I bought the CM Beats & Bass Special with the intention of upgrading to Geist for 50% off. Then the fxpansion guys release tremor, I demoed it and really dug its interface and sound. Now im trying to decide between the two but finding it difficult, and not finding enough info to go by.

I own a maschine, and my inital reaction last month was that Geist would be quite redundant. But then, Geist does have timestretch, and excellent layering, and very good fx, and very quick loop slicing, etc. from what Ive read. My research seemed to indicate that Geist and Maschine actually play really well together, and so I bought the CM special. The 50% discount is till the 29th.

Now, along comes Tremor, and I seriously dig its interface, and Ive found it really quick to come up with very useable patterns in minutes.

I should mention that I also have Kong (Reason) and Drumaxx, though I think neither comes close to Tremor, especially Drumaxx. To be fair, I havent spent a lot of time with Kong as I havent been using Reason lately.

Right now, Im leaning towards Tremor, simply because I feel it expands my options and brings more to the table than geist, considering what I already have. But I should also mention that I have a core i3 3.06 ghz imac, and Tremor does take a lot of cpu.
Also, if I buy Geist now, I save $125 while with Tremor I only need to spend another 50 after the 9th of feb. So if I decide to get geist later, Ill end up spending a lot more.

I produce, or want to produce, ambient, drum and bass, and similar genres. I also work as a composer of background music for tv commercials, corporate films, and documentaries.

I would really appreciate any helpful comments that help me decide, particularly from those who own any, or even better, all of these products.
Last edited by CT on Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:33 am; edited 1 time in total

Quite a conundrum...

Just a thought: you could approach the decision from a very practical, sober point of view - which would complement your setup better? That's basically the question you're asking.

You could, however, also use a different approach: which one really inspires you to make music? Tremor has obviously struck a chord with you. The cpu usage is a consideration, but there's always bounce 'n' freeze, and your hardware will probably get an update sometime in the future. To me, inspiration has made almost every purchase worth it, despite there being a good deal of overlap in my plugin collection.

After making my original post, I thought about it and realize that the question is not really one of IF I buy tremor, but when

I totally agree with what u say. Inspiration is at least as important as practicality, if not more so. Tremor to me is truly inspiring, very tweakable and not so difficult to program, though the depth is there too.

I guess the question is of whether Geist will be useful, since I have maschine. I think i already answered that question when I bought the CM special

Would still like to hear from those who own both maschine and geist.

I have Maschine and Geist, but favour using Geist. It's very powerful, and provides basically everything required for sampling, slicing, layering, sequencing. Maschine is nice, but Geist is more focussed for what I want to achieve.

The obvious point about your OP is that Tremor is a drum synth, and Geist is a sampler. Which one do you need? Or if not need, which one would suit your workflow better?

Peace
Andy.

Totally agree with that. Although I love using Maschine it's always more of a standalone thing with it, rather than inserting it into a DAW project, whereas Geist is usually the first VST I insert into a project. It is very quick and intuitive to get going with ideas. Maschine does sound great but IMO I get better results with Geist.

Tremor, on the other hand, is primarily a synth and although it's quick and easy to get your rhythm parts going (the polyrhythms are brilliant), there's a lot more to do 'under the hood' to get at the sound you want. That's still very rewarding though.

I own Geist, and I'm currently doing the math on whether it would make sense for me to get Tremor.

I spent a bit of serious Tremor time giving it a good run through, and, although I don't think my music is a fit for many of it's sounds, it is very intuitive and infinitely tweakable--overall, very good and fit to wear the FXpansion badge.

However, I then wondered if I could get similar results from Geist. Using Geist's pattern bank and going into the Experimental bank of kits (this MAY have been from the Guru expansion pack--not sure) I came up with some great beats that I think would rival anything I got from Tremor. I even used my results to bump out a complete track.

Now, obviously, I'm not creating new drum sounds in Geist, but you do have the ability to really alter your samples just about any way imaginable if that's what you want to do. As for me, I'm a preset guy, not a programmer. So, I think Geist will hold me for a while longer.

Cheers
-B

Thanks guys, some of those comments made things clearer to me, and well, before I changed my mind again I went ahead and bought Geist

Sensible advice.

But then again, would you feel as if your studio was really complete unless you had both?

If you don't know what the difference is, get both. You won't regret it.
They both do slightly different things anyway.

Seriously.

You won't regret it.

It really is fifth-generation fighter software.

You will find yourself chuckling as you think, can I do this? and you realise it has all been thought about before you. FXpansion are a serious force to be reckoned with. They are something special and their products prove that.

KVR, where the answer is always "get both"

Peace,
Andy.

I actually have both, annnnd Maschine. But if I were to recommend to someone what to get, I would say this. Both are great. Question you should ask yourself is, do you want the ability to have high quality drum samples or do you want to do for a more electro synthetic approach to drum. I almost akin Tremor to the old Electribe ER-1, but of course much more fun than that (without the hardware though). You get synthetic drums with Tremor.

With Geist you get to use samples, which I enjoy using and actually have to have access to. So for me because I need something that can use samples, and I love playing with synthetic drums, I bought Geist a while ago and just bought Tremor. I picked Fxpansion over Punch and some of the other drum machines in VST format out there, mainly because I really enjoy the interfaces of these two products. Tremor has a great 'quick' interface and Geist's sequencing and interface are similar (being Tremor utilizes Geist type sequencing with some differences).

Once I tried Tremor after owning Geist I realized they are both completely different sound machines, so I wanted both.

I have Maschine and really like it as well. The controller is great, but I would pick Geist over Maschine if I had to choose one. Geist is so efficient and streamlined and easy to use and it works the way I want.

Yea theyve been churning out some incredible products. The concept behind synth squad's fusor is really cool, so huge in scope but essentially a very simple idea. Ive found synth squad and dune to be the most innovative synths in the last year or two, cause of simple ideas that are implemented really well.

Yep, and always the "right" answer.

To further sum up what I was saying earlier, I actually find myself having more fun tweaking and 'playing' with Tremor, but I actually use Geist more for making tracks, probably because I like using samples. And it's fun too, of course.

I would really prefer to have Tremor built into Geist... I find it a bit disappointing that FX came out with the cool features in Tremor and I have no option to have them in Geist. I especially like the sequencing in Tremor and wish Geist had that adjustable track lengths. I can do the similar thing with multiple Geist engines but it is not as fluid as on one page in Tremor.

Geist and Tremor are not designed to work together and there is no integration. For example, there are different groove engines. I don't feel like FX gave thought to Geist users when making Tremor.

FX has really tempted me cause by itself, Tremor rocks... but I am gonna use Geist cause I need the sampling, samples, more tracks, multiple engines and so on... so am left with deciding whether I want to run the 2 sequencers and my DAW. That added complexity is more than I want so for the moment, I am deciding no on Tremor. But damn it sounds good...