MusicRadar

• Review

While you can create stomping kicks without ever going near Metrum's impressive modulation matrix, it's there for those seeking ultimate control. There are ten slots, and you can disable each with a power switch.

Modulation sources include MIDI velocity, key, pitchbend and mod wheel, as well as a selection of CCs. The three GUI Modifier knobs can also be controlled via CC, although this didn't work for us - Vengeance-Sound is aware of the issue and hope to fix it in an update. In the meantime, you can use host automation or set up alternative CC control in the matrix. There's also a dedicated modulation envelope that can be used as a source, and the amplitude envelope of any layer may also function as such.

As for destinations, you're spoilt for choice - pretty much any parameter of the synth can be modulated, including layer settings, effects parameters, the GUI Modifier knobs, the strength of the other modulation slots, and even MIDI keytracking and the root key. We particularly enjoyed binding the mod envelope to effects parameters (eg, bitcrusher frequency) and those of the oscillator, such as Drive and Shape, to add a touch of growl in the decay of the kick, or to sharpen the attack.

More options are found in the MIDI and System pages; for example, you can determine which layers respond to MIDI note (great for pitched jumpstyle kicks) and length, disable the master limiter, and decide what's affected by the excellent randomiser.

Effects

Next, effects. The most basic is a two-band EQ on the entire output. It has a spectrum analyser too, but it's only visible in the Effects page, so you can't see it when you really need to, such as while using the pitch envelope. We'd suggest an option to show an analyser instead of the (somewhat redundant) virtual keyboard.

The rest of the effects can be selectively applied to layers with toggle buttons, so you can easily exclude, say, the oscillator layer from the Distortion section - neat. Other effects are Bit Crusher, Stereo Matrix (widen or convert to mono), Stereo Delay (apply a short delay to either channel, to increase width), Room Reverb and Gated Reverb. The latter is tempo sync'ed so that it's always heard on the offbeat, and it resets when a new note is played, so the reverb never obfuscates the kick itself - also neat! The only effect we're missing is one to narrow the stereo field, rather than just 'mono-ise' sounds.

One big oversight is that there's no undo/redo. Accidentally hit the Randomize! button just as you've dialled in the best kick drum you ever heard in your life and… game over! However, v1.0.2 should be out by the time you read this, with a 'restore last preset' function for such moments, among other new features.

Summary

Metrum delivers the goods for any form of electronic music, be it house (all flavours), hardcore, RnB, hip-hop, DnB, hardstyle, etc. The sound is authentic and thoroughly slammin'. The timing is rock solid, too - as tight as placing samples on an audio track, at least in our test DAWs (Live and Cubase). If creating a kick from scratch, you still need the know-how to be able to tell when it's punching in the right places and not an overblown mess. You'll also have to resist the urge to continually tinker with your kick!

You could always combine your existing synths, samples and effects to create custom kick drums, of course. We cobbled together something like this in Ableton Live using Groups, and while it worked and sounded passable, we have to admit that it wasn't half as quick and easy as Metrum and the results weren't as good.

To sum up, although it's arguably not a vital purchase, the degree of effort and expertise that's gone into making Metrum has clearly paid off. We're sure some producers will wonder how they ever made do without it.

Take a listen to some Metrum presets. Each GUI Modifier is increased in turn, then all three GUI Modifiers are increased together:

Brooklyn Beat 3

UK Trance 3

Rock Kick 2

Jumpstyle Classic 2

Crack Kick