Spectrasonics Stylus RMX VST PC

Musician and recording enthusiast for nearly four decades. Running Cubase 5 on 64bit

Excellent interface. Does have a bit of a learning curve but pretty easy to get the basics. Features are organized in a sensible way. Groove lock is awesome...nothing like changing the groove feel or time signature of all of the drum loops with one click...truly amazing technology!

NOT JUST FOR REMIX ANYMORE. I can't stress enough how flexible this product is now that the expanded drum sounds are all included as a bundle. No more concerns about this being a "one trick pony".

Sound quality is outstanding. My last two projects were a power 6/8 rock ballad and a light acoustic tune with brushes. I used Stylus RMX for both and the results were outstanding.

Not cheap but well worth what it costs. Works perfectly within Cubase 5...no crashes...no problems.

I have been a full-time composer and producer for 15 years. I am on a Mac G5 running Pro-Tools 7.3.1.

The interface is really intuitive and easy to use. I did encounter problems with the installation, but they were most likely due to the fact that I am weak when it comes to the tech stuff (hey I'm a musician!)

The tutorials are very helpful.

I got this software for a client that hires me for dance music. I do a lot of music for fitness videos. Don't laugh, it helps pay the bills.

I must say that I have been somwhat disappointed with the sounds. The grooves are cool, but they just don't have any real "punch". I was somewhat seduced by the demos - but didn't realize that this software is really a one-trick-pony.

Basically everything sounds like a "House" or "24" soundtrack. I'm afraid it is too identifiable. Hats off to the composers that got those gigs and used this software to carve out that niche.

So I have to go middle of the road on this...

I would say it was worth the price, but I have to use it in conjuction with a lot of other percussive sounds to avoid it's cliche sound.

I've been a musician for 32 years. Guitar is my primary instrument, but I play others as well. I use a PC, Windows XP, Pentium 4 2.8 gHz, 1 gig of RAM, Ableton Live 5 is my host application. Funky, pop rock is my style.

This ease of use rating is not meant to be negative. RMX is a superb program, but it is not easy to learn how to use it with your host application... it takes some concentrated effort and time. In my opinion, this is because of the power of RMX. There is so much it can do. The instructional videos do a great job of teaching RMX, but using it with your particular host application has to be learned as well. Know your host application very well and be prepared to dig. The effort is worth it!

I must respond to the previous review. People, just because something is not your style does not mean it is not good. Some have mentioned that the sounds are compressed or otherwise altered, and that they are unusable. How then can the music creator for the popular TV show "24" use this program with such great results? RMX is simply wonderful. It allows me to get the kind of grooves that I have had in my head but could not get with normal midi programming. Remember, it's all about results... all about producing great music. RMX will help many people to get great results! I'm thrilled with the sounds I am getting.

Definitely worth the price. Again, it takes some time and effort to master, but it can do some pretty spectacular things. For those searching for a good groove producer, this allows me to combine many different percussion instruments and sounds together... layers of rhythmic sound. In addition to the thousands of individual sounds (useful for normal midi programming), RMX's power (in my opinion)lies in its pre-formed grooves that have the ability to be layered, altered in amazing and very musical ways, and mixed with great, included effects. I recommend getting the "Retro Funk SAGE Xpander" for its real drum sounds. This greatly extends RMX's usefulness.

The problem with Stylus is the sound. Yes the original sounds were top-notch, the loop programming is top-notch, everything in this VST is top-notch except one thing - the sound. The character. The tone. The sonic palette. That instantly recognizable overcompressed overflanged overlo-fied rusty sound. This plugin has so much character, in fact far way too much to even bother considering using it in any kind of music. I can find some use of kicks, soft snares and some of the percussive sounds, but everything else is just garbage because of that annoying overcompressed overflanged overlo-fied character. All metalic percussive sounds like ride cymbals, hihats, crash cymbals are useless and sound all the same - rusty. They have either no high-end at all or mutated high-end. Using Stylus in your songs is like wearing a wig - it may make you head look very cool but everyone will know it's a wig.

