PowerFX Miracle Beats

PowerFX is probably best known for their incredible collection of sample and loops CD's. They are used and packaged with application by manufacturers such as Steinberg, Cakewalk, Sonic Foundry and others. In 2000 they launched their massive downloadable sample and sound effect library which one can download their top quality samples and sound effects one at a time, paying only one at a time. Almost any way you slice it, PowerFX is a leader in the sample and loops production business.

It's no big secret around here that PowerFX has been a long time friend of HRC. Anyone who has visited HRC within the last two years or more has seen their banners and heard us talk about them. I personally was very excited when they told me many months ago, that they were getting into the virtual instrument business. Their first virtual instrument, the DXi synth Dyad, does rank among my most commonly used virtual synths. A few months later, along comes SoundShuttle, a clever little VSTi that acts as an interface for their online sample portal.

Miracle Beats is a combination sample CD and VSTi. The VSTi has, what PowerFX calls "LoopMorph" technology. LoopMorph technology is a method by which loop manipulation is made quite easy via a few controls on the Miracle Beats interface. It has 5000 individual samples that come from the over 500 drum loops that are shipped along with the Miracle Beats CD. All of these loops can be stretched to fit any BPM, and can do so without changing the pitch.

The Miracle Beats VSTi

The VSTi itself has a lot of very unique features. It has 4 stereo outputs that can fully separate the kick drum, snare drum, hi hats and the remainder of the kit. In addition it has 4 stereo limiters for tweaking the individual drum sounds and a so-called "Humanize" function to add some spontaneous factors for a more realistic sound and feel to the loops. It has a cool little function they call the "RMS Level" which can match the volume of all the parts involved so two or more loops can be used together and sound like they belong together and after that you can quantize your loops (which is optional or course) and export them as .wav files.

What this tells me is that it is a complete beginning to end solution for loop morphing, tweaking and just generally playing around with...it all sound good, but, how does it stack up in real world use...

Installing Miracle Beats

Miracle Beats in and of itself is a quick install, however, you need to actually browse to the CD root and double click the install file rather than the usual autorun install, which is not that big of a deal. Get that fired up, click a couple prompts and it installs quickly. After the application install is done, it starts the loops installer. Be aware that the 500+ loops that comes with Miracle Beats takes a while. That's a lot of audio to move. So, click the prompts, verify the progress bar is moving, so you know the install started as expected, then go get dinner, because it's going to be a little bit. Fortunately, as you will soon see, it's worth the wait...

What It Does

Miracle Beats operates in two basic modes:

• Sampler mode - Maps the samples that make up the selected loop to keys of your keyboard. The keys are mapped automatically, so there is no time consuming mapping to be done by the user. Once a loop is selected the user can create new loops and beats by playing the keyboard keys that trigger each sample.
• Loopmorph mode - Playing existing loops, morphing and slicing then, then saving them as a preset for later mapping and use, or for export to a .wav file and later import into a multitracking project.

The bulk of this review was written for Loopmorph mode. As I predict Loopmorph mode is where most users will spend most of their time. Sampler mode is strictly for playing and creating new loops...to morph...:-)

So, What Does It Look Like and How Does It Work

Insert into your host application as a VSTi, and open the instrument. You are presented with an interface that contains two long lists, one on either side of the window. The left side is is a list of all the loops that are avilable in Miracle Beats. The right side is a list of all the presets that are made from the available loops. Down the center starting at the top is the preview window where you actually see the wave files of the audio in your loop and at the bottom are some neat features which we will discuss later in this review. In the upper right corner is the heart of the instrument, that being the controls to morph each track of the loop.

You may notice in the loop list and preset list, there are little "X's" next to some loops. What that means is that the loop marked does not have all four tracks. Depending on the color of the X, it tells you which track is not used in that loop. If a given loop does not have an X next to it, it has all four tracks being used for that loop.

Each loop in Miracle Beats comes in a four-track format. The tracks are for individual kic, snare and hi hat, the fours is other percussions sounds, differing from loop to loop. Each of the four tracks has it's own seperate controls and each track can be muted and unmuted individually. The muting is done by clicking on the tracks wave form in the preview window. When a track is audible, there are four parameters available for it, each track with it's own control.

• Pitch - Adjusts the pitch of the sound. A right click on the heading for the pitch controls will match pitch and BPM between all tracks.
• Envelope Adjustments
  • Attack - Adjusts the attack speed of the sound.
  • Gate - Speeds or slows the decay of the sound.
• Reverse - Reverses the each sound in the track.

Together these parameters heavily morph each loop into an audio piece that is virtually unrecognizable from the original source loop.

In the bottom-center of the Miracle Beats interface are three additional features that are available globally, across all tracks.

• Shuffle - The shuffle parameter has two levels. What it does is slightly adjusts the feel of the loop, click it once for a slight shuffle and a second time to increase the effect. A third click shuts it off. In my usage thus far this shuffling can add some very interesting twists and rhythms to the sound. In the most extreme cases simply make the loops sound like it is coming from a different style of music.
• Humanize - Slightly random changes velocity levels of the different beats to add a more human sound to the loops. While sometimes the changes are very subtle, it does add a very human element to an otherwise very electrnically "perfect" loop.
• RMS Levels - Matches levels between loops to make them more easily used together.

After slicing, dicing, hacking and warping the loops to your satisfaction, you them, from one of the buttons in the bottom center, have the ability to export your loops to a .wav file for use in any audio application that accepts .wav files, which is every one that I know of...

The Included Beats

Well, since the primary focus of PowerFX has been samples and loops for it's very beginning, you just imagine what the bandled beats are like. There are 500+ very high quality samples played across many kits and drum machines to be sliced, diced, hacked and otherwise beat into submission for your audible enjoyment.

There are 808 and 909 beats, beats in different styles and rhythms, and much more.

In The Real World

I think we can probably agree from what we have looked at so far that Miracle Beats looks and sounds like a pretty interesting little instrument. However, just because something is interesting, doesn't mean it will get used.

One thing that I noticed right away is that I would like to see Miracle Beats available as a stand alone application as well as a VSTi. What I did with it a little bit in my studio is to turn on a loop, mess with it a little bit, then get it playing and jam along withit on my bass or guitar. Rather than using the loops in my actually music, it can work as a form of "inspiration" , if you will, to get those creative juices flowing. Using it for this purpose does not need to have a host application if it was available as a stand alone application.

In that same line of thought, what I see most likely what will happen for many people is that they will create these funky loops and beats in Miracle Beats, exporting it as a .wav file, turning it into a groove clip or Acid Loop, then importing it in to their multitracking application as that formatted loop. Using this process would also not necessarily require a host application...and would make the ability to export as an Acid Loop very cool as well.

Miracle Beats is really pretty straight forward to use, the interface is logically layed out and pretty easy to understand considering the unusual and unique nature of the instrument itself.

Looking Forward

During the course of writing this review I was sharing emails with Bil Bryant, the CEO of PowerFX, and he also shared with me that they are looking at releasing two more Miracle products. Miracle Drums, a collection of acoustic drum loops, and Miracle Percussion, a collection of loops made with a vareity of percussion sound samples. Both of which sound pretty promising regarding the types of content they will contain.