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Metrum comes with 330 genre-categorised presets.

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• Review

Vengeance-Sound branched out into plug-ins last year with the first in its Vengeance Producer Suite series, Multiband Sidechain. This effect makes it a doddle to achieve sidechain pumping - a very common dance music production technique. Likewise, Metrum aims to make light work of the most fundamental - and often most important - element of any dance track: the kick drum.

Metrum is a VST/AU instrument, and the basic architecture replicates the technique used by Vengeance-Sound's Manuel Schleis to create the killer kicks that his sample packs are renowned for: a synthesised sine wave 'body' layer brings the beef, with up to three sampled 'attacks' layered on top to give character.

There are 330 genre-categorised presets, and they're just as powerful and production-ready as those in Vengeance-Sound's sample libraries. Metrum's smart Librarian is simplicity itself: click a preset to audition, double-click to load it. All presets respond to the mod wheel, and there are three GUI Modifier macro knobs that provide additional sound-shaping options - eg, to dial in extra reverb, reduce the sample rate, fade in a ride cymbal sample, etc. Their functions are assignable, so it varies from preset to preset.

As well as complete kicks, there are presets for individual components: bodies and attacks. 1,800 attack samples are included, covering kick drums (who'd have thought it?), snares, claps, hats, rides, clicks, noise blasts and more. These can be auditioned just like full presets and dragged onto a sample slot. You can set user sample folders, but you can't traverse subdirectories. 24-bit samples also didn't load (this is fixed in the imminent v1.0.2 update).

In detail

Let's look first at the synth oscillator. Like the other layers, its controls are visible at all times. The basics are mute and solo buttons, a volume dial and pitch control. The Shape knob takes the oscillator from a sine wave up to a near-triangle shape, while Drive applies distortion and Spike accentuates attack.

Described as emphasising frequencies in the "stomach region", the Punch knob lives up to its name, adding - or removing - 'oomph' around the 130Hz region. Finally, there's a pitch control. Impressively, the small waveform graphics (and those in the envelope screens) continually update to reflect your tweaks.

The main tone of a kick drum typically starts out high then drops low very quickly. Naturally, then, there's a pitch envelope, and this is the beating, booming heart of Metrum, where you determine whether your kick is a lazy, 808-esque affair; a ballsy 909-alike; a minimal click-meets-sub; a taut, momentary DnB jab; etc. It's an ADSR design, with nodes for each point and curve handles. There's an amplitude envelope, too.

The sample slots also have pitch and amp envelopes, but their basic controls are different: mute, solo and volume are still present, but the rest comprise Pan, Tune, Spike, HPF and LPF, the latter being high- and low-pass filters - vital for slotting sounds into one cohesive kick. At the global level, there's a master amplitude envelope applied to all layers, and a modulation envelope.