Native Instruments’ original Massive synth was always going to be a tough act to follow. Released in 2007, Massive became one of the best selling and most influential software instruments of all time, helping to define the sound of 2010s EDM with its gritty wavetable oscillators and copious modulation tools.
Following a decade of small, incremental updates, NI released a fully-fledged Massive sequel in 2019 in the form of Massive X. Although NI hasn’t released any sales figures for the plugin, anecdotally it seems clear that Massive X hasn’t achieved the same mass-market appeal as its predecessor – or contemporary synths like Arturia Pigments and Xfer Serum, both of which borrow heavily from Massive’s design ideas.
