Fxpansion Geist is looking interesting

uh nope.. Maschine has a sound.. Motu BPM has a sound,and Guru has a sound.. Just like Gigastudio has a sound,and Kontakt has a sound.. To my ears,they are all wildly different..
You have to remember the dev's aren't telling you what they are putting on their code, they may indeed use what they feel is a better sound.. this is overlooked in so many of the daw vs. daw comparisons.. think about plugins, do they not have a sound either?

the argument,"but cpu's use 1's and 0's" is pointless
,when we're talking about coding an instrument..

How much you hear it, does depend on your D/A conversion monitoring,and room I will say..All of this eventually leads to your decision while mixing, so sound is huge.. Tho the obvious mp3 generation,could probably care less..

Angus from FxPansion and I actually discussed this as far as Guru vs. Bpm awhile ago, and he mentioned they (Motu) may be using a limiter to achieve their sound.He also made the valid point,that sound is subjective,which is also very true,whole other can of worms there..What my ears hear as "warm" you may hear as "sterile" vice versa..that's where it gets debatable..


oh yeah the content actually has a sound too... thanks to mic's and A/D conversion.. if your still in doubt, listen to a few of the UVI libraries,sample for sample without efx vs. another sampler's samples.. lol, I bring up UVI,because they are actually very open to letting their end users know what type of equipment,converters,eq's,compressors they use when making their content..
Would hope more dev's doing samples would be as honest actually... Perhaps their hardware though isn't up to par,like UVI?

Hopefully whatever Angus and co. did with SynthSquad/DCAM reflects in this new product..
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b-righteous and saint joe, you guys are both right actually.. They are both competing for our dollar in the end.. I'd be interested in giving it a spin tho.

The biggest feature's I'd like are high quality sound,and chopping made simple and quick...

P.S. And I really hope they have an exciting new way to map our midi controllers to where the hands on is as good as it can be..

Currently there's basically nothing that maps midi as good as the integration between cpu and maschine.. hopefully this is sought after in this new app

 

I certainly don't need this (I have Maschine, Nerve, Stylus and Guru) but I just can't help myself.

 

People hear all kinds of things they want to hear that are not actually there. There's even been studies done that show people will hear non-existent differences in the same software with different visual interfaces.

 

If you put the same raw sample in any of these samplers with all the effects turned off, its going to sound roughly the same. One isn't "warmer" than the other. Same goes for DAWS. I get a headache every time someone says their recording sounds better in (insert DAW).

you can't compare one sample library against another as having anything to do with the sampler itself. If you import those samples dry and A/B them dry against another sampler, there will be little if any difference other than maybe volume as that's all it's generally running through. It's too hard to tell from the video what is the sample library and what are Geist's effects so its near impossible to describe what Geist's "sound" is. If Motu are hiding a limiter that you can't turn off in the BPM main buss, then that's not cool.

the effects from something like Kontakt are pretty recognizable. but with nothing on, there's nothing to recognize and THAT is the sound of the sampler.

 

Geist has been released. Here's a 5 minute video showing the product in use:
http://de-bug.de/musiktechnik/archives/4414.html
It's kind of boring and uninspiring.
Geist does incorporate Dirac3 time-stretch/pitch-shift.
http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=120

I'll stick with MASCHINE!

 

it's cool, they did a custom map for the Maschine controller makes it pretty hands on, but still not as hands on as Maschine.

But it's a good product.

 

Hmm, you guys are not giving Geist enough props. They really made lots of smart and thorough design choices. Many of which we have been begging for in both Maschine and GURU. I like the simple way of choosing the edit focus of layers/pads and selecting all layers/pads. The laying and layer mixer is dope.
Great new slicer and intuitive browser integration.

And yes it does sound better/warmer. Those DCAM filters and drive aint no joke. Breverb built in and nice delays. Nice arranger/song mode similar to Live. Great new GUI. All good stuff.

