Sugar Bytes

Sugar Bytes Egoist | Reviews
87
cutoff and resonance, amp envelope
decay, overdrive and filter modulation
(an LFO or an envelope – not both at
once), but it sounds impressively warm
and weighty, and is very easy to
program, with four octaves of range and
a cleverly designed sequencer lane for
setting note length, glide and tie status.
The Effects page borrows from
Sugar Bytes’ lauded Effectrix, enabling
a small but well-formed array of seven
processors – Reverb, Chorus, Delay,
Filter, Lo-Fi, Tape Stop and Looper – to
be applied to Slicer, Beat and Bass via
another step sequencer, triggering each
effect in and out on its own lane. The
effects themselves sound fantastic, but
having a single shared sequencer for all
three sound generators seems
needlessly restrictive – I don’t think it
would compromise Egoist’s workflow to
allow them one each.
Workin’ it
Fast, productive workflow is what Egoist
is all about. It offers enough in the way
of compositional and processing power
to allow raw ideas to be worked up
without the endless distractions of a
full-on DAW, and with the ability to
randomise sequencer steps, slice
markers and effects parameters, as well
as handy sequence nudge buttons for
shifting patterns left/right and up/down
a step at a time, it also gives you plenty
of easy fixes for those moments when
inspiration has left the room.
However it doesn’t present any real
options when it comes to taking your
musical sketches to the next stage –
there’s no audio or MIDI export, and
only a single stereo output into the host
DAW. No MIDI export means you’re
stuck with Egoist’s limited drum and
synth sounds unless you transcribe
everything into your MIDI sequencer by
hand, while the absence of audio export
makes it less fluid than it could be as a
quick-and-easy groove production
solution. The paucity of plug-in outputs
isn’t quite such a significant failing (and
at least automation is fully supported),
but it all adds up to a bit of a fail in
terms of integration.
While I certainly hope to see this
particular issue addressed in a future
update, I reckon the reason for its
currently solipsist nature is that Egoist
was actually conceived and designed for
iPad first and foremost. After all, Sugar
Bytes have very successfully ported
their Thesys,
WOW2, Turnado
and Effectrix
plug-ins to
Apple’s mighty
tablet already, and
Egoist would make
the perfect fit
– literally, in fact,
with its iPad-friendly 1024x768 GUI.
I’m speculating, of course, but Egoist is
a fun and genuinely productive tool –
export limitations aside – and the
prospect of taking to the road with it on
iPad, too, is truly exciting. Here’s
(confidently) hoping, then, that we
see it land in the App Store soon and
get its Mac/PC horizons expanded with
version 1.1.
Although Egoist isn’t
meant to be a DAW in
anywhere near the full
sense of the acronym, it
does give you everything
you need to string
patterns together into
songs. The sequencer
section at the bottom of
the interface switches
between Pattern, Part
and Song modes.
Patterns (you can have
16) are individual Egoist
‘states’; Parts (a project
can contain six, each set
to 2, 4, 8 or 16 steps in
length) are chains of up
to eight one-shot Patterns
(defined as verse, chorus,
etc); and Songs are
sequences of up to 16
Parts. As well as regular
sequencing, Patterns
and Parts can be
triggered by MIDI.
While you may never
get as far as using Egoist
to develop full track
structures (you’ll probably
move to your main DAW
for that), being able to
extend Patterns into Parts
is certainly useful. And
the presence of the Song
mode reinforces the idea
that this really would
make a nifty iPad DAW.
The Sum Of Its Parts
“I reckon the reason for its solipsist
nature is that Egoist was actually
conceived and designed for iPad”
VERDICT
BUILD
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VALUE
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EASE OF USE
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VERSATILITY
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RESULTS
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A superb platform on which to kick
musical ideas around, but it’s
lacking in the export department.
spECs
System requirements
Mac: 1GHz CPU, 2GB RAM,
OS X 10.6.7 or higher
(32/64-bit)
PC: 1GHz CPU, 2GB RAM,
Windows XP or later
(32/64-bit)
ALTERNATIVEs
Akai MPC Element
£119
This impressive hardware/
software combo gives you
the essence of Akai’s
legendary workflow at a
great price.
www.akaipro.com
Korg Gadget
£27.49
Okay, so Egoist isn’t on iPad
yet, but it soon will be, and
when it is, Korg’s electronic
music workshop will stand
as stiff competition.
www.korg.com
Apple GarageBand
Free
Apple’s Mac-only entry level
DAW makes music
production almost comically
easy, which is why many
pros use it for getting rough
ideas together prior to
development in their
high-end DAW.
www.apple.com
The sequencing Effects section will be more than familiar to users of Sugar Bytes Effectrix
FMU285.rev_sugarbytes.indd 87 08/10/2014 17:16