No thanks, I didn't pay close attention to demos, I was so overwhelmed with an idea of having so many cool samples at my disposal. I hoped it would be my ultimate drum machine and that I would never ever want anything else. Wrong. I'm still using my own drum samples and have no plans of using Stylus. Maybe later I will bother to sample some of its sounds, but at this moment I don't use it and have no interest in it whatsoever. I think Spectrasonics need to buy their sound designers normal effect processors or teach them how to use them properly and how not to overuse them. I'm no professional drum programmer by any means, but I like my own drum loops 100 times better simply because they sound neutral and natural.

R&B/Hip-hop: 6years

Korg Trinity V3

Various drum machines

FL Studio

Pretty easy to use. If you want to put the drums on a seperate hard drive, its a bit of a pain.

Very over compressed samples. The content is very weak as far as hip-hop and R&B goes. If you are looking for RMX to give you hip-hop production, look elsewhere. Out of the box this software is geared towards electronica and techno musicians.

This was the worst purchase I've made since switching to an all software setup.

I've been doing hip-hop and R&B for 6 years. I've owned a Korg Trinity V3, and various drum machines.

Installation is a bit of a pain, if you want to put the Sage files on a different hard drive. It's simple to use but requires a lot of ram.

All of the sounds are heavily compressed, which could be good or bad. The content is very weak for hip-hop and R&B. There is better content out there. If you are just starting out, you would be better off getting Fruity Loops Studio and getting REX files specifically for your style of music. FLS handels REX files just well as RMX without the huge memory hit.

I think RMX was designed with the techno artist in mind. If I was an techno artist, I would have not sold RMX. I heavy compression would probably sit better in a techno mix.

For Hip-hop and R&B: 5
Good sounding samples are a must for a home project studio without proper room treatment.

I give it a 5 because I think this product is for techno only. They will get more use out of it.

Get FLS and a few sample discs from big fish audio or uberschall.
There is a reason there's no demo for RMX.

I'm a guitar player with a home studio setup with SONAR 4PE. Eventhough I love programming drums, partly because I play drums and because of necessity (got tired of begging drummers), I didn't like spending hours tweaking DFH Superior to make it sound incredible...

I use RMX for everything now and I disagree with one reviewer here that said you can't really get in depth with this and it always sounds like a loop, etc. Read on.

The interface is very powerful and intuative. The plug-in was an ease to install. I hardly use the core library, which is the main reason I believe some people find the sounds not up to par. I bought al SAGE Expanders (highly reccomend!) and converted some of my favorite loops into rex2 files and imported them as well into RMX.
IMPORTANT: If you want to get in depth into the programming of your loops you have to take the time and learn EDIT GROUPS, very powerful with proper use (I love to keep the backbeat and downbeat steady while another edit group handles the rest in Chaos designer).

I give it an 8 because it is not easy to start creating great loops right away....you need to take the time to do learn it.

This all depends on the library you use. I use the expanders and my own favorite loop libraries (converted to REX2 and you're done). The ability to use my old library at ANY PITCH without losing the sound quality is AWESOME!!

I'm giving it a 9 because of the core library sounds which are ok. Also because a 10 is handed out too easy now a days.

Worth the price. LEARN EDIT GROUPS. Love the fact I can re-use my old samples. Wish it worked better with SONAR.

I have been making music forover 23 years. My main instrument is guitar, and I play a number of others. I have the most recent version of RMX running in Nuendo 3 and Sonar 3.

I use RMX and the Xpansion packs as my main beat tool. I also use ACID, and straignt ol' programming with various softdrum packs. I am recording a range of music, triphop, rock, smooth jazz, and also commerial jingles.

I am using a custom built p4 pc runing XP pro with 2 gigs of ram.

I use Mackie HR monitors and Beyer headphones.

Once you watch the tutorials, you will become a master of RMX. Better then anything I have seen from any other app. Copy protection is a bit of a pain, but, that's what we get.

If you cannot get a great groove going with this tool, you either have not watched the tutorials, or are so tied to your older tools that you cannot break away from working with them and adopt a new tool.

It sounds great. If inserting an RMX track in an old tune, you find yourself having to rework the old tracks because they sound flat and lifeless next to the RMX tracks.

The presets are something that I rarely use. Effects or multis. Multis are good to get the writing process started, but then yu need to tweak from there.

