Apisonic Labs Speedrum

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khz
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Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by khz »

Freeware:
Speedrum Lite is the little brother of a Speedrum.
A "simple" drum - percussion MPC style sampler.
It is designed to be easy to use and to have a fast workflow. It has everything essential you need to start making beats.

FEATURES
  • Mpc style pads layout - 16 pads
  • Sample loading by drag and drop or via pad’s context
  • Copy and swap pads with drag and drop
  • Low and High Pass filter
  • Voice Mode: Mono or Poly
  • 8 "Cut" (choke) and "Cut By" groups
  • Pad can Trigger the other pad
  • Waveform view of loaded sample
  • Start and End of sample can be adjusted + AHD Envelope
  • Every pad can be set to one of 16 available stereo outputs
  • Supported Saving and Loading drumkits
  • Fully resizable from 60 to 200 %
  • Internal sample browser with sample preview
  • WAV, AIF, FLAC, MP3, OGG file format support
==> https://www.apisoniclabs.com/freeware.h ... edrum-lite


Buy: Speedrum
Two layouts

16 pads layout A/B with view to all pad FX or 32 pads layout with one FX view at a time
  • Mpc style pads layout
  • Pads can be triggered by MIDI notes
  • Multi-pad editing, copy and swap, delete, drag and drop...
  • Multi-pad controls changing, including FX controls
  • Midi-learn for every pad, save/load trigger maps
Resizable

Resizable GUI from 60% to 200% of default window size.
  • Easy-to-use user interface
  • Preferences for default behaviors
  • Supported Saving and Loading of drum kits
  • WAV, AIF, FLAC, MP3, OGG file format support
  • In VST, VST3 and AU plugin format
  • Written in native C++ code for high performance and low CPU usage
==> https://www.apisoniclabs.com/speedrum.html
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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by elcalen »

Speedrum definitely looks impressive. The layering features and general ease of use were the major selling points for me, and the fx seem nice too. The dev's also been pretty responsive on the support forum and already fixed several issues I found while trying the demo. While I haven't been able to try it out in actual production yet, it definitely seems promising...
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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by Audiojunkie »

One thing that I found interesting, is that while there are only 16 stereo outs, each of the 32 pads can be assigned to one of the 16 outs. That means, you can effectively group pads and route each group to its own separate out. For example, let's say you have several articulations of a single drum that you would like to put the same effects on. You just assign each pad of that drum to the same stereo out and then load up your effects onto that track! Do you have a drum kit that uses more than 32 pads? Open another instance and continue! :-)

Supposedly, according to the developer, the app supports round-robins as well (although I don't see exactly how it's set up, and the documentation is not available). Perhaps they are using a pseudo form of round-robin--doing a sort of round robin with each of the velocity layer samples, rather than using true individual groups of round-robin samples per layer for the kit. I'd like to get clarification on that.

One thing that I think is a drawback, is that there are only 8 sample layers. Let's say I wanted to use some of my deeply sampled multi-velocity purchased drum kits, containing 20 or more velocity sample layers... It seems that 8 layers is too little. Perhaps there is something I don't understand or I am not quite clear on. I purchase a lot of multi-velocity kits from places like Drum Drops. These have way more than just 8 layers, and there are two or more round robin samples per layer in those kits--their total number of samples add up to nearly 2000 samples on those drum kits. I would want to be putting all of those drum samples into my patch and not leaving them out.

Over all though, it seems like it would be easier to use than DrumGizmo. I'd just would like clarification on those things before I would be sure I would want to buy it. It's got to be head-n-shoulders better than the Open Source DrumGizmo for an "at cost" drum sampler. :-)

Edit: I just found the docs! Maybe I'll be able to answer my own questions! :lol: I'm off to read the manual! :D

Edit 2: The manual contained the answers to my questions. This Drum sampler appears to be positioned as more of a "Poise" (One Small Clue) replacement, than a tool for deeply-sampled multi-velocity acoustic drum kits. That's not a bad thing at all. I just like to understand the limitations. Interestingly enough, it can even import Poise kits if you have them:

"Import - Poise kit - will partially import Poise (by One Small Clue) drumkit, some of noncompatible parameters will be skipped"

Also, each of the 8 layers are single samples that can be triggered in various ways. However, the total number of samples in a single pad is currently only 8 samples:

"Speedrum has 32 Drum Pads. Each Pad can have up to 8 layers, and each layer can load one
sample. Each Pad is triggered by one MIDI note."

An interesting thing is how those 8 samples can be triggered:

"Each Pad has a Layer Mode parameter. It determines which layers are played when a drum pad is
triggered.
Pad Layer Modes:
• Single - when a Pad is triggered, only the active (selected) layer will play
• Velocity - a layer is triggered according to the MIDI note velocity (layer velocity range can be
edited)
• Round Robin - the next layer will be played each time the Pad is triggered
• Random - a random layer will be played each time the Pad is triggered
• All Tight - default mode - all layers will be played, the humanization is calculated once and used
for all layers"

One other interesting thing is each pad's play mode:

"Play Mode:
The play mode option controls how a drum pad responds to MIDI note-off events.
• One Shot - pad will play all the way through, ignoring any MIDI note-off events, release knob
will be disabled in this mode
• Note On - pad will play until it receives a MIDI note- off event. If the amplitude envelope is off,
the pad will be silenced immediately, if the amplitude envelope is on it will begin the release
stage."

