Image Line Drumaxx Drum Synth Review

I saw the announcement for Image Line’s new drum synth, Drumaxx today, and listened to the demos, and was impressed!  I am normally more interested in more esoteric or interesting sound design tools, but I have been looking for drum software that fits my needs for a long time. Until now, I’ve been disappointed with the offerings out there.  There’s a few, like waldorf attack, araldfx DKS, and some others, but I never really liked the sound or the functionality.  I own Sonic Charge’s MicroTonic drum synth, and even though it sounds great and is fun to use, it is sonically limited.

 

the synthesis section of the Drumaxx GUi

the synthesis section of the Drumaxx GUi

 

The difference with Drumaxx is that the engine is based on physical modeling.  This makes a big difference!  All the other drum synths out there have percussion synthesis engines that are, for the most part, based around filtered noise, oscillators, and pitch and amplitude envelopes.  The araldFX DKS plugin has a physical modeling component to it, but I found it poorly realized.

 

I tried it out, and bought it, and here are some of my thoughts.  First though, here is a simple demo track I made.  I sequenced Drumaxx from numerology, along with a synth patch in my nord g2.

 

Elcorian Fratart (locrian fart)

 

Firstly, the sound engine is fantastic and it has a very broad range of sounds. It is punchy and detailed compared to the other drum synths I’ve used.  I don’t know what the coders at image line did with this box, but I’m very impressed.   I don’t know how they managed to make it so you could squeeze ethnic percussion sounds, techno drums, weird effects, and acoustic kit sounds all from the same set of 10 knobs, but they did.  And they all sound good, and don’t have that fake, plastic character that’s bothered me with a lot of other drum synthesis stuff.  The percussion sounds great too.  Some of the percussion synthesis really sounds much better than the samples I have in my sample library, and I have a LOT of percussion samples.

 

There are some good and bad things about using the plugin.  Firstly, it uses a formidable amount of CPU–as much as some fancy reverb plugins or synth plugins.  But I attribute all that CPU usage to some sort of magic going on in the software that makes it sound so good.  Also, programming is a little tricky.  The knobs have a ridiculous amount of travel on them that has me really running my mouse up and down the desk just trying to get them adjusted to the right value.  And since the parameters are unfamiliar (instead of the traditional filter, osc, envelope stuff), it’s hard to know what is going to affect the sound in the way you want.  Thankfully, there aren’t that many controls, so I think it will become intuitive enough after I’ve gotten more familiar with the plugin.

 

All things considered, though, the GUI for this plugin is very good, and easy to use.  I am just complaining about the synthesis section.  Selecting presets, loading and saving sounds are all a snap, and I had this plugin figured out within 2 minutes of downloading and opening it.

 

The plugin has normal features for automating the parameters from within whatever DAW you’re using.  But I wish it was easier to assign CC’s to the different synthesis parameters, instead of having to dive through the massive list (16 channels worth) of different options.  I love the feature, for instance, in Sonic Charge’s microtonic, where you can assign CC’s directly from the front panel.

 

The velocity modulation section is also kind of weird.  It is hard to predict how the velocity will affect the sound.  And it doesn’t seem easy to just have the velocity slightly affect the sound you’re working on–the velocity modulation seems like it is either on or off, and sometimes you have to do a considerable amount of tweaking to get it working how you want.

 

Another thing that I might just be missing here, is that on the drumaxx website, one of the “plugin modes” is listed as “standalone.”  I can’t think of this meaning anything other than there being a standalone application.  I’ve downloaded both the PC and mac versions of drumaxx and this is nowhere to be found.

 

All together, I think this is a great drum synth, quick and easy to use, and more importantly, it sounds incredible.  Highly recommended!

 

Another demo, this one a lot less of a demo and more of just some weird sounds.  I was testing out using my Novation Launchpad to control a drum sequence that was being sent to drumaxx.  It seems drumaxx is good enough at withstanding some very serious midi abuse :D.