If you are interested in acoustic drums, do two things... get the Backbeat Xpander pack and also get Discrete Drums Rock Drums and rex'em, then use the SAGE converter. Now you can drop and drag awesomely recorder drums into you tracks and sync them in a second.

for the price of 3 loop packages, you get tons of loops that can be used for electronic music and r'n'b and a great groove engine. The built in effects are great too, used in moderation.

Chaos is great for repetitive percussion loops, but drag and drop is just crazy easy to use. I can get a great slammming track with drums, fills, and variations in a matter of 2 minutes.

I wish it had more acoustic drum patches, but that is overcome with the rex-SAGE import feature. Still.... some would be cool.

Currently producing music out of a home studio equipped with Pro Tools and Cubase. Have over 20 years experience as a guitarist/bassist with lots of gigging and studio experience. I produce and write songs and instrumentals for myself and others in the styles of pop, rock, and R&B.
I use a combination of Apple and Compaq computers with the latter having Athlon processors. I use a Digidesign Mbox as a sound interface because of its reliability and portability. I have a large variety of software and outboard gear to get sounds.

Well its easy enough to use. Anyone the least bit familiar with plugins should have no problems dealing with this software. Dealing with REX files is a bit unintuitive but the rest is easy. Loading files and generating variations is quite easy. The manual is okay - nothing special at all but startup and learning curve is not a problem so the manual does't need to be extraordinarily detailed.

Well it sounds fine but this is largely a function of the initial source material you present to it. If its low-fi loops you have then your variations will also be lo-fi in nature. The goal of this product is to permit the convenient and fast remixing of loops so its not necessarily a sound design tool, sequencer, or audio editor. In some ways the plugin succeeds in that is easy to generate remixed versions of loops but its not always something that you will like. Of course you can generate different variations until you find one you like though I found myself not liking even the better sounding loops that resulted.

I think this tool is aimed squarely at the dance market as the variations themselves frequently sound like programmed drums. Its up to the user to decide if this is bad or not. I never expected this software to generate seamless variations that sound like a real drummer but its just pumping out permutations on the loop with user
specified settings relative to time (16th notses, 8th notes) which isn't something you can't do with other methods.

I have typically done this (and had better success) using Recycle within Reason to come up with variations. I've also used Sound Forge to chop up loops and trigger different cuts in a particular order. Its more work but I've usually been pleased with the results and have more control over the process. RMX does this for you so one could argue that its a time saver but for me its not really even that. Again I allow that for a dance producer this might help give you some variations or inspiration but I don't think its that great.

I don't think it was worth the money. Its a specific app with one thing in mind and for me it doesn't do a very good job of that. Obviously what you provide as source material to the program is important. You can't expect it to work wonders with busy loops or layered loops which contain drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. You could of course. There is nothing stopping you. Its better to use single instrument percussive loops. You could use full ensemble loops and the variations might sound good for certain types of music but ts up to the person to sit there and keep at it so if you don't mind listening to lots of unusable (in my mind) variations before you find something good then go for it.

In the end I think RMX is a one trick pony that ,while doing what it says, doesn't do anything for me that I can't already do with established technology (Recycle, Sound Forge). Granted it will save some time but I don't know if its worth the money. I'll stick with existing methods of remixing loops and recommend to others that they do also.

30 Years playing guitar and keyboards. Use with Sonar for original rock/jazz/world hybrids (and just for fooling around a lot:))

Tutorials are very good, and most of it is intuitive....but the lack of manual makes me deduct a point. Still, lots of fun to experiment with, and the Copy Protection seemed fairly easy to deal with

Sounds great; the built-in sounds and patterns are more electronic/dance than realistic, so I use BFD for when I just want "regular" drums, but it certainly is VERY expressive, 8 part multi-timbral, good control features....and while you do tweak the presets, that's half the fun of this program! Very easy to get lost for hours on end trying new combinations. I haven't yet gotten any of the expansion sets, but they sound like they will give yet another dimension to this already great sounding product

This is a very unique and enjoyable product (there are some soft synths that sound good, but are a pain in the neck to use). I love the ability to play around with various aspects of rhythm, and it sparks a lot of creative ideas. What I don't like is that it's not a great application if you know basically the kind of drum part you want... for that you're much better off with BFD (or presumably DFHS, which I haven't used). In short, I don't find it a "must have" program... but it sure sounds great and is fun to use!