This is a workflow nightmare for chopping and rearranging slices into beats! I like that they've given us the option of so many pads, but quite frankly if I need more than 16 pads for something then I'll just start using another engine. I'm sure that's great for some people, but personally I find working with any more than 16 rows in a step sequencer to be a nightmare, especially since you can only fit 16 rows on screen at once and you have to select which group of 16 with its ABCD selector. In Geist 2, it will spread all of the hits across the 64 pads. Apart from anything, setting those pads to round robin would result in some nice unexpected variations, and you always have the power to 'force' a layer if desired. In Geist 1, a loop containing more than 16 hits would have the extra hits layered on other pads. Yay! But when chopping beats using the slicer, you can't limit the number of pads used. So many bad design decisions in the thing.įor starters, you now get 64 pads. Sure, they've crammed a lot more features in there, some of them quite useful, but they have screwed up the GUI and the workflow so badly that I find it a real PITA to use. Geist 2 is a huge step down from Geist 1 in terms of design and usability.

I'm still not using the thing in my projects, and I find myself going back to Geist 1 for all my drum sequencing needs.

Naturally, when it was released, I yelled 'TAKE MY MONEY' and got the thing installed ASAP. Took part in the threads on the fxpansion forum, soaked up every last snippet of information and preview screenshot until I was almost bursting with excitement. But for putting beats and samples together in a drum machine type workflow, no other software beats it.Īnd so like many others I waited for Geist 2 with baited breath. It's not a perfect plugin - small interface, fiddly browser, certain limitations etc. I barely needed to read the manual, although I did anyway (and it's top notch). I fell in love with Geist 1 almost straight away because of its logical, intuitive workflow.

Fxpansion geist 2 update