Stylus vs guru?

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 12:12 am

prefab loops suck, make your own. get guru.

supster · Post by **supster** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 12:38 am

RopeyPunter wrote:prefab loops suck, make your own. get guru.

RMX is really amazing at what it does, i used it for a while and know a few people that are writing really great tracks with it, only using the included library tastefully and further mangling / integrating them into the arrangement.

i did use it for a while but like a couple of other people here mentioned it was a major CPU and resource hog, i couldnt use most of the features in realtime and ended up bouncing parts / hits from the library and adding them to my own audio library .. then brought them into LIve as audio

add to that the fact that Live is more inefficent with VSTs (as a rule) than the other hosts, and the problems (bad arrange efficiency, audio glitch/dropouts) that are made 100x worse with VSTs taking your resources, and it ended up
being useless.

if you have a dual G5 with 4 gigs of RAM, imo look into it. otherwise forget it

GURU however:

totally different story, way more efficient and for my needs way more flexible. if just for getting a nice clear, loud, snappy sound from any individual samples i load into it .... previewing samples in your library is the fastest ive seen... super easy to build kits ... great kits included ... built in FX (especially the distortion and compression) again sound great, useful, easy to use etc etc

overall so inspiring, sounds so great and so easy to use. i think ive tried everything i need to and GURU is my mainstay of how i do drums. definitley essential

so - to the original post - if you are doing rock etc and need nice clear loud snappy beats - like to build your own kits to spec - and need something that is not overly expensive and / or doesnt require a cray supercomputer to run it, then seriously look into GURU

.

shaneblyth · Post by **shaneblyth** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:35 am

I just went and watched the vido of stylus RMX on their site and after using GURU I was totally blown away by what this could do. They say a picture (with sound!) is worth a thousand words)
what this thing can do goes way past Guru from what I've seen. The video demo on their site is quite long and shows the chaos engine off extremly well this is the most natural sounding druming from any piece of software i have ever heard. He drags it off as a midi file into logic and plays it that way or direct in realtime which is soo like live it isn't funny.

I think if you want to compose amazing feels in your drums this think kicks major butt. Guru feels so stiff in comparison and alot less flexable for what I want.. If you want dance grooves guru is fantastic and does other stuff but for Feel and real drummer random fills and the like that you can control in every aspect this thing rocks!

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:46 am

hmmm...I dont know about that. You get/make some samples, stick them into guru and then make some beats.

you use stylus rmx , and you use prefab loops sounds and grooves that every other stylus rmx user on the planet is using, and the chaos engine is just RANDOM ...

assuming the thread-starter is using live5, he could probably create something similar using live's midi effects , and using the -free- plugin 'suppatrigga' ....

be original man, dont become a lazy prefab drumloop user and abuser....you'll miss out on learning how to program that stuff yourself

BUT....these are just my own standards, and my grooves probably dont shine like the rmx ones...for now....but every day I get a little bit better. and I can sleep at night knnowing its all original, for better or worse

glitchrock-buddha · Post by **glitchrock-buddha** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 2:02 am

RopeyPunter wrote:hmmm...I dont know about that. You get/make some samples, stick them into guru and then make some beats.

you use stylus rmx , and you use prefab loops sounds and grooves that every other stylus rmx user on the planet is using, and the chaos engine is just RANDOM ...

assuming the thread-starter is using live5, he could probably create something similar using live's midi effects , and using the -free- plugin 'suppatrigga' ....

be original man, dont become a lazy prefab drumloop user and abuser....you'll miss out on learning how to program that stuff yourself

BUT....these are just my own standards, and my grooves probably dont shine like the rmx ones...for now....but every day I get a little bit better. and I can sleep at night knnowing its all original, for better or worse

Dude, you're not listening to anything we (stylus users) are saying. It's far more than a prefab loop player. Sure, you can start with those loops, but it's intended that these will be turned into something completely different. Or import your own rex files that you made. Loops are just half of it anyways. In kit mode it's a drum machine with individual drum sounds that you write with midi. like you would with guru. Then with all the effects, it's quite powerful. And far more possibilities with effects than guru I would add, because you can have inserts and sends for each drum sound. many of them.

