I was looking through the many videos FXpansion has been posting on their new virtual instrument Geist. When I fist saw the teaser for this I was thinking this was just going to be another drum machine. While it is a drum machine, it’s definitely got some strong sampler capabilities and they are in fact billing this as a “next-generation sampling instrument”.
This embedded video above shows off some of the sampling features that were standard on on-school hardware samplers that I kind of forgot about – like triggering recording with “threshold”.
Another feature revealed in the video is “Spitter” which is a plugin that routes audio from your DAW to Geist so you can resample audio on the fly. I appreciate FXpansions due diligence in making sure their instrument works within existing work flows.
I’m pretty happy with my Ableton drum rack, sampler, instrument rack resampling workflow so I’m not sure I personally will jump on Geist at the $249 price point. FXpansion addresses the question of adding Geist to your SAW in their FAQ:
“Does Geist do anything that I cannot already do with my DAW?
Nowadays, all DAWs are incredibly capable, powerful tools. However, there are an infinite variety of ways to implement any given feature, and many sample-based processes can be extremely tedious in DAW software, often requiring several different applications. Geist tries to make these kinds of long-winded processes extremely fast, and virtually instant in many cases.
We encourage you to download the demo and take it for a spin to see how it could speed up your creative projects!”
So to FXpansion’s point, if you are finding the workflow in your DAW “long-winded” or are using a more linear DAW, Geist is worth a look.
What are your thoughts on Geist?
Links
- Product Page (includes demo download link)
- Product Detail Page
- FAQ
Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Boulder, CO
www.MarkMosherMusic.com
www.ModulateThis.com
Mark Mosher Multimedia 
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