energyXT

EnergyXT is an amazing piece of kit. It's initially humble GUI hides a lot of functionality and flexibility.

Basically energyXT lets you manipulate MIDI and VST instruments and effects in a myriad of ways. It has modules that lets you split the keyboard into zones and send different parts of the keyboard to different instruments, it has an arpeggiatior on steroids, it has a midi chorder, a midi part player, a midi channel splitter and the list keeps on growing.

It also has audio capabilities and a sampler is in the works. I mainly use the MIDI bits, so I cannot comment on the audio side of things.

It works standalone as a host, as a VST instrument and as a VST effect (the latter being especially nice, because in a program like Ableton Live that allows VST effects but not VST instruments, you can add EnergyXT as an effect, and within it add VST instruments and jam along to the loops in Live).

The UI is minimalistic, and in the beginning it involved a bit of guesswork finding out what went where and how. However, once you grok it, it is easy to work with. The documentation is a bit thin, but Jørgen (the developer) is ever present at the forums to help out if questions arise. He is also incredibly attentive and implements feature suggestions with lightning speed.

Before I found EnergyXT I used Chainer a lot, and although I still find uses for it, EnergyXT has replaced it in my toolbox. XT does the same, and a lot more besides. On top of this, it is cheaper. At the current price it is a steal, and I would gladly pay many times the license fee for the features it now has.

The stability of EnergyXT is good, I have had a few crashes, but new updates are coming out at a rapid rate both with fixes and new features. I usually run beta versions, as I have found them to be very stable, and containing features that are useful.

Regarding value for money, few if any of my plugins can rival EnergyXT. Highly recommended!Read Review