 

Launchpad Drum Sequence

 

 

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Golden Master, February 24th 2010 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in reviews

Roland MKS-70 Review, monstrous drones

I recently received, from the internets, a Roland MKS-70 synthesizer.  The MKS-70 is a massive 2-unit rackmount analog polyphonic synthesizer that is the equivalent of two Roland Jx-8p synthesizers–so it has 12 voices, and can play two patches at once.  Holding all 12 of those analog voices obviously takes a lot of room, and it certainly was a struggle getting this beast into the rack.

 

The MKS-70 also can be programmed with a little box of sliders and knobs called the PG-800, and I highly recommend getting one of these if you’re going to use this synthesizer.  Without it, the mks-70 is hard to program.  The layout and interface is logical and easy to use, but slow and tedious to get results with.

 

mks70pic

oh yeah baby

 

 This synth sounds amazing!  Sure, this is the first analog synthesizer i’ve owned, so I can’t compare it to other analog synthesizers.  But it has a beautiful, rich, deep sound.  Especially with the rather extensive polyphony and ability to play two patches at once (you can send each patch to its own stereo output, or use a stereo or mono blend of both patches), you can get some truly enormous sounds.  For the kind of music I make, it’s perfect.  There is a “dual detune” control that detunes both patches, and also a very nice sounding chorus that can make almost any sound very lush.  

 

Anyhow, I don’t need to get into the details, as they’re covered on various other websites.  Just wanted to state for the record that this is a great box, and especially for the price they can be had at, it is a great value.

 

here are some tracks:  This first track was made with the mks-70 and my waldorf microwave.  The percussive sound is the waldorf, the pad is the mks-70.  Being able to run two patches at once is very useful–for instance, in this track, I had two rather fat-sounding drone patches going, started with one, and then faded the second one in part way into the track, for added monstrosity. 

 

Floating Lights Mp3 audio 

 

 

Another track: this one is more of a simple demo of the synthesizer being modulated with the PG-800, showing some of the range of sounds you can get just while tweaking the programmer.

 

Mks-70 tweaking demo

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Golden Master, December 8th 2009 | Posted in reviews, tracks

Launchpad, No Live: Novation Launchpad Review

 

Audiomulch with the Metasurface open on the left, my Novation Remote Zero SL and the launchpad.

Audiomulch with the Metasurface open on the left, my Novation Remote Zero SL and the launchpad.

 

I recently picked up a Novation Launchpad because I wanted the control options of a grid controller, even though I don’t use Ableton live.  I plan on using the Launchpad with Reaktor, Audiomulch, and possibly Processing.  The price wasn’t hard to swallow either.  I’ve seen very little info thus far on people using the Launchpad with anything besides Ableton Live, except for people who are using the “nonome” max/msp patch that allows you to load up other monome applications via the Launchpad.  So, I thought I would do a write-up on my thoughts.  The way I prefer to work is making my own custom midi mappings with my controllers.  Novation’s Automap system might be interesting for others, but I always prefer to have my own configurations because I’m picky about those sorts of things.  So I’ll be detailing how I went about that.  

 

First thoughts: Build quality:

 

I think the launchpad is well built and feels solid under the fingers.  It doesn’t look like there is any way it could possibly break, and it even comes with a nice right-angle USB cable.  I had a monome before, and sold it, and even though the monome was sleeker and nicer-feeling, I don’t feel like it was really that much better for music performance.  I felt the buttons on it were too small and close together for a lot of purposes.  The buttons on the launchpad work well enough, and are tactile and responsive.  Sometimes they feel a little chunky, and give a bit too much of a rubbery “click” if you push on them fairly hard.  But actually, you don’t have to push on the buttons very hard at all to get them to work.

 

MIDI Configuration:

To make custom midi setups for the launchpad, you have to use their automap software.  Otherwise, you have to roll your own in max/msp, processing, or something similar.  I’m considering doing this at some point, depending on how much the automap software for the launchpad improves.  At this point, it provided the basic functionality I need to do what I want, but I wish it could do much more.

