kleine: 32 Devices, 70k Downloads, Built on Borrowed DSP
kleine has 32 devices in the catalogue and 69,985 downloads between them. Twelve of those devices carry the bulk of the traffic — roughly 56,000 downloads, about four fifths of the total — which tells you something useful straight away: this is not one hit surrounded by filler. It's a spread. Instruments, audio effects, a MIDI effect, a drum cell add-on, a couple of reverbs and filters. The uploads run from late 2009 through to the end of 2013, which puts the whole body of work in the Live 8 and Live 9 era, Max 5 and Max 6.
The through-line: porting good DSP into a Live-shaped box
Read the descriptions in order and a habit emerges. kleine keeps finding working audio code somewhere else and making it into a device you can drop on a track.
ck.fourier is described as a Max for Live adaptation of the Fourier filter from katjaas.nl. ck.reflex is based on code by Katsuhiro Chiba and is described as a simplified take on the old Ursa Major Space Station algorithm. String is a waveguide string physical model derived from a patch AudioMatt posted to the Cycling '74 forums, ported and slightly modified. ck.mystery box is credited to "mystic code from the mythical c74 forum."
That's four devices in a row where the author names a source. It is a distinct way of working, and it is useful to producers for a specific reason: patches posted on forums and research pages rarely have a Live-friendly interface, parameter ranges that make sense for music, or automation lanes. The gap between "this algorithm sounds great" and "I can use this in a session on a deadline" is exactly the gap kleine spends their time closing.
The second strand is filling holes in Live's own device set. M4L DrumSynth Rimshot is an addition to the DrumSynth from the Max for Live Essentials pack — a rimshot cell that didn't ship, built for 808, 909 and CR78 style hits, with the same velocity modulation section as every other DrumSynth cell. M4L Multipitch is framed as the audio-effect equivalent of Live's Chord MIDI effect. Impulsemachine is a MIDI effect you put in front of an Impulse. None of these try to replace a stock device; they attach to one.
The three that most people download
ck.acid is the headline, at 16,480 downloads with a 5/5 rating and ten comments. It's an instrument, version 1.3, built for Live 8.2.1 and Max 5.1.7. The description plays on the double meaning of ACID — the database property set and the Chicago TB-303 squelch. If you want a 303-lineage voice that lives inside Live rather than in a separate plugin folder, this is the most-downloaded thing kleine has made and it has never attracted a bad rating.
Impulsemachine sits at 10,183 downloads, also 5/5, nine comments. It's the oldest device here — added November 2009, updated October 2010 to version 1.1 — and the instruction is three words long: throw it before an Impulse. As a MIDI effect that feeds Live's eight-slot drum sampler, it belongs to the same family of work as the Rimshot cell: take a stock Ableton device most people already have loaded and give it something new upstream.
M4L Multipitch rounds out the top three at 9,230 downloads and 5/5 from six comments. The author is candid about it in the description — a fun device that also shows the limitations of realtime pitch shifting on audio. That honesty is worth noting. You are getting chordal stacking on an audio signal, with whatever artefacts realtime shifting brings; knowing that in advance makes it easier to use the artefacts on purpose instead of fighting them. Try it on a sustained pad or a single-note bass rather than a full mix, and lean into the smearing on sparse material.
Texture, space and filters
M4L Vinyl is the most-downloaded of the texture devices at 3,429. It combines a vinyl recording with synthesised crackle and hiss generators plus filters, aimed at digital recordings and beats that sound too clean. The combination matters: a sampled vinyl loop alone tends to repeat audibly, while synthesised noise alone tends to sound static. Having both in one device gives you a way to keep the character without the loop point becoming obvious over a long track.
ck.reflex is the reverb, at version 1.5 — the only device in this group that reached a point-five revision — with 2,211 downloads and four comments. Built for Live 9.0.4 and Max 6.1.2. A simplified version of a classic hardware algorithm is a different proposition from a convolution reverb or a generic algorithmic one; it's the kind of send you reach for when you want a specific colour rather than a neutral room.
ck.fourier (2,818 downloads) and ck.mystery box (2,595, three comments) are the experimental end. The mystery box takes an audio file you drop in and a preset from its preset box — a device you audition rather than dial in. Put an unused vocal take or a field recording into it and bounce whatever comes out; that's the workflow it invites.
One practical note: M4L Vinyl and ck.fourier are released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence. Worth checking the terms if the result is going on a commercial release.
The instruments nobody has rated yet
Several of kleine's instruments have respectable download counts and no ratings at all, which usually means people grabbed them and never came back to the page. ck.Bertha (2,645) is introduced only as "a different kind of....organ" — the author is not going to explain it for you. String (1,723) is the waveguide physical model; physical modelling responds to continuous controller input in a way that sample playback doesn't, so it rewards expression data more than velocity layers. kleine synth (1,661, rated 4/5) is described simply as a portable synth, version 1, from February 2012.
ck.voicesynth (1,569) comes with a condition: it requires the CNMAT objects from Berkeley. If you don't have those installed it will not load, so install the externals first and then open Live. The author's framing — "might be useful to someone" — is characteristic of the whole catalogue's tone.
Where to start
If you have never loaded a kleine device, go in this order:
- ck.acid — highest downloads, perfect rating, ten comments. The safest first pick by every available signal.
- Impulsemachine — if you use Impulse at all, this costs you nothing to try and changes what the sampler does from the MIDI side.
- M4L Vinyl — the most broadly applicable of the effects, and the one you'll end up putting on a group bus.
- ck.reflex — on a return track, as a character reverb alongside whatever your default is.
- M4L DrumSynth Rimshot — only if you already own the Max for Live Essentials pack, since it's built to sit alongside the other DrumSynth cells.
Keep the dates in mind. These devices were written for Live 8 and Live 9 against Max 5 and Max 6, and most of them never received an update after their initial release — only ck.acid, Impulsemachine, M4L Multipitch and kleine synth show an update date at all. Current Live versions will usually offer to convert older patches, but expect the occasional device that needs a nudge, and check the stated Live and Max requirements on each page before you troubleshoot. For another catalogue built on a similar scale of consistent, utility-minded output, the PeterMcCulloch spotlight covers comparable ground from a different angle.