As an avid user of Geist 2 by FXPansion, I was happy to see the addition of the Drum Machine in Cubase. However, there are still a few features that prevent me from fully moving over from Geist as my main drum programming tool. The biggest one is the ability to pitch all samples globally.
In Geist, there are a couple of ways to do this. One is by clicking the “Pad” button while editing a sample. Any parameter you adjust then affects every pad, which is incredibly useful for things like pitch, filtering, and ADSR envelopes on chopped-up drum breaks. Another method is to use the Global Mix window, where a single pitch control transposes the entire engine containing all the pads. You can also pan the entire engine, add global effects, and make other broad adjustments from the same place.
Comparing Cubase’s Drum Machine to Geist might be a bit unfair, so I wouldn’t expect it to have every feature Geist offers. However, a global pitch control would be a very welcome addition and seems like it would be a relatively straightforward feature to implement.
