, VST3 or AU plugin here – including total recall for your kit.

Simply load the Nektarine plugin into any DAW that is compatible with VST, VST3, AU or AAX (meaning virtually any current DAW, be it Ableton, Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, Bitwig or Studio One), scan your plugins and you are good to go: Now AURA has direct access to your installed plugins from the hardware! You can also import the instruments’ patches into Nektarine’s powerful database – for many instrument plugins we even offer their factory patches as downloads ready for import. And before we forget: AURA includes a license for the Nektarine stand-alone application. So if you just want to perform sounds live, and sequence from AURA drum-machine-style: get groovin’!

Start by loading a multi-sound drum plugin like Groove Agent, one of the many Kontakt libraries, or any other drum plugin – instantly taking over AURA’s 16 pads. Don’t like the snare? Replace it! 

Play the pad, press ‘Add  Slot’ in AURA’s pad setup menu, browse your patch library on the TFT color display and load a new plugin. Any pad can be reassigned to a new plugin by creating a plugin slot and loading a patch or plugin directly from AURA’s browser. AURA’s patch browser lets you also filter for particular plugins, categories or tags to quickly zoom in on the sounds you are looking for. The best is, that a patch automatically loads the plugin it belongs to – so finding that “perfect” kick or snare drum for your track across multiple plugins becomes a matter of seconds.

Keep adding instrument plugins until you have a different one playing on each of the 16 pads, ranges can also overlap for sound layering. Mix your kit using Nektarine’s software mixer with panning and volume control per plugin – and by adding FX plugins:

4 insert FX slots per plugin as well as 4 additional global send FX slots for the kit provide plenty of processing options. The FX plugins can be loaded and tweaked from AURA, using the two dedicated “FX” buttons for instant access to inserts and sends.

Your kit, including all of the FX configurations and pad assignments is saved as part of a DAW project/song or in a Nektarine Multi-Patch for instant recall.

The Nektarine software running on your computer has a dedicated PlugIn View, so you always see your loaded plugins and configuration:

When you hit a pad on AURA, Nektarine displays the assigned plugin’s GUI in the Plugin View. You can also use the pad representation in the upper left corner of the UI to select a pad manually, or use the parameters in each plugin header to set volume, pan and effects send settings. On AURA’s screen you can see these parameters for 8 pads at the same time.

Dedicated views for FX Inserts and the global Send FX allow you to easily assign and control VST or AU effects plugins that you want to add to your kit.

Nektarine’s ‘Browser’ provides a powerful database for all your presets. It is designed to manage thousands of patches and kits with features like customizable tags and sorting tools including full control from AURA. Browser settings are independent for every instrument and effect plugin slot. They are stored with a Nektarine Multi-Patch or even a DAW project/song, along with all other settings. Nektarine can be run in any DAW hosting AAX, AU, VST or VST3 plugins or as a standalone application in Windows and Apple OSX.

TWEAK PLUG-INS

Press ‘Plugin’-mode for instant control of hosted instrument plugins – complete with parameter feedback on AURA’s color display. Based on the last triggered pad, Nektarine auto-selects the relevant parameters for control from AURA’s 8 heavy-duty rotary pots.

Your plugin has more parameters? No worries: Nektar’s mapping technology can even control plugins with thousands of parameters seamlessly. Simply select another mapping page using the display soft-keys or ‘Menu’ button and the pots are reassigned – with crystal-clear parameter feedback on AURA’s display. What’s more, you can get started right away, as factory maps for many popular instrument plugins are already included with Nektarine.

When programming drum sounds, quick access to key parameters such as pitch, decay or level is essential. So many of the factory maps are set up to deliver this to you – even supporting multi-sound plugins such as  Kontakt libraries or Steinberg Groove Agent for example.

On many of these plugins, each pad controls a different instrument (kick, snare, toms etc.), often also with different sound parameters and settings for each. Simply Hit the desired pad – and the controls are re-assigned for a true hardware drum machine style workflow!

Making your own maps is easy: Nektarine has a special ‘Control’ View for graphic map editing including drag-and-drop support. To the left of the window you see a list of all available plugin parameters, at the center you see AURA’s 8 pots. To assign a parameter, simply drag it from the list onto a control  – that’s all, no rocket science required!

On the right you see the selected map’s page structure: Maps can be as simple as a 1-page map with just 8 parameters or a full-featured synthesizer map with multiple pages like shown below. Create pages and subpages to easily cover complex plugins with multiple Oscillators-, Filters- and so on. All of this easily controllable via switching pages from display buttons or the ‘Menu’ select button.

You can create maps for your FX plugins the same way, and save it all in Nektarine. 

DAW CONTROL

Take advantage of AURA’s deep DAW integration: Aura of course works with any MIDI software, but if you use one of the DAWs supported by Nektar DAW Integration software you can select tracks, navigate projects or control extended transport functions directly from the hardware. Nektar’s integration software takes care of all required setup tasks, so everything is pre-configured for instant use.

Once installed, the dedicated ‘DAW’ button comes alive and assigns AURA’s surface to take control of many popular DAWs at one press. Seven transport buttons are otherwise fully MIDI assignable, including MMC commands, and can be used to set up transport control for any software not supported by Nektar DAW integration. 

Nektar DAW Integration software for AURA currently supports: Ableton Live Suite, Bitwig, Cubase, Digital Performer, Garageband, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper, Reason, Studio One and Sonar/Cakewalk.

MIDI PROGRAM

AURA’s 16 presets are pre-loaded with example settings. These settings are a good starting point for your own presets, and give you an idea what you can use the pads for. The 8 pots are all assigned to General MIDI (GM) instrument controls, so GM soft- and hardware instruments will respond immediately.