StiX : MultiSynthesis Drum Machine (v1.6 Released + Flash sales)

[Lotuzia]

just tried to install the demo and Avast reported it as a threat fyi

Ooops. Thanks, We'll see what we can do. Avst can be overpicky sometimes.

If it happens for some other people, please post here or PM me.

[Lotuzia]

... A drum synth that is horrible at making kicks ..

Horrible at making kicks? What the heck have you been using up until now? Personally the only plugin I've used with kicks as good as this is Drumspillage 2.

Thanks

[Lotuzia]

...... The samples include a bunch of Bass drum samples so you could try to laod those in Osc 3.
It is also possible to tweak existing Bass Drum presets by e.g. adding filter Drive and/or adding Distortion.

Last but not least you could also create your own Kick drum patch from scratch. StiX is a full featured synth with VA OScs and sample import support so alot of things are possible compared to as "simple" preset based drum plugin.

This is the public Beta and hopefully the final version will include many more presets then. I will do my best to do some too until then.

I'd love that

Yes there will be more presets in v1.0. Including Kits from Wave Alchemy. All in all I think there are around 400 Drumpad presets in the current Beta. And a lot of global presets, drumkits presets, sequence presets etc.

[Daags]

So the answer is no ... the list of excuses and alternatives don't come anywhere close appeasing the lack of this basic drum machine functionality.

the most important aspect is still left to the mouse, and this is a fail for a drum machine.

though in fairness to your poor design choice, you are not the only one making this collossal mistake.

my advice is to add it.
well, assuming you want it to function like an actual drum machine anyway.

can the steps be de/activated by midi ?
if not - chalk this up as a fail.
if so - you should be sure to highlight this fact when listing features.

so tired of vst drum machines making this mistake. the reasons as to why this should be possible should be obvious, or you shouldn't be designing drum machines.

Yes adding variations when looping with a single pattern might be the obvious reason. Or one of them. This feature was present in an old Yamaha unit.( with a complicated way to operate it, and it was only deactivate irrc, and not activating empty steps -not sure of that but ...- )

With Stix you can mute/unmute drumpads ( ie drumsounds) by playing live on octave c3 of your midi keyboard/device. Seems much more handy than deactivating steps, as you can deactivate a step, or the whole sequencer line, or part of it. And build complete intro/outro effortless from a single, admitedly busy, pattern. Just mute/unmute sequencer lines in a progressive way with a few keystrokes, and iyour intro/outro is done. Or your break/fill/whatever.

You can also play the drums live with the sequencer using octave C1. It might be faster than adding a step.

And chain patterns live with octave c2, and therefore record entire arrangements in your daw in a flash. Especially if you can combine this with StiX other live control possibilities.

These are not strictly similar things though, Mute/unmute combined with Play Drums live can do things that de/activating can't do, in a fast and intuitive way, its also -imho- much more powerfull, but the opposite is also true : De/activating steps could give different results -in a few cases-

Well, this is the way/design I choose for StiX. Whatever you will think of it if you try it, a lot of thought have been put into the making of StiX. It's the Drum Machine I have always wanted for myself.

[jbuonacc]

So the answer is no ... the list of excuses and alternatives don't come anywhere close appeasing the lack of this basic drum machine functionality.

the most important aspect is still left to the mouse, and this is a fail for a drum machine.

though in fairness to your poor design choice, you are not the only one making this colossal mistake.

how exactly is this supposed to work? each step is assigned a MIDI CC number or what? does anything out there do this? i don't think it's as simple as you make it sound.

but yeah, Lotuzia's "avoidance" (actually seems more like innocent lack of comprehension) is off-putting. you should be used to this by now, he's been doing this for years. seems like a good guy though, you don't need to be a dick about it.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Have a look at Sugar Bytes Era to see how to midifi a drum machine, just about every aspect of it is midi controllable, including all the performance features, quite incredible

[jbuonacc]

I've compiled some of the *Single Drumpad* audio demos in one longer clip.
StiX Single Drumpad Demo A

i wanted to keep my mouth shut previously, because i thought most of the audio demos were crap, but this and a few other really show off the strengths of this new rhythm composer. programming rolls, etc like this can take a long time via traditional means. in earlier demos i was thinking it'd be just as easy to physically play stuff like this into it from a pad/keys controller, but even that usually requires some editing if it's not dead-on.

you might be on to something with this, hopefully others will realize it. i'm a bit curious though as to how you felt that there was nothing on the market that did what you wanted, and come to find out you've never even used 'Tremor'. probably a good thing in the long run.

[Lotuzia]

I've compiled some of the *Single Drumpad* audio demos in one longer clip.
StiX Single Drumpad Demo A

i wanted to keep my mouth shut previously, because i thought most of the audio demos were crap, but this and a few other really show off the strengths of this new rhythm composer. programming rolls, etc like this can take a long time via traditional means. in earlier demos i was thinking it'd be just as easy to physically play stuff like this into it from a pad/keys controller, but even that usually requires some editing if it's not dead-on.

you might be on to something with this, hopefully others will realize it. i'm a bit curious though as to how you felt that there was nothing on the market that did what you wanted, and come to find out you've never even used 'Tremor'. probably a good thing in the long run.

