Native Instruments B4

Kurzweil PC1X, Yamaha PSR-GX76, MOTU Fastlane USB, Hot-rod MOSFET Homebuild Leslie 145 (http://www.vintagemusicprojects.com), Behringer 802 mixer, Behringer KX1200 keyboard amp, Leslie mic'ed with 3 SM58 mics 2 upper, 1 lower, KX1200 direct in to house board, Native Instruments B4, PIII 850 MHz, Soundblaster Live 5.1 sound card with KX Project Driver.

See my review above. This commentary is in response to the guy above who said this thing sounds bad.

My advice: buy the licensed version with all the tonewheel sets which includes a B3 in every state of disrepair you can imagine; Run it through a decent PC with a decent soundcard and low latency driver, and a real Leslie;

See the majority of the comments here - it doesn't get better than this, even compared to the hardware clones. Takes a little longer to setup, but audience can't tell the difference and being an experienced keyboard player neither can I and I've been playing for 32 years on and off.

I use it standalone as I have no need for a VSTi host. See my original review

See my original review above.

See my original review - never crashed and I use it for live performance 2 times a week for 3-4 hour gigs.

I've been playing keybaords in a 70's rock band for about 6 years and before that i used to play a bit keyboard in a bad black metal band...
The Organ i've beed played is some useless GM sounds, Yammaha organs that sounded like crapp, Crumor Organizer and som other crappy none tonewheel organs, I used a lot of distortion and other modulations to make it sound a bot more cool. I havde tried some Hammond organs and thougt i sounded really pissing good, and deicided to buy one, that was before I even known about the price and i was a bit freaked out.

No problem at all, if you know how install a game and workded a bit with midi there should be no problem....

There is one thing I don't like and thats the only thing I can complain about, but it can be my crappy soundcard, the sounds a bit compressed, needs more bottom and punch to be the real thing.

With a good soundcard this should sound great, I'm thinking of buying a USB Aduiophile 24/96 (since i use a laptop) used for about 100$ and hope for low latency, with my sounblaster (crapp) my latency goes down to 35ms whitout sounding crappy, (If you know it doesn't work well together with the audiophile USB plz e-mail me). I hope for about 10ms delay. But the sound i great and fit very well with my band...

I've been playing since I was 14 and I'm 46 - took about 15 years off from regular playing when my kids were born so I started back in the '70s and have played various organs through several home-built (and recently hot-rodded scratch-built Leslie 145). I've also owned and/or played various Hammonds (L-100, B3, etc.), Fender Rhodes, Korg MS 20 (mono 2-osc analog synth), Mini-Moog, Crumar strings, Crumar Organizer, Wurly, Yamaha, Kurzweil and various other keyboards over the years.

This review is for the Native Instruments B4 and I'm using it in standalone mode with an 850 MHz PIII, 384 Mb, Win XP Home, MOTU FastLane USB Midi 2x2, Creative SBLive! 5.1 with the kXProject Driver Version 5.10.0.3537 through a hot-rod Leslie 145 (see the construction notes at http://www.vintagemusicprojects.com/HomebrewLeslieConstr.html) Using the sound card and driver I am able to achieve less than or equal to 5 milliseconds latency between key down and sound production to the Leslie.

The interface is very intuitive if you are familiar with tonewheel/drawbar organs. The software is copy protected by indentations drilled into the disk beyond the readable area required for software installation, and infrequently at program startup it prompts you to insert the installation CD. Not a problem for me - If I as a software vendor created something this good I would protect it from piracy as well!

Getting a good sound out of it, for those who aren't familar with drawbar/tonewheel generation is easy due to the 120 preset configurations which come with the software. There are a few quirky things about the UI when it comes to saving your own bank of preset sounds (I use the out-of-the-box configs but with the Leslie sim turned off and load these when I start). The manual clears these things up and has several good sections for those who are new to tonewheel/drawbar sound generation.

B4 compared to a real Hammond through a Leslie in an A-B comparision I challenge even the most trained ear to discern the difference! And I'm not kidding either. The Leslie sim while not a real Leslie (and I can tell the difference) with a set of stereo speakers is about as close as it gets and is very convincing. With a real Leslie and the various acoustic things it does to the sound no simulator can interact with a room in this manner, but from a convincing standpoint it very close for a listening audience. Output is stereo and is highly polyphonic, limited practically by the horsepower of the machine you run it on.

