Fxpansion GURU (ver 1.5.9)

Sound: 8 Features: 10 Versatility: 10 Simplicity: 7 Playability: 9 Reliability: 8 Control: 10

Review by; Chvad SB

So, back in 1999 I bought a little phrase sampling program called "The Taureg" by Bram Bos. It was great and for the past eight years it's been my primary tool for constructing drum loops. Well, eight years is a long time and this last year while recording new material I felt like my enthusiasm for the program was waning. Eight years is an eternity in computer-land, my poor little Tuareg can no longer compete with new workflow situations and feature sets offered by contemporary DAW's and thus I began feeling the urge to seek out something new and inspiring. I'd felt the urge to seek out a replacement application earlier but each search I endeavored upon came up empty handed. I'd find drum synths, I'd find loop arrangers, I'd find phrase samplers... all fine on their own but none of them integrated their functions as well as The Taureg did and ultimately none of them inspired me enough to part with my cash. ENTER GURU.

Once again I felt compelled to search for a replacement application... only this time I stumbled upon a new program called "GURU".

A few weeks ago I felt compelled to search for a replacement application yet again only this time I stumbled upon a new program by Fxpansion called "GURU". I began to read all the promo hype on their site and decided to download the demo. The demo itself installed easy enough and came with a few drum kits and loops, enough to feed into GURU to get an idea of what it was capable of. To say I shit myself would be an understatement... No. A more appropriate statement would be that I had a massive blast of diarrhea followed by a seizure and then flopped about in my own excrement for a few moments before regaining my composure. THAT'S how immediately cool GURU is.

So what is GURU? It's basically a phrase sampler, step sequencer loop slicer with a massive amount of editing options both within the sequencer and on the samples themselves. It can function as a stand alone or within a host as a VST, DXi, AudioUnit or RTAS. Whole projects can be saved, pads can be saved, drum kits can be saved... the amount of options made available to the user is pretty staggering. The MIDI implementation is EXCELLENT and most functions can be done with keyboard shortcuts if you should choose to do so.

I don't think any option is more than three pages away at any one time and most functions can be accessed in a myriad of ways.

So GURU has lots of functions but how is it to use? It's actually pretty straight forward. You can have fun with it almost immediately as all the primary functions are just a mouse click or two away. I don't think any option is more than 3 pages away at any one time and most functions can be accessed in a myriad of ways. As a drum machine it functions great. You can have up to eight velocity layers per pad and 16 pads per "engine". The "engine" is what Fxpansion use to refer to an entire setup. You can have 8 "engines" per projects. In other words: 8 drum machines. Each pad can be edited individually with envelopes, filters, insert and send FX. When slicing loops, GURU will assign pads sounds based on type and arrange the patterns directly into the drum grid. It's fast, slices well and gives a number of parameters to control what is or isn't included during the slicing. Velocity levels can be maintained or each slice can be normalized automatically. It can cross fade slices to reduce glitching and the features really do go on and on. The sequencer is quick and easy to use and if you're worried about maintaining "swing" while working in a pattern based sequencer have no worries... you can offset notes as much as you want and you can also play directly into guru and you have the option of whether or not to quantize the incoming midi data. You can play human and sound human but have the quantized nature of a grid when the time calls for it. GURU also has a strong randomizing feature set that'll mulch up whatever you feed it for almost any parameter available. You can randomize sound parameters and sequence parameters and all independently of one another that can lead to pretty interesting results.

Each pad can be edited individually with envelopes, filters, insert and send FX.

Worried about bugs, glitches and support? Set those fears to rest. The Fxpansion team is the hardest working I've ever seen. I purchased Guru 1.5.1 and in a matter of weeks GURU has progressed to ver. 1.5.12. Not just bug fixes but a significant number of new features as well. All features based upon direct requests from the user base on their forums. Calling them responsive doesn't even seem to be good enough praise. They kick ass in a huge way and genuinely seem interested in taking an already great program and massaging it into an even better one.

What GURU isn't... it's not a drummer. It's not a device with which to reproduce human drumming to the tiniest detail. It's not going to load sample sets with velocity layers a hundred times deep. GURU is really it's own animal that IMO is greater than the sum of it's many parts. It's a drum machine, phrase sampler sequencer that's incredibly fun and rewarding to use and if that's what you're looking for then that's what you're gonna get. On a final note... GURU comes with upwards of 3 gigs of drum hits, kits, loops and sound fx all ready for you to use. Some more useable than not but what's what will obviously depend on the user but there's a good collection of sounds that most people should be able to work with immediately. I don't write a lot of reviews but I really do want to spread the Gospel of GURU. It's an awesome and a tool I am confident it will be satisfying my creative needs for a good time to come.

Sound: 8
Sounds as good as the samples and loops that you import. GURU does great cross fades for loops with reverb and delay applied and it's slicing is relatively glitch free. The FX engine is pretty great though the reverb is a bit tinny sounding.

Features: 10
The features run aplenty. You really can't go wrong here. It's overall feature supercedes anything I'd ever ask of the program in the studio and seems more than adequate for live use.

Versatility: 8
It does what it does and it does it well. It's control scheme (see below) is extremely varied. I'm rating this as an application that sets out to be a drum machine/rhythm maker and doesn't pretend to be anything else but. Don't buy this and complain that your synth leads sound weak.

Simplicity: 7
On the surface it's all there and there are enough things under the hood to keep you busy for a long time to come. It'll take a few minutes to know where everything is at but for the most part everything is labelled well.

Playability: 10
See Control Below

Reliability: 8
During version 1.5.6 I had a few crashes so I can't give this a perfect rating but I have had any issues with it crashing since 1.5.7. I've tested this out on both PC and Apple as a plug in and stand alone application. I used ProTools HD 7.2.3 as a host application on the Apple and SONAR Ver. 4 on the PC. GURU performed reliably in both environments.

Control: 10
GURU really excells in this department. As previously mentioned almost all functions can be accessed via keyboard shortcuts but in addition you can also access most things via MIDI as well and of course with your handy lil mouse. All work equally well. I triggered GURU from a Yamaha DTX drumkit without a hitch, played it effectively off the keyboard and inputing data via mouse was straight forward.

-Chvad SB