Essentially, this means that one could load up pads with drum hit samples that are One Shot triggered, pads that are loops, and a kit could be saved using a combination of the two.

Based on this new research (after I saw where the docs were), it appears to me that this is a very capable and well thought out drum sampler, in the nature of how One Small Clue's Poise works (probably even better), and that it is designed for small sets of samples per pad. This means that it does not (in any way) replace DrumGizmo, which is designed for huge multi-velocity realistic acoustic drum kits, with samples numbering in the thousands. I would find myself using both tools completely differently, and would find both to be essential. :)
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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by elcalen »

Oh yeah, it's obviously not going to be the right tool for every possible use purpose. This is marketed as a sampler, after all, not a realistic drum kit emulation. Even though it has kit saving/loading functionality, I see its primary use (for me) in quickly loading in individual samples from my collection to make beats with. Since my interest is mainly in electronic dance music, that's just the kind of thing I need. Eight layers is likely more than I'll ever use, and I don't really care about velocity mapping. But just having, say, a few hat or shaker sounds in a round robin or random repeat, combined with the humanization features, can add a lot of life to a simple beat. And it feels like Speedrum makes setting stuff like that up really fast and easy.
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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by sysrqer »

I keep meaning to check out the full version of this, it looks so good. Since I've started using Reaper making drums is one area I've never been happy with, there are some good tools out there like sitala but there's always some issue, often to do with getting samples into it and being able to preview the sounds in the browser.
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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by elcalen »

sysrqer wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 10:05 am I keep meaning to check out the full version of this, it looks so good. Since I've started using Reaper making drums is one area I've never been happy with, there are some good tools out there like sitala but there's always some issue, often to do with getting samples into it and being able to preview the sounds in the browser.
Honestly, Reaper's own ReaSamplOmatic5000 is pretty good. It only loads a single sample, of course, but it's quite light on CPU so you can easily have multiple instances, and you can easily drag samples to it from Reaper's own browser. You can even do some round robin stuff with multiple instances on one track, but it's not very intuitive and requires more setup than something like Speedrum, which is one of the main reasons I'm giving Speedrum a shot...

Dragging samples to Speedrum from Reaper's own browser doesn't appear to work (tbh, I don't think I've seen a third party plugin on Linux that worked well with drag and drop from outside the plugin...), but Speedrum's own browser seems good enough for my needs (and does preview samples). The sample view also has buttons for rapidly loading the next or previous sample in the folder, which is quite handy.
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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by sysrqer »

elcalen wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 10:52 am
Honestly, Reaper's own ReaSamplOmatic5000 is pretty good. It only loads a single sample, of course, but it's quite light on CPU so you can easily have multiple instances, and you can easily drag samples to it from Reaper's own browser. You can even do some round robin stuff with multiple instances on one track, but it's not very intuitive and requires more setup than something like Speedrum, which is one of the main reasons I'm giving Speedrum a shot...

Dragging samples to Speedrum from Reaper's own browser doesn't appear to work (tbh, I don't think I've seen a third party plugin on Linux that worked well with drag and drop from outside the plugin...), but Speedrum's own browser seems good enough for my needs (and does preview samples). The sample view also has buttons for rapidly loading the next or previous sample in the folder, which is quite handy.
Yeah I generally use ReaSamplOmatic5000, it can work quite well and, as you say, it integrates well with the browser. I've got a few different setups saved for it but I've never settled on one, for example having them all in one midi track and feeding individual tracks, or having one midi track feeding individual tracks with an instance of ReaSamplOmatic5000 on but with a midi filter. I just find it a bit fiddly and messy though trying to work out which track corresponds to what. It does the job but something a bit more tailored is appealing. I really liked the free version of speedrum but no bookmarks in the browser and the browser resetting when you play the project is enough for me to look into the paid version, they speedily replied to my email about these issues and said that the full version fixes them so I'm looking forward to trying them out.
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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by tavasti »

Speed Rum, do you get drunk faster? Or is it rum mixed with speed?

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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by elcalen »

tavasti wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:00 pm Speed Rum, do you get drunk faster? Or is it rum mixed with speed?
I also keep reading it as "rum". I guess seeing booze everywhere is part of Finnish mentality. :lol:
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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by tavasti »

elcalen wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:18 pm
tavasti wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:00 pm Speed Rum, do you get drunk faster? Or is it rum mixed with speed?
I also keep reading it as "rum". I guess seeing booze everywhere is part of Finnish mentality. :lol:
Interpreting it this way makes more sense than Spee Drum. What is Spee?

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Re: Apisonic Labs Speedrum

Post by scottwheeler »

elcalen wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 10:52 am Dragging samples to Speedrum from Reaper's own browser doesn't appear to work (tbh, I don't think I've seen a third party plugin on Linux that worked well with drag and drop from outside the plugin...) [...]
That's a Reaper issue. It partly works in Ardour, Tracktion and BitWig on Linux.
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