Price paid was excluding the price of a PC which can be had for around $300 these days excluding a monitor. The PC I'm running it on is about 3 years old and used and I got the PC partially in trade for some computer work I did. With this setup and full-on dual manual control it only uses about 3-6% of the CPU and about 10-15% of available memory.

Computer keyboard is also mapped to functions of the virtual instrument such as rocker switches, preset and bank selections, and Leslie sim speed switch.

I've built a real-time control surface for this unit which employs real Hammond drawbars from an L3 along with toggle and rotary switches, but it is still in the prototype stage and not yet ready for primetime.

Still for the styles of music I play using presets is much faster to get an "instant" setup rather than pulling a bunch of drawbars and having to throw a bunch of switches.

In my opinion it's much lighter than a B3, sounds just as good, and it doesn't get much better than this.

I play music since 1990 as a Keyboard player. I'm interest in hammond sounds since 1998. I've been in a discussion List called Hammond Italia for about 3 years and I've learnt and I'm learining a great amount of hammond-related stuff. 90% of Hammond Italia List member like B4 sound and this opinion is related to people who plays Hammond consoles on stages or living rooms. I've purchased the tonewheel version so it's the 1.1.1 software version. I use B4 in live situations with my Oberheim ob3 squared as a master. I've programmed a map which involves Ob3 midi messages to control B4. This map suits perfectly with b4 virtual controls. I use b4 in standalone or with many vst hosts in conjunction with virtual compressor. I run plugins on an IBM Thinkpad PIII with 128 mb RAM. I run al my equipement on the band P.A.

The interface is very intuitive except for some controls (leslie spread, balance). All controls can be midi controlled. The sound is good out of the box. Than You can tweak knobs in order to achieve some particular effects trying to recreate for example leslie on stop, speeds, hammond without leslie, some leslie tonal charaters tweaking tone knobs.

It sounds great, the resonance produced on upper octaves are ear piercing! The distortion is really good, chorus effect is lush and very close to the real thing. Leslie effect is the great feature of this programme. I know that real leslie can be beaten but B4 leslie effet is a great substitue for travelling hammond players.

The price really worth. I choose this plugin because it can be run on standalone and when I discovered B4 I didn't know anything about vst world. I can't afford Hammond but I played it in some occasions. I think that B4 is the best choice for an hammond clone. There are good hardware clones out there but if you own a Pc, B4 is the most affordable choice. The software is strong built. It nevere crashed any time. It sucks a 15% of my 550 mhz CPU. I wish it had some leslie models selection or a better internalHammond amplification sim. One thing lacks for all: spring reverb!

I'm mainly a guitarist who plays a little bit of keyboards. I'm running this on an AMD K6-2 350 MHz Win2k machine with a Turtle Beach soundcard, and I have no problems with latency.

The interface is just like playing a real B3, except the drawbars for the manuals are backwards (upper manual should be on the left and vice versa). It's easy to install. The only copy protection is having to insert the CD every time you want to play it.

Setting everything up is no different than if you were on an actual organ. Everything's pretty much self-explanatory.

The sound is amazing. Everything sounds, well, like a B3. I've played it live several times, and I've been really happy with it. The one thing I love about this thing is that it has balls. Some of the other fake Hammonds I've played have had the sound right but not the feel. This one gets it all right. You hit a high note and it's there. Turn up the drive and it'll growl.

The presets are really nice. Most of them are organized by song, so you can find the sound for, say, Gimme Some Lovin', really quickly.

The Leslie simulation is excellent.

It's well worth what I paid for it. A great piece of software. If you need a B3 and don't want to buy one of the expensive Hammond clones or lug around the original, it's great.

It's never crashed on me, and it runs fine on my comparatively slow machine.

I'm using B4 in standalone mode on a Windows XP 3.2 Pentium, listening through headphones.

Interface is intuitive and graphically cool. I'm bothered, however, that every freakin' NI product has its own idiosyncratic way of storing and retrieving presets. I own several NI products, and would find life easier if they all acted the same. I strongly encourage NI to determine their "best practices" for UIs, and improve all their products accordingly. For example, it would be nice to be able to change the current preset with the mouse ... why do I have to use the computer keyboard?

I have the tonewheel extension set (Vox, Harmonium, Farfisa) which is very cool, but you can't save a preset with its associated tonewheel. Say you tweak a preset with the Vox tonewheel and save it, but when you retrieve that preset the Vox tonewheel is not automatically loaded. This is not a good thing.

The manual is typical for NI: several mistakes, some bad grammer, and a few moron-level errors (like referring to the B4 as Spectral Delay, which is a totally different NI product). Fortunately the B4 is so simple that the manual covers all the bases without much confusion.

