I have used Attack over the years, but Tremor has a killer seq with many options with either it or the synth engine. Download the demo, you'll see

They've got completely different sonic characteristics. Out of the box, Microtonic is a bit thin and more synthetic sounding, Tremor is more dense and overdriven sounding. Tremor's sequencer is more robust, but Microtonic can drag-and-drop MIDI to DAW. Microtonic is a mature v3.0 product. Tremor is newer tech, but suffers from some v1.0 stuff. Microtonic is very CPU-friendly. Tremor will eat your CPU for lunch _and_ dinner. So, trade-offs.


What I'm curious about, in this thread specifically, is how Geist compares to Xfer's Nerve??? Anybody have any thoughts on that?

Thought I'd share a small comparison on my top candidates:

Microtonic / Tremor / Geist
8 instruments / 8 instruments
12 patterns / 24 patterns
16 steps / 32 steps

lots of presets / lots of presets
"synthetic sound" / "analog sound" / sample based
fast results / more variety
cpu friendly / cpu melting
32bit / 32/64bit / 32/64bit
~90€ / 119€ / 189€
v3.0 / v1.0 / v1.0

Geist is out for me. I don't want 1,5 DAWs and xx GB samples.
Guess Microtonic will be my choice because cpu usage and simplicity.
But I'll give Tremor a closer try how fast I can build my sounds.

The worst thing is that for Deep House / Tech House I could even use both.
It gets more expensive month by month, damn
Last edited by phazedown on Sun Feb 19, 2012 12:57 pm; edited 1 time in total

Just a few corrections to your comparison table as far as Geist is concerned.
when you include 8 engines then you have 16x8 sample slots. Geist has 24 patterns instead of 16 and once again 24x8.
There are some preset patterns in pattern view top right "insert" pull down menu.
I know it is sample based but you can use the splitter plug to sample either hard or software synths. Lot's of possibilities their as you could sample Tremor u Microtonic, Punch whatever. And there are tools to mangle the sounds
to make some interesting sounds coming from generic samples. Just thought I would add that. I would suggest if I wanted two drum Vsti's it would include Geist with either one of the other ones considered.

I have Geist and I checked out Tremor over the Holidays.
I prefer Tremors GUI & built in effects but I found the actual sounds too synth oriented and limited for my purposes.
In a perfect world I think XPansion should have redesigned the Geist GUI added better effects and had Tremor as an add on sound pack. I find the sounds to be too limited and synth oriented for me to justify purchasing or even using much if at all.
If I have a drum machine I want it to be able to sound like a drum machine, I have enough synths.
Last edited by kgdrum on Sun Feb 19, 2012 9:36 am; edited 1 time in total

I'm working on two songs in parallel at the moment. One uses Geist and one uses Tremor. I love them both.

I would be excited to see some of the neat little features from Tremor into Geist. But I'm glad I have both.

very interesting thread.. I stumbled on Tremor, but my main-to-go sampler tool will always be Geist, simply because it's AMAZING to cut up loops, resampling, picking patterns from other loops and putting them onto new loops, picking out the sounds you like, etc. What I do in the end is to bounce it down as audio in logic anyway, kind of save it like my own sample packs and own loops.

But tremor, damn, looks amazing, I'm leaning towards getting that one as a sequencer and drum synthesiser, while using Geist as a pure sampler, any thoughts and recommendations about this? or does Geist work as good as Tremor as a sequencer?

Depends on what you want in a sequencer... Overall Geist is a far more powerful sequencer. Patterns can be much longer. You can have 8 lanes in Tremor and you can have 128 in Geist. Geist has song mode so you can chain together patterns, switch patterns etc. Tremor is not enough by itself for me. 8 sounds throughout a song is never going to be enough so that means multiple instances.

Tremor has some speed advantage by being able to set the length of a sequencer lane independently. For a quick sequence it is faster than Geist, but like I said, it is not enough for me to use by itself so add the complexity of multiple instances and the advantage is gone.

I am also not going to be happy using 1 instrument like Tremor. Sampling my own sounds from other synths is easy in Geist so I can have many instruments in Geist which means more diversity of sound. Sampling is easy enough and fun enough that I do it per project.

I would like the per lane step length from Tremor to be added to Geist... also the nodulation lanes having their own length independent of the note steps. But no way will I be using the Tremor sequencer instead of Geist. It is just too limited compared to Geist for me.

I just finished my first song with Tremor... it was really fun and even a little magical to work with. My next song uses Geist (I actually started it earlier but it's a bigger production) and Geist feels much deeper, but because of that a little more intimidating.

I found that Tremor gave me a whole new vibe to work with and this song sounds different than most everything else I've written.

In both cases I was able to craft what I believe to be unique tracks in a way that just using loops (even in Stylus) or using patterns in a sampled drum kit like Battery couldn't provide without MUCH more work.

Here's the track: http://lightsfadelow.com/track/small

One miss here for [ EDIT: Tremor ] is that as a drum synth, many of the drum sounds are pitched. In this song, the kick is VERY pitched, and I had to automate the pitch parameter to get it to follow the song's chord progressions. It would have been much nicer to feed simple MIDI notes into the plugin. When you listen to the track you'll appreciate how critical pitching the kick was.
Last edited by lightsfadelow on Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:03 am; edited 1 time in total

It is much easier to just use a kick with a different pitch on a different pad... In Geist you have 16 pads per engine and 8 engines for a total of 128 pads (sounds) so there are plenty to have multiple pitches of the same sound on different pads... It is easy to do basslines in Geist this way too.

Sorry I meant Tremor, not Geist. There weren't enough pad slots for me to do that. Geist I haven't ha this problem with mainly because as a sampler I don't find myself with pitched kick drum samples.

It is easy to sample any synth in Geist. So you could sample your Tremor kick in multiple pitches. I sample all sorts of stuff into Geist!

That's true, but a sample doesn't respond the same way as a synth. For example I had some hi-hat like synth sounds that as long as I played stayed within a pitch range... but when there was a break they did sort of a pitch glide. Can't do that in Geist. Don't get me wrong, I love Geist. But I also like Tremor for what it is. But given how likely it is that you'll get a pitchy sound with a drum synth, and given the more simple interface of Tremor, being able to set the notes that those "drum" sounds play via MIDI would be a nice add.

aye

do you guys have any tips on how to use Geist for resampling? or is Logic better for this? (to slice up an already existing sample or your own resampled synth to make glitches)?


I really like this, perfect for percussion loops etc.

But I'm finding it really hard to slice a loop using spitter on an audio track to transfer it to the sampler and then to the slicer.

When I get the audio file to the slicer, there are only 16 pads, and when using the transients in Geist there are more transients than pads, what do I about this?

I just want to get each transient slice in on a pad, without using layers (because layers are just stacking and making a lot of awful noise)

Also, is this the ultimate way of resampling and editing? Would you recommend something else for this? I need tips, highlights and explanations of how you guys do it I can also use logic, but since Geist comes handy with the pattern sequencing built in, I don't have to bounce out the audio files I want to edit, I can just get the reverse effect, pitch, repeat etc in directly into Geist.

Big help needed! I'm loving this plugin!

EDIT: AND YES! I've watched ALL the tutorials on Youtube given by FXpansion, they're awsome! But my question remains.

Answers are highly appreciated! I scratched my head about this today, spending hours of trying it out :/