Sequencing in Geist2 is another area that sets it apart from the competition. For instance, you could sample eight hits from a hardware drum machine and quickly assign them to round-robin playback on a pad, thereby fusing an analogue source with Geist's advanced sequencing and audio processing capabilities. Another is found in Geist2's slicing engine, which allows you to automatically assign slices (with transient detection) to open pads or pad layers. This can be enabled or disabled with a pair of buttons on the interface or by a trio of keyboard shortcuts. One example is the ability to edit multiple layers and pads within an engine simultaneously. This is true to some extent but FXPansion provides a few useful workflow shortcuts to ease the strain. With 64 pads and eight layers allowing for up to 512 samples to be contained in a single engine, you might imagine Geist2 is difficult to manage. Some of the kits that ship with Geist2 demonstrate this by utilising a round-robin rotation of slightly varying samples.
#FXPANSION GEIST 2 VS ARTURIA SPARK 2 SOFTWARE#
This feature is handy as it lets you break out of the static feel inherent in most software samplers that trigger the same exact sample over and over without any of the variation that the human ear desires. Here you can choose to trigger all layers simultaneously, to rotate in a round-robin format, to split by velocity or to leave it up to random chance. The logic determining which of these layers is triggered by an incoming note is driven by the playback mode dropdown menu. Each pad has eight layers containing a sample slot with its own fully-featured playback controls, filter, effect slots and aux sends. The 64 pads in each engine begin to show Geist2's depth. The former is made convenient by Geist2's drag-and-drop MIDI export capability, which operates very much in the same way as Maschine. An engine's pads can still be played with MIDI when patterns are switched off, which comes in handy when sequencing Geist2 from a DAW or MIDI sequencer. These engines can be considered distinct instruments, each with 24 patterns that can trigger up to 64 sample pads.Sitting to the right of each engine are smaller circles that allow you to mute or solo a given engine, as well as a power icon that disables pattern playback. Starting at the highest level, you're given eight engines to work with, which are represented visually by the eight circles at the top of Geist2's interface. The specs and workflow are largely unchanged from the original version. So is there still a place for software-only drum samplers in 2016? FXPansion believes so, as evinced by last month's release of Geist2. The recent trend has been the introduction of dedicated hands-on controllers, removing the chore of managing complicated MIDI assignments. Whether it's Native Instruments and the Maschine 2.0, Akai and its multi-platform MPC line, or Arturia's Spark, there's no shortage of options available to beat makers in 2016. Since then, the competition in its field has done nothing but heat up. It's been nearly six years since we last checked in on FXPansion's flagship beatbox instrument, Geist.