Sound quality is very good. Presets are very good. Lots of tweakability in drawbars and all the other doodads.

Sound quality is great, but UI needs improvements. The tonewheel extension set is way cool, but useless because presets aren't stored with the tonewheel you used when you created the preset. If you just want to use the standard factory presets, and you don't care about the extra tonewheels, you'll think B4 is a sufficient B3 emulation.

I'm a semipro rock-psychedelic keyboardist, i play piano, ep, analogue synth and specially combo organ e hammond organ.
My istrument on stage is the wonderfull Clavia NordElectro2 73.

I have try the NI B4 Version 1.1.1, play with M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 at the max resolution.

The interface is intuitive, but organ and setup is on
different pages.
The MIDI controller on market to play clone/organ is poor... waterfall keyboard, drawbar, sweel pedal... A normal master keyboard and a PC is totally insufficient.

Poor, very, very poor...
in comparison with original organ and in comparison with other clonewheel.
The leakage missing, bad highter harmonics, sound too compress,
without bass, it play flat and nasal
http://www.pucpuc.net/mosite/ne_vs_b4.mp3

Virtual instrument IMHO useless.
It's uneasy to use, it's impossible to play like an organ,
it have creepy sound.
Better than the organ on Korg M1, Roland D50, but pitiful in comparison with any other clone.

I've been playing around with pianos/keyboards for about 13 years, but I've only serioulsy been pursuing keys/synths in my recordings for about a year.

I ended up acquiring the B4 software through a friend of mine to use with Sonar XL 2.0. I didn't get the DXi plug-in for it, so I'm using it completely stand-alone. As far as keys go, I've got a Samick weighted digital piano, an old Roland Juno 60 (completely analog, no MIDI), and a Radium 49-key USB MIDI controller. The B4 software interfaces magically with the Radium, but more on that later.

Like falling off a log. The program itself has a very intuitive interface. It's basically a top-view of an actual Hammond, with all the drawbars, controls, and manuals of an organ. Using it is as easy as moving a mouse. Couldn't be easier...

... Until you throw in the Radium into the mix. As far as I know, Native Instruments and M-Audio have no affiliation with one another, so the fact that they interface so well together is astonishing. Being that the Radium is simply a dumb and (rightfully so) generic controller, I'm going to have to give the credit to Native. All the parameters are physically controllable with the Radium. For those who have never seen the board itself, it's got 8 MIDI parameter faders and 8 MIDI parameter knobs, a modulation wheel and a pitch bend wheel. Delightfully, the Radium's faders all control the drawbars, and the modulation wheel toggles the leslie speed. Some of the knobs don't do anything by default, but others control all the knob-like functions, like the preset control. It all just worked as soon as I got it all set up. I had this thing making dynamic on-the-fly music 30 seconds out of the box with the B4 software.

In a word, perfect.

When I first acquired the software, I was a bit skeptical about the performance of the software. I was giddy about the ease of interface, but was unsure of how it would perform sound-wise. I was shocked and amazed.

The presets alone were enough to keep a smile on my face. Nothing short of perfect. The sound was all there, from the shimmering Leslie effect to that throaty thunderin bass. The highs soar, the mids are heavenly, and the bass is awe-inspiring.

However, all sounds aside, my favorite effect was the rotary speaker sound. Now it aint much to get an organ to sound like it has a rotary speaker. Hell, most Casio keyboards have one preset or another that features a terrible facsimile of a rotary speaker sound. But even in a synth with tweakable parameters, you're going to be hard-pressed to find a module or synth that will do anything but one set speed. You might be able to tweak it, but it'd be missing one of the fundamental components of the Hammond sound; the ramp-up or ramp-down. When you flick that switch on a real Hammond, your speaker will crank up to speed or wind down, not that instantaneous crap featured on most synths. Such is the case for the B4 software. You get that ramp-up/ramp-down sound to a T. Perfect!!

Oh yeah, you also get buzzes, crosstalk, stereotypical Hammond quirks, and 6 different global presets describing the quality of the organ you're sitting at.

If you can get this software, you will be happy for life. I used to be part of the melancholy masses who thought the only way to get a Hammond sound was from an actual Hammond, and I didn't have $5000 or enough strong backs to haul one around, so I was very pleased when I got this software. Instantaneously, I got a new sound that is featured on nearly every recording I lay down anymore.