Still lacks Maschines controller integration and no piano roll. Not to mention the upcoming VST/AU hosting. Maschine will still probably be my go to but Geist looks sick. Plus, more competition is a good thing.

 

I was using it this morning before work , it's a good product for sure, I like a lot about it.

I like the layering, I like the fx, the fx routing is crazy, the song mode is insane especially since you can record your scenes live into song mode (sorta like ableton), but I just don't like the sequencer. I don't like working in steps, I like to set my pattern to a specific bar length and go. I like to turn my grid off, etc. That's where it disconnects for me, that sequencer, sure I can work with it, and I can get some grooves going, but it's just not fluid enough for how I like to make my music.

That's the one thing, for me, that holds it back. Similar to BPM sequencer, if they had the same piano roll style sequencer for their kits/banks (instead of a step sequencer based thing) as they do for the instrument racks, it would be a lot better. Or at least give the option. If Geist allowed you to use step OR piano roll, I would feel a lot better about the sequencing, but that's the same thing I said about BPM

That's just a personal thing

Geist has timestreching too, and slicing/chopping with it is WAY better than it was with GURU.

 

I agree with your points. That's what I don't like about it and why I prefer Maschines sequencer. May wind up being a sound module in Maschine for me. Depends on what 1.6 brings. Maschine may end up making Geist redundant if NI go all out.

 

i loved guru but hated how when you moved samples or the guru folder you had to search for each sound starting from the desktop, so if you had your sounds berried deep in sub folders and had more than one instance of guru + using more than one engine in each instance, it takes way too long to search and load for samples

if you had a client that wanted to hear some tracks and had to go threw this, that would be wack!

i got maschine now so whatever

 

sounds really good.love the efx..the buss compressor is amazing.. will be even more crazy inside Maschine.. I like to program beats as well as play on pads,and with all of the complaining I did,to finally see a guru 2 or geist in the flesh I have to show'm some love.

 

just upgraded! looking good....i think inside maschine cometh january things are going to get very nice indeed. timestretching inside maschine until thats sorted by NI, and layering is so much easier with geist. only £76 for upgrade, i think thats totally fair enough!

 

ive had a good play around....its actually amazing! geist and maschine a dream combo!

 

After a quick trial I'm really not feeling the sequencer at all. Can't sequence melodic and keyboard parts with midi. No tap tempo or count in. Maschine is superior other than Geist has better effects and filters. The song arranger is nice but since you are limited to percussion work only it's all for nothing.

Still a nice app if they would add some no brainer features that should have been there before launch. They have had years to sort these things. Nice drum module to use with Maschine for it's built in effects and sound though.

saintjoe had it right.

 

my review

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrAxXRDBTkU"]YouTube - FXpansion Geist review[/ame]

full written review here:
http://soundsandgear.com/fxpansion-geist-review/

 

Thanks Joe for the video,excellent job..

 

no doubt, thanks for checkin it.

 

yeah theres a few things they missed out like count in etc, but remember how limited maschine was when it first came out, and it took a while for updates relating to midi etc and simple things you would of expected from the start.

The effects in geist are amazing, the splicing is so much nicer than maschine, and quicker. I like the layering as well, nice touches like round robin etc are cool. i like it when you slice a samlpe, you can still play the individual sliced parts chromaticaly/or velocity split on the pads or your midi keyboard. Theres loads of other workflow things that will help me when used with maschine. IT def wont replace maschine for me but for some things it works better than maschine.

Dragging a dropping midi for example into your daw takes a mere second, compared to maschine where you have to wait for it to load etc.

Anyways, im stoked i have both!

 

?

Dragging n Dropping MIDI is really quick for me with Maschine.

sowari

 

You're confusing it with audio drag and drop. MIDI drag and drop in Maschine is instant.

Anyway, I don't see the point of comparing this to Maschine at all. This is a mouse-driven software like all others and for me, Maschine is really in a category of its own and compares more to standalone hardware if anything. Although I can see how some might want to integrate something like this or Battery/BPM within Maschine.