pHATmatik Pro

Hot diggitee damn! I don't know why, but I was hoping to write the first review of pHATmatik Pro. I'll tell you, every so often a music product comes along that's destined to be revered. pPro is such a product. There have been plenty of loop rearranging tools, from the venerable ReCycle, to Cakewalk's somewhat less originally named Cyclone, and of course, Propellerhead's Dr. Rex from Reason, but pPro pretty well flattens them all. It's got every feature I wished for from the others, and it's a VSTi, to boot. It's interface is easy to understand (I made a song with a pre-beta version, LONG before there was a manual), and it's loaded with thoughtful extras, such as "drag-and-drop" support for both slices and the MIDI files it generates from the loop. it's transient detection is pretty much the best I've yet encountered, and the slicing is VERY accurrate. The editing section allows for minute editing/mangling of each slice, and the master section supports a lovely comb filter, as well as tempo locked delay and LFOs (2). There are plenty of ways to render a loop into a wholly new creation, too many to go into here. Suffice to say that even a handful of loops can provide a wealth of new material. By it's nature, there are unlikely to be presets, but then EVERY sound is a pPro preset, isn't it? The sound quality is top-notch, and it's frighteningly stable. Even beta versions out-performed some expensive name-brand plugs I own. The customer support is exemplary, and it's creator, Art, is attentive to the user's needs, and pretty dang cool, too. Is it a value? How much money do you spend on loop-library discs? pHATmatik Pro will give you an infinite variety of loops for about the same price as a CD full of those crumby ol' static loops. It's a rare oppurtunity to watch the birth of a product that's poised to change the way people approach making music, and I feel priveleged to have been there from the beginning. Thanks Bitshift.Read Review