Pip: KK-ACCESS — where the NKS ecosystem gets the honest, no-affiliate-links treatment it frankly deserves, and this week chrisankin has been busy.
Mara: Very busy — we're looking at new preset packs for synths, a full review of a vast Latin percussion library, and a cinematic drum powerhouse from Heavyocity, all with accessibility front and centre.
Pip: Let's start with the synth preset world — there's quite a bit happening there.
New sounds for your synths
Mara: The question here is simple: what new preset content has landed for NKS users this week, and is any of it worth your euros?
Pip: The post covering Plughugger and Ocean Swift lays out several options at once. Plughugger's Swedish Progressive House pack for U-HE Diva is on at 9.90 euros with the code PROGRESSIVE, and Ocean Swift brings two new releases — Spectral Symphonies for Absynth 6 at 24.99 euros, and Sub Sonics for Hive 2 at 14.99.
Mara: All of them carry NKS compatibility with tagging and pre-hear sounds, which matters for the KK-ACCESS readership. Ocean Swift also have bundle deals, all NKS compliant.
Pip: Then Plughugger returns with a second release — Neon City for U-HE Repro, covering both the polyphonic Repro 5 and the monophonic Repro 1. They describe it as "a return ticket to the decade when analog and hybrid synthesizers ruled the airwaves and pop music shimmered with optimism."
Mara: That's a confident pitch. It comes in Repro preset format plus NKS presets, pre-hear sounds, and WAV files for use in other samplers — 9.90 euros on intro offer with code NEONCITY, down from the regular 19.90.
Pip: Fifty percent off an eighties nostalgia trip. Cheaper than therapy, and probably more fun.
Mara: The Freelance Soundlabs May newsletter rounds out this territory with NKS library updates for Best Service Engine Audio — Celtic Era 2, Dark Era, Desert Winds, Era II Medieval Legends, and Forest Kingdom 3 among them — plus new GForce bundles covering the Oberheim, Analogue Series, and Ultimate collections, and expanded NKS support for GForce M-Tron Pro IV including the new Dust-O-Tron and Streetly Tapes London expansions.
Pip: That M-Tron list is long enough to need its own postcode. The newsletter notes the Engine Audio libraries were a particular challenge because every automatable parameter had to be re-enabled manually for each preset — a month's work just to automate the process.
Mara: Right — and that effort translates directly into instant control for the user, no fiddling with host automation settings on every preset load.
Pip: From synth presets to something altogether more physical — let's get into the percussion reviews.
Hitting things, authentically
Mara: The central question across both percussion reviews is whether these libraries hold up for blind and visually impaired users — and the answer is nuanced each time.
Pip: Starting with Orange Tree Samples and Latitude Latin Rock Percussion, the scope is immediately striking: 376 percussive instruments, over 88,000 samples, 15 gigabytes, and a development period of more than ten years.
Mara: The review is candid about the accessibility ceiling from the outset: "The truth from the outset is that there are advanced features included within Latitude percussion that blind and visually impaired users will not currently be able to access out of the box."
Pip: What that means in practice is that the sample browser — where you'd load and mix your own instrument combinations across 16 slots — is out of reach via NKS. Tuning, panning, sample offset, and the groove pattern loader are also absent from the current nine pages of NKS controls.
Mara: The workaround is real but limited: all instrument content is represented in the 259 included NKSN snapshot presets, divided across Ensembles, Grooves, Kits, and Menus, so cherry-picking sounds across multiple Kontakt instances remains possible.
Pip: The sound quality itself gets a strong endorsement — 48 kHz, 24-bit recording, up to 16 round robins, and convolution reverbs sourced from Eventide, Lexicon, Kurzweil, and even an Alesis Midiverb II from the eighties.
Mara: It's on introductory offer at 159 dollars until 31st May, regularly 199. The review concludes it's not a total barrier, but if you want the full interface experience from the walkthrough videos, you'll need to weigh that honestly.
Pip: Then there's Oblivion Drums from Heavyocity — a different beast entirely. Where Latitude is a decade of careful ethnographic sampling, Oblivion Drums is cinematic aggression by design, built in collaboration with composer David Levy, known for his work on Doom Eternal.
Mara: The NKS accessibility picture is broadly consistent with Heavyocity's Damage library — EQ, Punish and Filter, Compressor, Saturation, Delay, and Reverb are all accessible. The Kit Designer gives individual volume controls for all 16 channels, though pan controls are oddly absent from the NKS mapping despite being available for host automation.
Pip: The Loop Designer section gets a particular mention — 36 loop presets split into five keyboard zones per preset, plus keyswitches between F1 and B1 that trigger beat stutters ramping up to a 64-beat machine gun effect. Available for 129 dollars until 3rd June, with an extra 20 off for existing Oblivion owners.
Mara: Both reviews reflect KK-ACCESS's non-peer-profit policy — no affiliate links, no financial incentives from developers, just direct assessment from a blind user's perspective.
Pip: Which is exactly the kind of editorial consistency that makes the accessibility verdicts here worth trusting.
Mara: Preset packs, deep percussion libraries, and honest accessibility reporting — there's a consistent thread running through all of it about what NKS actually delivers to users who depend on it.
Pip: Next time, we'll see what else lands in the ecosystem. There's always something new to map.
KK-ACCESS 