It's also worth mentioning that the software is very reliable. No crashes, not hard to configure, no BS. I had some issues recording stand-alone with Sonar, but I found that if I have the B4 program opened BEFORE I open Sonar, everything is fine. It's not a resource-hog either.

In conclusion, the only thing this program is missing is a solid walnut cabinet.

Just a short review here...basically, I'm a guitarist and bassist learning keyboards. I've got an Evolution 61-key USB midi controller keyboard, running into a P4. Its a beautiful sounding instrument!!!!! The patches are good, and playing around really teaches you about the instrument and how to dial up sounds. I've grown tremendously since getting this keyboard, and it has made me realize how crappy the organ patches are on the expensive keyboards at my church (where I play mostly guitar in a couple praise teams). Seriously, this is the sort of thing that makes you want to buy a laptop so you could take it everywhere! (dont have the money)

Very easy. I wish I had a more elaborate controller so I could have drawbar control on the fly, but I can't complain. If they could somehow make a hardware version of the B4...with drawbars, a leslie switch, waterfall keys, and all the appropriate rocker switches (i wouldnt even want/need patch memory, just give me the sound in an instrument!) they seriously could charge a lot of money, and get it.

Everything you need to dial up any organ sound (OK, any hammond organ sound, but the tonewheels pack gives you several others...although I personally found out how much I preferred the hammond after toying with the others for a while...too much cheese). I wish there was an easy way to add reverb though...I'm using it standalone and haven't figured it out yet. But reverb is obviously not an important organ effect, and certainly never came with the organs.

Fan-diddly-tastic!!!

Rich, organic, its-alive sort of sounds. Helped a lot by the leslie, of course...which is the best simulation I've ever heard. I wish I could get that sound in an effects box!!! But yeah, the tonewheel sound is definately good (you can strip it down to that by turning off percussion, leslie, drive, keyclick, and chorus/vibrato...just the pure tonewheel sound), but when all the other colouring factors come in, you've got something that just makes you smile when you hear it. I will use this all the time! You can add some very tube-y (for software, at least) grit to the sound, and although I prefer the sound without chorus/vibrato (sounds purer to me, less organ-y), they do sound very authentic and very good. Presets again are very nice, and easily tweaked. Latin 66 is a favorite of mine. I love the acceleration/deceleration of the leslie, its marvelous. definately my favorite softsynth, closely followed by the inimitable applied acoustics lounge lizard. with those two tools, I can make some funky music.

Definately worth it. go spend your hard-earned money, you won't regret this plugin. If you've got a fast laptop, find a way to rig it up, as this is really one of the best (and cheapest) B3 simulations out there!

I've been playing for about 10 years and I was strictly analog for the first 9 until a good friend turned me on to Cakewalk Sonar. After that I was going digital without looking back (at least for recording. Instruments and effects are another story). Anyway, being an avid fan of the B3 and B4, I kind of had an attitude about this program before I really sat down with it, but I was pleasantly surprised by the B4 soft synth.

A breeze. I had it up and running within a minute or so. It's got the most intuitive GUI I've seen for a synth, where you basically SEE the organ. You see drawbars, knobs, both manuals, wood, everything. When I first saw it, I'll admit I had an attitude, "like any program could replicate the B3, pfft." But the GUI grew on me, at first if nothing more than ease of use. I have to hand it to NI, the thing is as easy to use as a real organ. If you want to adjust your Leslie speed, you flip the switch. If you want to adjust a drawbar, just pull on it. I love it. And it's got a whole load of presets that'll get you off and jamming in no time. Interfaces well with my Midiman Radium USB controller.

Again, I was very biased when I heard of this program originally, but I was won over in the end. Short of buying an actual organ, you're not going to find a more realistic synth (soft or otherwise), module, or any other facsimile that'll make a more convincing Hammond sound. This thing is capable of reproducing every sound the actual organ makes, because you're editing the exact same parameters in the synth as you would on the organ itself.

The sounds are very convincing, but not perfect, or rather I should say too perfect. While the synth did an incredible job reproducing crosstalk and noise associated with the mechanical B4, it was still a little "digital" sounding. I'm being extremely picky when I say that though, almost anal.

The "Rotary Speaker" sim (leslie is trademarked, apparently) sounds excellent, and it winds up and slows down like a real leslie would, which I thought was neat.

Overall, I'm extremely impressed by the sound of this synth. It's the best one out there, for sure.

This one's a keeper on my digi-rig. I'm primarily a studio kid, so it's not going to see any gigging action, but you can bet your boots it's going to be on A LOT of my recordings. This thing is great.