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Shortcircuit XT
Reviewed By swivel [all]
April 26th, 2005
Version reviewed: 1.0.15 on Windows
Well I entered the soft-sampler market a couple years ago after some years working with emu and yamaha samplers. After a disppointing spin with emulatorx, I settled on Kontakt for pads/bass/instruments and Battery2 for beats...there were some shortcomings, and stability issues, but I felt they were the best soft samplers out there, even though there were some things I could do on the hardware samplers that weren't possible.
Then, out of nowhere, came shortcircuit. Someone mentioned it in a kvr thread...I must admit, I was a bit sceptical about trying it - I tended to avoid some of the plugins not backed by a large name-brand because of stability issues; but I'm beginning to feel that the opposite may be true, many large well-known software packages are bloated and much more unstable than the nimble, efficient code some of the independant developers are coming up with. My experience with shortcircuit has certainly been that way as it's one of the stablest programs I've ever seen.
Anyway, after downloading the demo, what first struck me was how well-thought out the interface was. It's apparent that Claes (the developer) has studied the various ways samplers have chosen to handle sample groups, zones, regions etc...and come up with a setup that is as transparent as it is easy to use. Each sample gets its own zone and parameters (kind of similar to the yamaha A-series way of doing things), you can then group samples together in groups, if you desire, which have their own set of relevant parameters. In practice, you don't need to use groups at all and can do everything on a sample basis, very very simple. But groups do come in handy for simultaneous control over multi-layered samples for example. The system also works to make a separate drum sampler (such as Battery) unnecessary as sc works that way too.
When you click a sample to edit it, all the parameters are immediately displayed on screen...and there are many! but again, the interface is so well done, that it is not overwhelming at all, just click the parameter and drag with the mouse, or type a value with the keyboard. I won't attempt to list all the parameters here, but you get 3 LFO's per sample an ADSR for amplitude a 2nd ADSR you can assign anywhere (to one of the filters for example), you can set sample start and end points, loop points (with a crossfade point to smooth the edges), portamento and...2 filters.
Now the filters are not just filters in the traditional sense, you do get a healthy selection of the standard low pass (with different poles), high pass, band pass, notch, peak etc...but also 2-band parametric eq, morph eq (a la zplane), comb filter, and some more FX oriented ones: gate, clipper, slewer, limiter, freq shift, pulse osc...
Not only that, but the sound quality of the filters is excellent - in fact, it's the first soft sampler where I'm not slapping a 3rd party filter VST on the output but am quite happy using the internal filters.
The last thing I have time to mention here, is the modulation matrix. All the parameters can be modulated by most other things, sources are: LFO's, midi controllers, AEG's, random generators, velocities etc, destinations are pretty much everything...and once you start messing around some really interesting - yet usable - sounds can come out. The key though, is that it's so easy to play with, no GUI lag, just click and go...and that's the key really to shortcircuit, everything's so easy it's very conducive to experimentation..just start playing, and before you know it you're sucked in and mangling samples all over the place.
The other thing you notice about shortcircuit is the sound quality...1 thing I like to do on pads is to modulate the amplitude with a sine LFO. I've tried this with Kontakt and for some reason it doesn't sound right. With shortcircuit it's smooth as butter. On the shortcircuit website they say "All filters & effects are calculated at the precision required for them to sound the way intended and oversampling are used when required to prevent aliasing." If you play around with it for a while, you come to realize that this is true.
Well, there's so much else I could mention, the lag generators, sample previewing, etc...but I've run out of space. Every so often, I'll learn something new I didn't know was in there by browsing the shortcircuit forum. In fact if you think of something cool for shortcircuit, it's either in there already (you just don't know how to do it yet), or it's about to be added with the frequent updates...you can also post suggestions in the forum (which are often implemented too if they make sense), and the updates are very frequent with top notch support.
Noone should be buying a new soft sampler without trying the shortcircuit demo first...download it; it may change the way you look at softsamplers...(and no I don't work for them, but am just extremely grateful they developed it, a lot of my software headaches have gone away and made space for making music..)Read Review
Then, out of nowhere, came shortcircuit. Someone mentioned it in a kvr thread...I must admit, I was a bit sceptical about trying it - I tended to avoid some of the plugins not backed by a large name-brand because of stability issues; but I'm beginning to feel that the opposite may be true, many large well-known software packages are bloated and much more unstable than the nimble, efficient code some of the independant developers are coming up with. My experience with shortcircuit has certainly been that way as it's one of the stablest programs I've ever seen.
Anyway, after downloading the demo, what first struck me was how well-thought out the interface was. It's apparent that Claes (the developer) has studied the various ways samplers have chosen to handle sample groups, zones, regions etc...and come up with a setup that is as transparent as it is easy to use. Each sample gets its own zone and parameters (kind of similar to the yamaha A-series way of doing things), you can then group samples together in groups, if you desire, which have their own set of relevant parameters. In practice, you don't need to use groups at all and can do everything on a sample basis, very very simple. But groups do come in handy for simultaneous control over multi-layered samples for example. The system also works to make a separate drum sampler (such as Battery) unnecessary as sc works that way too.
When you click a sample to edit it, all the parameters are immediately displayed on screen...and there are many! but again, the interface is so well done, that it is not overwhelming at all, just click the parameter and drag with the mouse, or type a value with the keyboard. I won't attempt to list all the parameters here, but you get 3 LFO's per sample an ADSR for amplitude a 2nd ADSR you can assign anywhere (to one of the filters for example), you can set sample start and end points, loop points (with a crossfade point to smooth the edges), portamento and...2 filters.
Now the filters are not just filters in the traditional sense, you do get a healthy selection of the standard low pass (with different poles), high pass, band pass, notch, peak etc...but also 2-band parametric eq, morph eq (a la zplane), comb filter, and some more FX oriented ones: gate, clipper, slewer, limiter, freq shift, pulse osc...
Not only that, but the sound quality of the filters is excellent - in fact, it's the first soft sampler where I'm not slapping a 3rd party filter VST on the output but am quite happy using the internal filters.
The last thing I have time to mention here, is the modulation matrix. All the parameters can be modulated by most other things, sources are: LFO's, midi controllers, AEG's, random generators, velocities etc, destinations are pretty much everything...and once you start messing around some really interesting - yet usable - sounds can come out. The key though, is that it's so easy to play with, no GUI lag, just click and go...and that's the key really to shortcircuit, everything's so easy it's very conducive to experimentation..just start playing, and before you know it you're sucked in and mangling samples all over the place.
The other thing you notice about shortcircuit is the sound quality...1 thing I like to do on pads is to modulate the amplitude with a sine LFO. I've tried this with Kontakt and for some reason it doesn't sound right. With shortcircuit it's smooth as butter. On the shortcircuit website they say "All filters & effects are calculated at the precision required for them to sound the way intended and oversampling are used when required to prevent aliasing." If you play around with it for a while, you come to realize that this is true.
Well, there's so much else I could mention, the lag generators, sample previewing, etc...but I've run out of space. Every so often, I'll learn something new I didn't know was in there by browsing the shortcircuit forum. In fact if you think of something cool for shortcircuit, it's either in there already (you just don't know how to do it yet), or it's about to be added with the frequent updates...you can also post suggestions in the forum (which are often implemented too if they make sense), and the updates are very frequent with top notch support.
Noone should be buying a new soft sampler without trying the shortcircuit demo first...download it; it may change the way you look at softsamplers...(and no I don't work for them, but am just extremely grateful they developed it, a lot of my software headaches have gone away and made space for making music..)Read Review
