Review: Dust Road for NI Massive by ModeAudio

The Dust Road soundset by ModeAudio aims to bring the sounds of analogue synthesizers to Native Instruments Massive.

Now, I guess Massive isn’t exactly known for its warm, analogue type sounds. You might think it’s all about aggressive dubstep wobbles & harsh, digital sounding electro stabs, but it does in fact sport an analogue architecture.

Here’s what ModeAudio says about this:

“But Massive is digital, it can’t possibly produce a sound like analogue!?” we hear you cry. Think again! The dazzling variety of sampled waveforms, resonant filter choices and dizzyingly complex modulation capabilities allow Massive to conjure up sounds every bit as lush, unstable and warm as its analogue counterparts.

Dust Road exploits these abilities entirely, bending pitches, blending waveforms, blurring filters and blitzing standard routings, all to gorgeous effect. Hear the decayed, constantly-shifting sound of analogue audio come to life, complete with full sound sculpting options. Every macro control of every preset has been hot-wired to give you full access to and control of your sound.

Dust Road comes with 50 presets: 10 bass, 5 chords, 5 lead synths, 15 pads, 5 plucks, and 10 classic synth sounds. It also includes 50 MIDI loops which showcase the bass, synths and chords.

Below is a short video of me checking out the patches. The end of the video includes a short demo clip I made in some 15 minutes, using only the sounds from Dust Road and a drum kit preset from ModeAudio’s Hyper Beats for Maschine 2.0.

So what do I think?

It’s great to see a soundset for Massive with a bit of a different approach. I think Dust Road does a great job showcasing the more analogue side of Massive.

I have to admit the lovely demo track at the ModeAudio website already won me over. This pack has so many unique sounding patches, I am well impressed with Dust Road.

I love the movement, the slight variations you get when holding a note, and the useful macro assignments. With the included MIDI’s you get a good idea of what ModeAudio was thinking of when designing the patches. The only section that didn’t do much for me was the plucks.

In general, I reckon you’re going to get some good use out of the sounds of Dust Road, especially if you do downtempo electronic music or cinematic works that need a gritty, analogue type vibe.

More information: ModeAudio / Dust Road

Hey there, I'm Ronnie and I run Rekkerd.org. I'm a bedroom music producer and guitar player, and I love chicken vindaloo & all things glitch.