Nektar Aura 16-Pads Beat Composer and DAW Controller

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.

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.

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.

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.