Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2

Audio interface from the makers of Kontakt, Tracktor and Machine

The German company Native Instruments among musicians is strongly associated with virtual instruments - primarily with the Reaktor modular supersystem, the legendary Kontakt sampler, the Tracktor virtual DJ deck and the Machine for beatmaking Machine. However, in the last decade they decided to enter the audio interface market with a line of very interesting devices from the Komplete Audio series. And immediately hit the bull's-eye, occupying a unique niche of its kind. While Focusrite, Presonus and other companies focused on home recording of vocals, guitars and other instruments, NI decided to win the hearts of numerous bedroom producers who write techno, dubstep, house, trance, hip-hop and other music genres focused on club dance floors.

Version 2.0

Komplete Audio 2 is an updated version of NI's popular mobile audio interface that retains all the key features of the original. Usually all reviewers start praising the KA 2 for its looks. And it's hard to argue with that. The jet-black chassis with volume controls, audio inputs and power switches would look the same as everyone else, if not for its top panel, which changes everything. It is divided into halves, on one side there is a massive volume control that gives aesthetic pleasure when you turn it, on the other side there is a mirror panel with LED indicators of the incoming and outgoing signal. In addition to the visual aesthetics, the case turned out to be quite compact and also perfectly assembled. As time has shown, Komplete Audio 2 can be carried in a backpack without worrying about its safety.

Great sound for the price

The quality of the built-in preamp, headphone preamp and DAC is also in order. Komplete Audio 2 sounds decent against the background of PreSonus AudioBox and Focusrite Scarlett, supports 192 kHz sampling rate, and is also equipped with a pair of combined XLR/TRS inputs with support for phantom power. Throw in a serious software starter package (Ableton Lite, Maschine Essentials, Monark, Replika, Komplete Start, etc.) and you get an extremely attractive option for an aspiring musician, producer or beatmaker. The only negative is that the headphone input duplicates the linear one, i.e. they cannot be fed a separate signal to monitor the sound from the second deck in Traktor. Apparently, NI decided to divide their cards in a similar way - Audio DJ models are designed for DJs, and Komplete Audio for sound recording.