REVIEW

Let’s get one thing clear before we start: Stylus RMX is not a ROMpler. Neither is it ‘Stylus 2′. It is, in fact, a massive generational leap from its predecessor that, although shipping with a huge (7.4GB) sound library, does allow you to import loops of your own. Spectrasonics have always railed against their plug-ins being labelled ‘ROMplers’, and this time they do actually have a point – so we take back what we said in last month’s news story. Stylus RMX is indeed not a ROMpler.

The original Stylus was, though! It was one of the first software instruments to truly take advantage of increasing hard drive sizes, featuring a straightforward interface with which to control its thousands of included loops, and the same method of triggering them as that used by REX files: chromatic MIDI sequences, each note triggering successive slices of the loop. Spectrasonics call their take on this system Groove Control, and the original Stylus is now referred to as Classic Stylus. Fascinating stuff. History lesson ends.

RMX change

At the core of Stylus RMX is the all-new architecture that Spectrasonics have been beavering away on for the last couple of years. It’s called SAGE (Spectrasonics Advanced Groove Engine) and it makes Classic Stylus look like a mere toy.

The first thing you’re likely to come across that lets you know just how much things have changed is the new browser, from which all sound selection choices are made. The top selection menu offers four choices: Core Library (the sounds that ship with Stylus RMX, comprising around 2500 grooves, 3000 kit modules and over 10,000 single-shot sounds), EXP Libraries (add-on libraries, available through Spectrasonics under the banner SAGE Xpanders), User Libraries (your own REX or Groove Control files, converted with the included SAGE converter utility – see, told you it’s not a ROMpler), and User Favourites (any sounds in Stylus RMX that you’ve deemed particularly tasty). The bottom menu offers choices within those four categories (user-defined favourites folders, for example). The Core Library contains RMX Grooves (the new material), Classic Stylus (all of the content from the original Stylus), Groove Elements (all of Stylus RMX’s grooves categorised by instrument type), Sound Menus (all of the individual sounds in the Core Library in single-hit form), Groove Menus (an updated version of Classic Stylus’ system of the same name), and Utilities (test tones, clicks and the like).

Groove master

Selecting a groove or sound is done by clicking on it, whereupon it’s loaded into the currently selected channel of the eight available and immediately played back. Using the browser, you can mix and match up to eight grooves, single hits and Kit modules (see below) as you see fit. Like we said, this is a looong way beyond Stylus as we used to know it.

Always present at the bottom of the interface are start and stop controls for Stylus as a whole, which operate independently from the host sequencer’s transport controls, and a bank of buttons for selecting each of the eight loaded loops or sounds (let’s call them parts) and starting/stopping their playback. All the settings in the interface are on a per-part basis, so when you want to edit a part on any page, you have to remember to select it first.

Stylus RMX offers three main modes of usage: Groove Mode, Sound Menu Mode and Kit Mode. Grooves are complete loops, offered as ‘Suites’ made up of ‘Elements’, which comprise various versions of the full loop as well as the separate instrument tracks that make it up – hi-hats, kicks, snares, etc. Grooves can be used in either Slice or Groove Menu Mode, and the difference between the two is made clear by the type of MIDI file that goes with them. Thankfully, unlike Classic Stylus, importing MIDI files is done from directly within the interface – simply grab the blue MIDI file name in the browser and drag it onto your sequencer track. If you’re in Slice Menu Mode, the aforementioned chromatic MIDI file appears, ready to trigger the slices of the loop at the host tempo, enabling timestretching without artefacts, and offering the full note-editing functionality that only MIDI can bring.

In Groove Menu Mode, each element in the selected suite is triggered in its entirety by one designated note, which is what appears in the MIDI file. This lets you quickly arrange elements at the expense of editability – while everything always adjusts to stay in sync with the host tempo, you can’t make any edits within the loop itself. A particularly cool feature is the ability to halve or double the time of loops while auditioning them, by hitting the appropriate buttons in the browser, and these changes translate over to the MIDI file when dragged from the interface, too.

Sound Menu Mode differs from Kit Mode in that, while the former simply maps individual sets of sounds taken from the core library loops across the keyboard, Kit Mode (activated by hitting the Kit button in the Mixer page) opens up menus of ‘Kit Modules’ in the browser that are then used to create an up to eight-part multitimbral drum kit, with each drum or cymbal (many offering two separate sounds mapped over two notes) getting its own channel in the mixer. Kit Mode has also been designed to adhere to the GM standard, so your GM MIDI files will always play back the kit elements they were intended to.

Fearsome filter

In terms of sound-shaping, Stylus RMX essentially offers the same options as Classic Stylus, but all of them have been stepped up a gear, not least the filter, which is now based on GMedia’s awesome impOSCar model. This offers low-, high- and band-pass modes in either 12 or 24dB/octave configurations, and is equally capable of extreme roll-off or subtle alteration. There are LFOs to control amplitude, filter cutoff and pan, ADHSR envelopes for amplitude, cutoff and pitch, sample offset and sample reverse controls, a master resonant HP/LP filter, and coarse and fine pitch controls. It’s enough to impose huge sonic changes, but not so much that you lose focus on the task in hand – a philosophy that permeates Stylus RMX right through from the top down. If you want really quick results, there’s even an Easy Edit page, which boils the controls down to the bare minimum and presents them as oversized knobs and sliders.