Anyways guru's cool too, I tried it, great browser, easy import, but I have no use personally. I've got so many frickin' drum machines it's rediculous.

To whoever is considering them, you should try the demos because they'll suit people differently depending on what you already have.

cheers,

grb

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 2:12 am

ok fair enough...I dont have the stylus experience you do....just my personal preference is to stay away from commercial samples....its just this thing that niggles at me so I just dont bother...I do like the chaos functions in stylus, but I want to learn how to program something similar myself using bidule, or max....

anyways, we can only say what we like and Mr Thread-poster can pick up what suits him

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 2:45 am

I'm going to get some flack for this but..... Stylus is pretty cool, though Stylus takes a lot of the actual programming out of your hands, the chaos (I'm dammed sure it's not pure chaos BTW) engine is generating groove and feel for you, you're only turning a knob, and though there is plenty of ways to actually use Stylus without going into prefab loops and patterns, it's not what it's geared towards. Importing REX files is nice, but Recycle costs at least $100 on ebay, and $199 new.
The argument is that loops are great because if you can't program drums then they save time, besides usually they are nicely mixed, compressed, and have a groove you might not normally do. My feeling is that I don't want that sort of homogenous "cool groove" in my music, I would rather suffer under my own creative limitations than start getting into the habit of relying on prepackaged beats, chaos engines, and groove templates.
GURU only has a limited ability to do the work for you, to somebody that wants to instantly hear a high hat line with nice dynamics and a good shuffle, it can sound "dry" and "stale", and I have to say it, but it's simply because they didn't take the time to do any more than pencil in a bunch of 16nth notes. GURU is IMO miles above Stylus in actual programming ability, built in step sequencer, trigger patterns (not loops) from the keyboard etc. Stylus I think has a better libray of sounds, but limited IMO ability to create your own groove. Not limited ability to create your own patterns entirely, but very geared towards drum patterns as creative tools. To some this is much more intuitive, and I would agree, but it's also very limiting IMO.
If I owned Recycle, what with the amount of older drum patterns I have from songs etc. I would probably get Stylus, if I made my living off of television music or any other sort of commercial venture, Stylus would also be a no brainer, but I make music as an extension of my art/mind/thereputic release, so GURU I own.

shaneblyth · Post by **shaneblyth** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:06 am

RopeyPunter wrote:ok fair enough...I dont have the stylus experience you do....just my personal preference is to stay away from commercial samples....its just this thing that niggles at me so I just dont bother...I do like the chaos functions in stylus, but I want to learn how to program something similar myself using bidule, or max....

anyways, we can only say what we like and Mr Thread-poster can pick up what suits him

honestly go to the Spectrasonics site and look for the videos on stylus RMX and watch the one that is a realplayer feed dont bother with the others. The guy is doing a live presentation of it at some show it is the top one the rest are quicktime ones. The quality of picture is a little crusty but you'll get the idea.. till I watched that I didnt get it either

supster · Post by **supster** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:15 am

Machinesworking wrote: GURU only has a limited ability to do the work for you, to somebody that wants to instantly hear a high hat line with nice dynamics and a good shuffle, it can sound "dry" and "stale", and I have to say it,

but it's simply because they didn't take the time to do any more than pencil in a bunch of 16nth notes. GURU is IMO miles above Stylus in actual programming ability,

I make music as an extension of my art/mind/thereputic release, so GURU I own.

this is what ive found using GURU for a while:

because it sounds so great - and so easily flexible to get it to do exactly i want it to - im getting more and more toward the goal of writing to spec the things i hear in my head

the extra capabilities are great, but to be able to simple hear that hi hat parttern or timale roll or tailored techno loop - find the close sounds in my libary - then craft a pattern on GURUs sequencer and bounce it to a 4 or 8 bar loop in Lives session grid ..

