Sound On Sound
Beatstation
Review Extracts
In Use
Although it has built-in MIDI and REX file players, Beatstation has no internal pattern-creation or pattern-editing capabilities. This hardly matters when it’s used as a plug-in within a DAW application: patterns can simply be dragged and dropped from the file browser to MIDI tracks, and their data edited, rearranged or reprogrammed as required. Working with the stand-alone application, however, you’re limited to playing back ready-made patterns (although you can, of course, make your own in an external program, then import them into Beatstation.
The supplied sound library is extensive, and for the most part sounds very good, albeit with a definite electronic, dance bias. A clever function generates ‘random instruments’ from elements within the sound library, occasionally roducing very surprising results! The file browser makes it easy to mix and match sounds from your own collection with the supplied library, while the Sampler Recorder (see the ‘Sample Recorder’ box) in Beatstation’s stand-alone version adds another dimension, and is great fun to use.
Beatstation’s built-in effects sound good, and, although not hugely tweakable, are consistently useful and easy to use. The Pad Properties panel is perhaps slightly cramped, but not difficult to find your way around, and allows access to a lot of different playback parameters at a glance. Sounds can be quickly tweaked or bent out of shape, and layering combinations is easy. The only thing arguably missing is a proper resonant filter for each pad (although there are some filter-like presets among the ‘EQ’ effects).
CPU usage can be a bit on the high side if you succumb to the temptation of inserting multiple effects for multiple pads. One solution might be to rely on your DAW’s effects for processing instead – although you should be aware that the Beatstation instrument plug-in provides only a stereo pair of outputs, which limits the routing possibilities somewhat. At this price, however, it hardly seems fair to quibble.
Conclusion
Beatstation sits halfway between dedicated sample-library players (so-called ‘ROMplers’) and more elaborate, sound design-oriented sampler instruments, offering many of the advantages of both. If you just want to assemble backing tracks quickly using components from the supplied library, you can do that. If you fancy branching out into recording and mangling your own sounds, you can do that too. There’s potentially a lot you can do with Beatstation, in fact, and, given the low asking price, that makes it seem pretty good value for money.
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