Geist / BreakTweaker /Tremor V. Playbeat / Beat Scholar etc.

[abstractcats]

Hey guys! So, I've been looking at upgrading my Drum samplers/ synths.
I've been watching a number of videos on the latest drum seqs/synths/samplers and thinking about my old ones Geist and BreakTweaker ... to a good degree, the new VSTs seem like current, if not some older tech wrapped in very modern UIs. And Geist / BreakTweaker seem to so the same things as the new stuff, and sound just as good, Tremor seems to have better sound design tools, other then some new randomize tech. What am I missing, if anyting?

Thanks

[wilx]

Triaz! It's brilliant. Very customisable, tonnes of content. Love it.

[abstractcats]

Triaz! It's brilliant. Very customisable, tonnes of content. Love it.

I've seen the ads, I'll give it a run, thanks!

[idoru97214]

Yup. Triaz

[ralfrobert]

You can also stay with your old stuff and save the money. If they still work. Geist is hard to beat.

[Lectropunk aka influx808]

D16 drumazon 2 and nepheton 2 are really awesome and I had geist, battery 4 , maschine, etc

[emef]

Triaz, Microtonic, Drumazon 2, Nepheton 2, Atlas 2, Beat Scholar

[bizzazz]

Beat scholar is cool to mess around with to get some wild experimental beats, especially with its randomizer. But I never seem to use it when doing an actual song.

Triaz is the real deal though.

[_al_]

Depends what you want from it, I guess.

Honestly, I spent so many years looking for a suitable drum player / sampler, I almost lost my faith in humanity.
All I wanted was a straightforward pad-based player, that gives me custom multipoint envelopes for volume and pitch, has a sample reverse function, and allows start / end trim.
Everything either had some simple ADSR envelope with no curve control, or was missing something else, like a sample browser or reverse function.

To put my struggle into perspective, I own copies of Avenger, Mdrummer, RMV, and other shit I can't even remember, because I was sure they would fit the task.
Nope... all of them ended up being more of a workflow killer than helper.

So after many years of using Slicex (FL), I've now settled with Backbone (the Borg lol), as it is simple, and has all the basics I need.

Not worried about on board fx, as I got plenty of those, but it does a good job at what I need it to do, and is low cpu.

I probably would've been happy with Slicex, if it didn't remove the marker every time you imported a sound... that means you have to manually add a marker, just to get the vst to play a note. How the hell can we audition a bank of sounds like that lol

[sacer]

It depends on your music.
I also like battery and Maschine, but also nepheton 2 and drumazon 2 are really great.
For kicks i like sonic academy kick 2 -and i also like Algonaut 2 for randomisation of my sample libraries.
Triaz sounds also very nice and for some drums I prefer mycrotonic or xils lab stix.
I‘ve also used tremor and Geist in the past, a combination of both would be really great, but never happened

[abstractcats]

I‘ve also used tremor and Geist in the past, a combination of both would be really great, but never happened

SUCH a shame Tremor, was abandoned its a great tool for creating drum sounds, I don't believe I've ever seen another with such drum sound design options. I did get Triaz, I'm probably getting Beat Scholar, today.

[cake builder]

Beat Scholar is cool but it looks like they haven't updated it in two years. I thought they said they were looking at implementing the option for different lane lengths, but doesn't look like they ever did.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

The thing I loved about Geist was that it could basically work as a standalone DAW if you wanted.

You had pads you could program into patterns (basic), but then you had a bunch of patterns you could save and trigger via keyswitches for live performance. It blows my mind that so many of these drum products don't allow you to save 16 patterns and don't have key triggers for them. But then Geist allowed you to sequence the patterns into full-blown songs. It was an MPC-style groovebox workflow. If you asked me then, I'd have said that would be the standard for drum products in 2025. But it seems like these programs are all about sample discovery and forcing users to do everything in the DAW's piano roll or clip launcher instead of within the instrument itself. It's not as fun honestly and always feels like a cop-out to me.

I miss Geist.

[SamDi]

+1 for Triaz. I also tried many options. Many have good sound design features bit sequencer is somehaow lacking others have goos sequencers but sound design is limited. Triaz is offers good features on both sides and has good presets to start from.

[morphex]

I‘ve also used tremor and Geist in the past, a combination of both would be really great, but never happened

SUCH a shame Tremor, was abandoned its a great tool for creating drum sounds, I don't believe I've ever seen another with such drum sound design options. I did get Triaz, I'm probably getting Beat Scholar, today.

It can definitely be very frustrating when amazing plug-ins like Geist and Tremor have their development stopped cold in their tracks. Tremor has the kind of sound-sculpting abilities that I want in a dedicated drum synth, but I missed out on it and there aren't many alternatives that I consider to be in the same ballpark.

I still have my copy of BreakTweaker installed on my Intel iMac. But again, it's a very cool concept that was suddenly stopped at v1.0.2. Each of these has so much potential, and it's a shame that anyone would let these VST's continue to go undeveloped. But that's the software business for you, and it's probably money-related.

Personally, I'd love it if Elektron took some of the magic from their hardware drum synths and released it in plug-in format. But for now, I'm getting pretty good results from a mixture of Battalion, Triaz, DrumComputer, Ephemere, and Tactic 2. They each have their pros and cons, but they're effective for creating a wide range of sounds and sequences.