then most of what RMX can do i do with Lives clip features, envelopes, external FX and audio editing. i like using Lives features to do a lot of the fancy things VSTs do with extra features .. randomization, variations etc .. its one of the greatest things about Live imo .. why learn something extra that you dont need to.

anyway what im saying about GURU, this is priceless. i couldnt do that with Impulse, always sounded weak to me by comparision, GURUs features make what im talking about here easier (for me) than anything else ive tried.

the thing about STYLUS (to me) is that much of it has a kind of typical "spectrasonics sound": very slick, glossy, liquidy beats that ... like i said ... have amazing uses ... but it seems to me you have to work harder to make the libary sound unique.

but what im talking about here is the main thing about GURU for me, RMX is not really set up to do that in quite the same way. i suppose if you have the horsepower to run it in real time and trigger individual hits using MIDI clips, then it can work this way as well to a degree

its all what works with your setup and what gets you the results your looking for in the end

.

shaneblyth · Post by **shaneblyth** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:23 am

supster wrote:
Machinesworking wrote:

its all what works with your setup and what gets you the results your looking for in the end

.

Thats exactly right thats why it is very hard to say one is better than the other .. for me it looks like RMX will suite my style of music and th way i want to create.. You know what it's like when you find something that just "fits" you like a glove... we are all different sizes though

solar28 · Post by **solar28** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 5:16 am

guru -- with the built in sequencer it can be said to be "aimed" at people who want to make beats from scratch. But it too comes with a large library of loops. However from watching the videos it does appear that GURU has a nice easy system via it's various sequencers and automation abillilties to allow nice experimentation (it looks cool to draw those quick automation curves for filter cut-off etc).

I don't believe Stylus truly is geared toward loop makers. Let's not forget that it comes w/ over 10,000 individual kit elements (more than guru actually), and that you can make your beat from scratch easily. Build a kit, then record the beat. That easy. And, while it does not have a built in sequencer -- every single host that would 'host' (sorry about that) has a sequencer (actually every host IS a sequencer). So you can sequence just as easily in stylus as in GURU.

There could be an argument made that Guru's built in step sequencer is better, but methinks it's important for people to know that they already HAVE a step sequencer in ableton Live (or sonar/logic/etc) that's pretty, well, powerful.

Not trying to say one is better -- just that Stylus isn't a loop machine, just that it can play loops. As can GURU.

I agree with those who don't like to just "put loops in their songs". Hip Hop does use loops and samples -- but always creatively applied and sometimes completely unrecognizable.

shaneblyth · Post by **shaneblyth** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:02 am

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/12 ... -tips.html

check out the quite indepth review..
the guy ended up saying he had bearly scratched the surface and that was without all the addons you could get

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:48 am

solar28 wrote: that would 'host' (sorry about that) has a sequencer (actually every host IS a sequencer). So you can sequence just as easily in stylus as in GURU.

There could be an argument made that Guru's built in step sequencer is better, but methinks it's important for people to know that they already HAVE a step sequencer in ableton Live (or sonar/logic/etc) that's pretty, well, powerful.

Not trying to say one is better -- just that Stylus isn't a loop machine, just that it can play loops. As can GURU.

I agree with those who don't like to just "put loops in their songs". Hip Hop does use loops and samples -- but always creatively applied and sometimes completely unrecognizable.

A bunch of things here. First off GURU's step sequencer is designed with percussion in mind, Stylus doesn't have one, you have to rely on a host. Second, GURU can beat slice raw audio files, Stylus cannot, it relies on you buying Recycle to slice loops to import in. Stylus most definitely is a loop machine, that you can also use as a Battery style sound library. granted a very complex and well thought out loop machine, but geared towards that none the less.
GURU is closer to a beefed up TR808 with a few other tricks thrown in.

Hip Hop was infinitely more interesting to me when producers were able to take any sound file and add it into their music, half the feel of early hip hop to me was that it was cut and paste song making, and referenced the commercial music industry, as well as the world around it. Prepackaged canned beats from any source don't reference Led Zeppelin, George Clinton, AC/DC, James brown, TV commercials etc.