I'm not here to comment other instruments, and I even left people comment the Tremor/StiX comparison. Simply put, Tremor, like other drum machines, doesnt do what I want, all I want, and it doesnt do them how I want them to be done, wich is for me equally important for a drum machine. It's not that Tremor is not ok, it has its strong points, you can do nice things with it. Besides that, I have made a short list of the differences between StiX and Tremor. And this short list is rather long,in every department. Tremor can do things StiX cant do, and the opposite is equally true. They also sound different.
Else : I'm a skilled drummer, and when I want to play electronic drums naturally, I do so. A Drum machine is something else. StiX can do things you cant achieve when playing drums live (and do them efforless). The reverse is true, natural playing will give interactions you will never get with any drum machine. So the results will be different, and will sound different. And it can also do things that you cant do in a daw, except if you want to spend 3 hours editing each bar, and a life to explore in your daw all the possibilities that you can change in StiX with a mouse click.

It's very possible that I did not understand what the other guy wanted with the de/activate feature, I thought it was just variations, when it was actually programming the sequence itself via keys. Well the keys and midi are used for something else in StiX. It's not that you could not activate a mode in wich keys could be used for this, it's also that, due to the fact that you can have a different step per beat number in StiX, a different number of beats per step, and divisi, and everything else, I cant see how this could be usefull, or to be exact : playable. with StiX.

As for the audio demo, well they just show what can be done with StiX with a few *mouse clicks*, a drumpad (a drumsound) and cycling on ONE bar. I'll post some other ones.

[Lotuzia]

So the answer is no ... the list of excuses and alternatives don't come anywhere close appeasing the lack of this basic drum machine functionality.

the most important aspect is still left to the mouse, and this is a fail for a drum machine.

though in fairness to your poor design choice, you are not the only one making this collossal mistake.

my advice is to add it.
well, assuming you want it to function like an actual drum machine anyway.

can the steps be de/activated by midi ?
if not - chalk this up as a fail.
if so - you should be sure to highlight this fact when listing features.

so tired of vst drum machines making this mistake. the reasons as to why this should be possible should be obvious, or you shouldn't be designing drum machines.

Yes adding variations when looping with a single pattern might be the obvious reason. Or one of them. This feature was present in an old Yamaha unit.( with a complicated way to operate it, and it was only deactivate irrc, and not activating empty steps -not sure of that but ...- )

With Stix you can mute/unmute drumpads ( ie drumsounds) by playing live on octave c3 of your midi keyboard/device. Seems much more handy than deactivating steps, as you can deactivate a step, or the whole sequencer line, or part of it. And build complete intro/outro effortless from a single, admitedly busy, pattern. Just mute/unmute sequencer lines in a progressive way with a few keystrokes, and iyour intro/outro is done. Or your break/fill/whatever.

You can also play the drums live with the sequencer using octave C1. It might be faster than adding a step.

And chain patterns live with octave c2, and therefore record entire arrangements in your daw in a flash. Especially if you can combine this with StiX other live control possibilities.

These are not strictly similar things though, Mute/unmute combined with Play Drums live can do things that de/activating can't do, in a fast and intuitive way, its also -imho- much more powerfull, but the opposite is also true : De/activating steps could give different results -in a few cases-

Well, this is the way/design I choose for StiX. Whatever you will think of it if you try it, a lot of thought have been put into the making of StiX. It's the Drum Machine I have always wanted for myself.

So be clear / I thought you wanted to make variations live within a sequence with your de/activate step thing. Wich could have been the sense of your question as well, added to the fact that I'm very concerned with the 'add life to the machine' aspect of StiX.

But it seems that you want to program the beats (ie *record* ) with another way (midi keyboard ? Midi Ccs ? ) than mouse clicks ? I did not make excuses or whatever, I just did not understand your question. If you have formulated your question more precisely instead of 'obvious reasons' the answer might have been more clear. If it's that, (on/off steps with alt/ midi note ON keys) the answer is that, due to StiX polymorphic metric nature, it might be difficult, and simply implayable in a number of situations. ( because StiX is not only about 4/4 and 16 steps per bar ) BUT ... I'll nevertheless consider it, and give it some thought. If it's still something else, well ..... just explain it clearly

[cranium]

Respect for bringing your ideas to light and making it available to us.
This thing is fun and I sure like the sound of it!

Currently when tuning knobs (in particular fine-tuning using the right mouse button) it only makes adjustments when within StiX's GUI.
(In both Bitwig and Cubase 8.5) Something you are probably aware of.

Are you planning to make improved versions of the demo available to us as well?

[subterfuge]

It seems in the current Windows demo (non-time limited) the GUI width changes don't work. It stays at the same pretty wide size.

[cranium]

It seems in the current Windows demo (non-time limited) the GUI width changes don't work. It stays at the same pretty wide size.

Have you tried reloading the plugin after making changes to the GUI size?

[VariKusBrainZ]

It seems in the current Windows demo (non-time limited) the GUI width changes don't work. It stays at the same pretty wide size.

Have you tried reloading the plugin after making changes to the GUI size?

works for me, medium size is huge on my old laptop

[subterfuge]

Have you tried reloading the plugin after making changes to the GUI size?

I have now. Reloading the plugin updated the change, thanks. It seemed to be the biggest size by default, a little too wide for me.

[stardustmedia]

Until when is the intro price?

And how many computers can be activated?

Until V1.0 is released (Wich will be announced a few days before in a Xils newsletter)
There's no precise date.

Thx for the info. I'm away until 16th Jan... don't want to buy stuff from my handy or a public computer

If I remember right Xils give you two activations per license, right?

With Elicencer or Ilok you can insall it on as many computers as you want, provided that you have the hw dongle with you. With Soft Ilok, I think you can transfer the licence from one computer to another one iirc. Xils-Lab follows the genaral rules/guidelines of Ilok and eLicencer for all this afaik.

Yes, but when you forget the dongle you're screwed

EG Soundtoys give two activations per license. Means you can have two conputers running it simultaneously. No matter if both use soft ot hard ilok or mixed.