NEKTAR AURA BEAT COMPOSER –
MAKE YOUR OWN BEAT!

Nektar AURA is a powerful beat creation and performance instrument. This MIDI Pad Controller has 16 hyper-sensitive RGB illuminated pads, an on-board step sequencer, a flexible pad repeat engine and incredible plugin control. AURA brings an exciting drum-machine-style workflow to any DAW or external MIDI setup.

AURA’s 16 RGB-illuminated pads are great for finger drumming and trigger at the lightest touch. Even better, everything is set up for you already when running AURA with Nektarine – including mapping for many VST®, VST3® and AU™ drum instruments.

The pads are also highly customizable: Tweak pad sensitivity to your needs and playing style by choosing one of 4 different velocity curves with adjustable bias parameter. Pad pressure is assignable to Aftertouch, Pitch Bend or other MIDI CCs. And you can not only set a dedicated MIDI channel for each pad, you can even route the MIDI In note to a different MIDI note (eg. when playing a multi-sound plugin, and wanting to browse the sounds in that patch from one pad). 

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.

Nektar DAW Integration software for AURA currently supports: Ableton Live Suite, Bitwig, Cubase, Digital Performer, Garageband, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper, Reason, Studio One and Sonar/Cakewalk.