Next up is the sequencer, which uses an evolution of the clever technology seen in Tremor. By default, sliced loops will adapt to fit whatever tempo and feel you’re currently using. Samples can be easily sliced (all the bundled loops are pre-sliced) and, of course, you can edit the slices, assign slices to different layers and manipulate sliced content.

Every sample inside Geist2 can be almost infinitely manipulated using the sample editor section with an extremely fine grained set of controls including envelopes, sample playback mode, mixing, filtering and tuning, looping and timestretching. There are multiple pad input modes like Chromatic, Velocity or Sampler, which enables you to sample directly into a pad either from your audio hardware or internally within the instrument.

Layer up multiple sounds into pads and choose how they are triggered In terms of workflow there are resizeable sections, the ability to show different editors and tools and a number of drop-down menus, but on the whole it’s well thought-out and you should find your way around pretty quickly. With so much going on in the interface it’s nice to be able to take advantage of higher resolutions without having to keep restarting the app. That is to say the interface has been made vector-based which enables live resizing up to 4K and supports Retina displays, both of which are relatively common these days.

Running as a standalone application or as a plug-in on Mac or Windows, Geist2 has embraced the scalability that we’re seeing with an increasing number of software releases. There’s a lot to cover so let’s dive right in. Now there’s a new version- Geist2-which takes things to a whole new level and incorporates many of the features from the company’s other software instruments and effects. Some years back, the London-based company produced Guru, a sample-based groove creation and manipulation tool, which later evolved into Geist, with greatly expanded capabilities. FXpansion is well known for its mighty BFD drum instruments but also makes a range of other impressive synths, effects and music tools.

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