 

The automap software allows you to make multiple templates across several midi channels that you can toggle through via the four round buttons at the top right of the device.  These templates are called “pages” which can be arranged under groups that are accessed via those buttons, and the pages can be flipped through with the left-right arrows to the top left.

 

each button can be custom configured to either send a midi note or a CC.  No program changes, NRPNs, or anything else.  The CC’s and midi notes can be set to four modes: normal, momentary, toggle, and step.  “Normal” mode just sends the note or CC once.  Momentary sends the max value (or note on) on press, and a zero value upon release.  Toggle is just what it sounds like, and “step” allows you to step through a sequence of values based on a customizable increment.  Pretty nice!  I wish there were program changes, etc, but I can fix stuff like this with reaktor if I need a workaround.

 

There are some things that seem like they are missing though.  For instance, despite the multi-color LED’s, all the user templates display in red only.  Also, “off” state of the buttons are displayed in a dull red that isn’t much dimmer than the full brightness setting that they show when they are toggled on or pressed!  I wish these settings could be adjusted.

 

In use:

Something that isn’t really explained in the launchpad’s (basically nonexistent) manual is that in order to use the midi output of your automap settings, you have to use a sotware midi system like the IAC bus on OSX or MIDI yoke on windows.  I spent a some time trying to use the “novation launchpad” midi input in my software before I realized this.  Maybe there are some features that I haven’t figured out yet, because of the nonexistent documentation.  Who knows.

 

The launchpad buttons respond quickly and seem snappy enough.  However, as explained in the “launchpad programmer’s reference,” the USB connection of the launchpad is somewhat low-speed, and you can see this in the slow refresh rate when you are flipping through templates.

 

Monome Emulation:

 

Issues with the display speed also seem to come up when using the “nonome” max/msp patch for using monome patches on the launchpad.  Simple patches seem to work fine (the ones I could get to work properly, at least) but more complex ones seem to struggle.  I tried using the launchpad with Molar VST, and it the basic functionality was intact, but the display update lagged in a way that I didn’t experience on the monome.  I was able to get other monome patches working just fine, though.  I think that more emulators will be coming out, anyhow, and with some smarter coding, I think that this display update issue could possibly be resolved.  Anyhow, the emulation seems pretty good, and I think it will only get better.  I was also able to get the “pages” monome app working just fine, and that one was written in Java!  So almost anything seems to work with the emulators.

 

 

How I’m using it:

 

 

Right now I’m using the launchpad to control an audiomulch patch of mine.  The most important parts of this, to me, are controlling a matrix mixer, and switching between preset patterns and effects, as well as muting and unmuting looper channels (which isn’t demoed in this video).  I have one page that has the matrix mixer and the mute buttons for the looper, as well as a column of buttons for controlling the speed of the matrix mixer’s fade time.

 

This is a very simple, and visually rather boring, use of a very capable controller, but for me, it’s a world of difference between doing the same things with a mouse or on a standard midi controller.  I’ve found that I can actually play a matrix mixer like it is a sort of instrument, and that’s without changing the input source of the processed sound very much!  As far as the audio for this demo… it was very thrown together ;), since it was just a demo after all.  I have some better sounds in the other mp3’s you can find on this site…

 

 

 

Final thoughts:

 

I think the launchpad is a great controller, and is ridiculously cheap for what it is.  It has multicolor LED’s that none of the competing products in the range (except for the apc40 of course) have, and is built very sturdily.  I think the software implemenation of the MIDI mappings could be much, much better.  And I hope that the emulation software gets better too, because there are apparently ways to make things run a little more tightly.  Honestly, though, I don’t think that the launchpad will ever be a perfect monome emulation, because the monome is really much, much faster.  The programs I made for my monome when I had it could run blindingly fast, and the launchpad obviously isn’t capable of this.

 

However, I think that people should write software for the launchpad!  It is a fertile playground for controller stuff, and has some very nice colorful LEDs, which can provide all kinds of information.  Anyhow, I got this controller so I could use it in a live performance I have next month, and I think it’s going to make it much, much more fun for me.

 

 

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Golden Master, November 17th 2009 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in reviews