Geist Lite limitations?

[V'ger]

Trouble is that you lose sight of your drums when Geist ends up being like a DAW within a DAW. Imagine if all your synths etc did their own MIDI/pattern-song thing like Geist, it would be a nightmare to keep track of your song and to do major arrange edits etc. I mean that's why we use DAWs to begin with; keeping track of everything on one pane and view/edit stuff at a glance/click.

I recommend to try the full version demo of Geist first and use it as you would normally and maybe you'll find like me the pattern/song mode is not so practical after all, and the sampling is something you do only in a blue moon but then there are other ways to do that anyway etc.

Likely you have other or better effect plugins outside Geist which means routing channels to your DAW anyway, so you might end up using Geist to only trigger samples and then there are ways to do that without taxing your wallet and CPU so much.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

you'll find like me the pattern/song mode is not so practical after all, and the sampling is something you do only in a blue moon but then there are other ways to do that anyway etc.

yup, no interest in the sequencing/patterns/songs

perhaps, re: the sampling it is something YOU would only do in a blue moon.....

there are other way to do it, of course, but none with the immediacy of this....imagine how much of a success the mpc samplers would not have been had you had to do all your sampling in another app, slice then import (even if only drag & drop)....this little convolution in workflow is enough for me to really not bother most of the time, but there seem to be at least a few of us who love this function

[osiris]

I love the Lite version, it;s just fine. I can't begin to wonder how overwhelmingly complex the full version is...
Who cares about drag and drop?
The only thing is I can't seem to get it to stop playing even when the main DAW transport button is stopped, so I have to do the loop separate, but it can do some mighty interesting things.

[V'ger]

Agree the sampling in Geist is really great and a lesson to all 'sampler' developers. This is something Kontakt etc should have had a long time ago.

[braj]

Well regarding arranging, if you are triggering the patterns based on the piano roll, then you really are working in your DAW's piano roll and any edits to your piano roll will be reflected in the way Geist is triggered Anyhow, I'm happy with the lite version for now, I'll see how it goes for a while and if I outgrow it and find the need for sampling huge then I'll think about upgrading.

[Karmacomposer]

I own the full version of guru. How different is geist?

Mike

[BERFAB]

I own the full version of guru. How different is geist?

Mike

Geist is a different animal, for sure. I had GURU before Geist, and I wasn't prepared for the learning curve when I transitioned. It's not THAT hard, to be sure, but there are differences that do take some time to learn.

Biggest practical difference for me was content. I don't think the factory Geist content is as full as that of Guru. Geist addons are nice though.

[pdxindy]

Trouble is that you lose sight of your drums when Geist ends up being like a DAW within a DAW. Imagine if all your synths etc did their own MIDI/pattern-song thing like Geist, it would be a nightmare to keep track of your song and to do major arrange edits etc. I mean that's why we use DAWs to begin with; keeping track of everything on one pane and view/edit stuff at a glance/click.

It may not fit some people... you are welcome to not like it

but with Geist it is easy to create patterns and switch between them, try different things etc... then if you want, just drag the patterns you create right into your daw tracks and you have midi clips including the various modulations you made as cc data... easy to bring it over to the daw when you want

and using scenes is easy to try many variations, swap on the fly, keep extra variations as options for later, play in realtime... 1 midi note (or mouseclick) can switch between patterns 1-24 on each of the 8 engines... I find it much easier than moving midi clips around in a linear timeline...

Most of my synths do have their own midi thing... It is called an arp and/or step sequencer. I agree it would be cumbersome if every instrument had its own internal sequence. but that is in user control and you can drag any pattern from Geist into your daw sequencer whenever you want... so also in user control... sometimes I just use Geist to trigger the sounds and only work in the daw as far as sequencing... depends on what I am doing.

I could get along without the Geist sequencer, but not the sampling...

[pdxindy]

I own the full version of guru. How different is geist?

Mike

Geist is basically Guru 2 - but completely re-written and overall greatly improved... You can use any of the Guru content in Geist

[BERFAB]

I own the full version of guru. How different is geist?

Mike

Geist is basically Guru 2 - but completely re-written and overall greatly improved... You can use any of the Guru content in Geist

Um, caveat emptor there. There are technical restrictions on how Guru content is imported to Geist. I ultimately gave up on trying to get all the content to play correctly when they (thankfully) created the GURU addon pack for Geist. It's not ALL the Guru content, but enough (most of the kits at least) that I was able to move forward.

[pdxindy]

I own the full version of guru. How different is geist?

Mike

Geist is basically Guru 2 - but completely re-written and overall greatly improved... You can use any of the Guru content in Geist

Um, caveat emptor there. There are technical restrictions on how Guru content is imported to Geist. I ultimately gave up on trying to get all the content to play correctly when they (thankfully) created the GURU addon pack for Geist. It's not ALL the Guru content, but enough (most of the kits at least) that I was able to move forward.

indeed... good clarification!

[braj]

So I think I've made my decision, at least for now I'll hold off buying the full version, the free Lite version is awesome for what it is, it gives me a nice drum machine that I can easily load my own samples in, nice grid editor, nice drum mixer, a global effect, another effect for each individual channel, some sample manipulation capability, and easy pattern sequencing in my DAW. I just hope the $125 price stays in effect so I have that option available if I outgrow it, but for my needs I think it is plenty of drum machine. Thanks CM and FXpansion, I really appreciate this freebie!