I’ve been reviewing Native Instruments and iZotope gear for over a decade – these are the things worth picking up in their Cyber Season sale

(Image credit: iZotope)

Shockingly, I’ve been reviewing for music technology gear for MusicRadar for over a decade, in which time I’ve tested numerous hardware and software releases from Native Instruments and iZotope, including multiple iterations of Maschine, Traktor DJ gear, soft synths, effect plugins and more.

In recent years, Native Instruments, iZotope and Plugin Alliance have merged into a single brand under the Native Instruments umbrella. As a result, the company’s inevitable Cyber Season Sale has a lot of potential hardware and software products available at discounted rates.

These brands make a lot of gear that I love and use regularly, but there are also a few weak spots among their product line-up – the recent underwhelming update to NI’s Maschine software or iZotope’s middling Trash reboot being prime examples. With that in mind, let’s unpick the highlights from the Cyber line-up.

For our money, the best deals to be had here are on the software front. While there are offers on buying various Maschine models as well as the A Series controller keyboards, we've seen better prices elsewhere. If you're in the market for hardware, we'd recommend trying our Black Friday music deals hub.

Native Instruments recently gave its DJ software a long-needed overhaul. New features include AI stem separation, flexible beat grids and a fun mini drum machine. Overall, v4 has a well-rounded feature set and smart-looking interface. Its best feature, however, is that unlike many DJ apps, there’s no subscription or paid add-ons involved. You can pick the software up for the thoroughly reasonable discounted price of £90 and have access to everything Traktor has to offer. For home DJs or simple pro setups, it’s a good deal.

NI’s longstanding software bundle series has really benefited from the company’s merger with iZotope and Plugin Alliance. The combination of NI big hitters kontakt 8, Massive X and Guitar Rig 7, alongside iZotope’s excellent Ozone 11 mastering suite, plus a generous crop of effects and sampled instruments, make for a really well-rounded package that’s very tempting given the 50% discount. For our money, the Standard package is the sweet spot value-wise, but the more expansive Ultimate and Collector’s Edition bundles are also 50% off.

The original Massive is one of the most popular and influential software synths of all time. This follow-up, released in 2019, is a little overlooked by comparison. In our view, that’s unfortunate – Massive X lacks the immediacy of its predecessor, but it’s also deeper and more powerful. Its multitude of wavetable playback modes are capable of some wonderfully aggressive tones and the modular setup really adds flexibility. This 50% off deal isn’t unheard of – we’ve seen similar reductions in recent months – but it’s a good price for a deep and interesting software synth.

We really like iZotope’s Neutron mixing software for its accessibility and versatility. It’s a shame that the full version isn’t part of the Cyber Season sale, but the cut-down Neutron Elements is – and at under £30 it’s a tempting proposition. What Elements gets you is the AI-powered Assistant – which will generate a custom preset for your audio – along with top-level control of Neutron’s core elements. Honestly, it’s a little limited compared to the full version, but at this price it’s a handy quick tool for basic mixing, and you can upgrade to the full version later at a discounted price.

RX is a great tool for post-production and audio repair. We use it regularly when working on video content – its AI tools are great for addressing unwanted noise from speech recordings or low-quality mic recordings. The top-end Advanced tier isn’t cheap, so if you’re a freelancer or semi-professional who could make use of these pro-level tools but need to buy them out of your own pocket, this 50% off deal is a good opportunity to save some money.