MusicRadar

Samplitude's interface remains busy and fiddly.

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• Review

Samplitude is no newcomer to the great DAW race, having begun life in the early '90s as a sample editor for the good old Commodore Amiga. Its modern incarnation is a full-on DAW, offering recording, editing and playback of audio and MIDI; virtual instruments and effects; numerous graphic analysers; and much more.

We're looking at the Pro version here, which includes such extras as the Analog Modeling Suite, Vandal amp sim and Revolver tracks.

What's new?

Samplitude's plug-ins have dramatically swelled in number, so let's take a look at what's new. The crash-happy Independence LE ROMpler from v10 is out, thank goodness, but the same workstation-style sounds are here in the Vita player, which we've seen before in Magix Music Maker. Vita is easy to use, offering controls for amplitude and filter envelopes, easy delay and reverb, etc. There's no multi-out, though, limiting the use of the drum kits.

Samplitude has new 'Synth Objects', which are clips that also contain the instrument itself. There are four instruments here and, again, we've seen them before in Music Maker.

Not impressing us much are the cheap and nasty LiViD virtual drummer and the cheesy Drum & Bass 'beats 'n' basslines' module that looks like a '90s eJay escapee. The Atmos 'atmosphere generator' is also present, complete with the hilarious hip hop mode, with its Gunfight parameter! Unsurprisingly, these Mickey Mouse efforts seem rather out of place in Samplitude.

BeatBox 2 is the fourth Synth Object instrument and is far more agreeable. It's a step-sequencing drum machine with shuffle, 14 effects, and neat automation lanes. Each of its 16 slots can trigger a sample, a synthesised drum or a mix thereof. There are three types of synthesis and some terrific noises can be had.

Sadly, there's no synth editing panel - instead, you assign a parameter to one of the six macro knobs, but with there being way more than six synth parameters, it's like performing keyhole synth surgery.

Also new is Revolta 2, a wicked soft synth that we felt was too full-on for Music Maker, but that suits Samplitude. It's got twin oscillators, noise generator, dual LFOs, step sequencer, mod matrix, dual effects and 150 or so presets. There are a few rough edges, though: it clicks on new notes if you exceed the voice limit, for instance.

Another of our favourites from Music Maker made the transition - Robota is another drum machine, with an emphasis on synthesis. Raw waveforms can be mashed up with frequency/ring modulation, rectification, bit-depth and sample-rate reduction, filtering (with a zingin' comb mode) and tube saturation/compression. Meaty kicks, speaker-shredding zaps, harsh dissonances and more are all fair game.

The essentialFX series is another Music Maker convert. StereoDelay Compressor, Phaser and Reverb can't compete with existing Samplitude plug-ins, but ChorusFlanger is a real gem, with its splendidly lush, shimmering chorus.