Perhaps one of the most mind-blowing features of Stylus RMX is that any and all edits can be applied to individual slices or sets of slices within a groove – and we’re talking everything, including effects settings, Chaos Designer settings (see boxout) and all Edit page settings. This is done using Edit Groups, and with them you can, for example, apply a delay to just the snare hits within a loop (yes, this is without editing or separating the loop in any way), or enforce Chaos on the hi-hats and nothing else. It’s really incredible stuff, particularly when you consider that with eight Edit Groups (the maximum number allowable) used on all eight parts, you’re talking somewhere in the region of 10,000 parameters being dealt with at once!

Being eight-part multitimbral, Stylus RMX has its own built-in mixer, which is straightforward but eminently functional. Mute and solo buttons are in place on every channel, as are four Aux sends for tapping off the signals and sending them to the auxiliary effects (see boxout). The only thing that feels like an omission here is any form of channel EQ, but since there are several low-CPU EQ units among the included effects, this is more an issue of convenience than functionality. From the mixer, you can also send each part to any of eight stereo outputs – this isn’t currently implemented in the AU version under Logic 7, and the RTAS version in general, but both are being addressed, and an RTAS update should be available by the time you read this.

The mixer page is also where Multis and Kits are loaded and saved, a Multi being a complete Stylus RMX ‘patch’, complete with effects and parameter settings. In Kit Mode, a menu of pre-built kits is available, while in Multi Mode, hundreds of Spectrasonics-designed Multis can be accessed and added to.

RMX, drums ‘n’ wah-wah bass

With Stylus RMX’s Effects Rack, you can insert up to three of the built-in effects units on every mixer channel, and load up to three effects into each of the four auxiliary send channels. You could easily get the sound you want without having to go anywhere near your plug-ins collection, as there are 24 units on offer including compressors, limiters, a stereo enhancer, six EQs (one of them a 12-band), wah-wah, distortion, two phasers, a flanger, four delays and a reverb.

The really good news is that the effects are superb – yup, all of ‘em. Even the reverb impresses, and the distortion units and compressors give you everything you need to totally mash up whatever drums and percussion come their way. Not only do the effects sound great and offer a good level of control, but they’re also relatively light on the CPU. In fact, we wish Stylus RMX worked in stand-alone mode so we could do away with our sequencer altogether during the drums production stage.

The only issue we have in this department is that you can’t save effects settings on their own – only as part of a multi or sequencer song file. While the effects units are designed to be easy to use, it would be good to be able to call up favourite settings rather than having to start from scratch every time.

The hour of Chaos

Stylus RMX’s secret weapon, the Chaos Designer, lets you add a variable level of ‘improvisation’ to your grooves. The faders control the probability of ‘chaos’ being introduced to various parameters (Pattern, Repeat, Reverse, Timing, Pitch and Dynamics), while the Range knobs determine how far that chaos will go. The other knobs set the direction of the chaos for each parameter. So, if you were to put the Timing fader half way up, chaos would be introduced for every given hit, which in this case would be deviation from rigid time. The Range knob then controls how wide that deviation can be, while the Push/Drag knob determines whether the deviation goes behind the beat or ahead of it. Pattern, Repeat and Reverse only have probability faders: Pattern sets how often the pattern will rearrange itself, while Repeat and Reverse decide whether a slice will repeat itself in place of the next slice, or play in reverse.

Once the Chaos Designer is running, its output can be captured retrospectively as a MIDI file by hitting the Capture button. You can then drag that MIDI file into your sequencer, effectively ‘rendering’ the chaos, or export it as a file for later use.

As good as it gets

Stylus RMX is a total winner. The Core Library is vast, offering months of exploration. The new material is first-rate, covering a wide range of styles and flavours and going way beyond just drum loops, and we still love the loops in the Classic Stylus section, which seem to have the edge in terms of warmth and ‘vinyl feel’, so their inclusion is a huge bonus. And remember, once you’re tired of the included sounds, you can then go about converting your own, although you’ll need ReCycle! to turn them to REX files first, if they aren’t already.

With SAGE, Spectrasonics have really hit the target. The interface is a joy to use, the level of control on offer redefines what can be done with sliced loops and MIDI, and the effects and Chaos Designer are so good that we’re still pinching ourselves. Kit Mode is another unexpected treat that, while not as flexible as the more dedicated likes of DR-008 and RM IV, turns Stylus RMX into a completely different animal and lets you use it a whole new way.

Stylus RMX is unquestionably the most powerful loop-based drum machine on the market today, and at this price it could well become seen as a studio essential. Our only real gripe (apart from the lack of effects presets) is that no manual is included with it – instead, you get about three hours of very informative tutorial videos. We’re told that Spectrasonics are currently preparing a PDF reference manual and a PDF index for the video tutorials, that will be available soon as free downloads from their website, but it would have been nice to get a paper manual in the box. That aside, though, we have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Stylus RMX to anyone who uses drum loops in any style of music. It’s the bomb, baby.