Product Reviews

Arturia's Storm 2.0 is the latest take on the all-in-one virtual music studio to appear natively for Mac OS X, and it brings both a novel approach and several appealing features to the Mac.

To create your studio, you can drag up to four instruments and three FX into the central 'rack'. Storm then compiles and optimises the code for this configuration. Because of this approach, you can't add modules on the fly, which can prove frustrating.

One solution is to open two copies of Storm using the ReWire system, which allows eight instruments and six FX to be used. It's not ideal, you can't record the two songs as a single file and the ReWire implementation doesn't work at all in OS X, but Storm is also VST compatible and can be treated as a collection of plug-in instruments by many sequencers.

This is arguably the best way to view Storm. With five different drum machines (acoustic, electronic and percussion sounds), five synthesizers and three sample modules, as well as the 10 FX modules, there are plenty of good sounds to be had from such exotically named modules as Arsenic, Orpheus, Shadow and Puma. If you have a MIDI keyboard that supports the feature, most modules also have assignable knobs.

Hit the decks

Particularly enticing are the Vocoder, through which any source can be sent, the Sequence Filter, a different filter cut-off for every 16 beats in

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a bar, and Scratch, which is modelled on a pair of turntables. Simply drag and drop a sample, which is automatically tempo-adjusted, on to the decks and then wiggle the virtual DJ's hands back and forth. The results are realistic once you get the hang of it.

Another notable feature is that audio sources can be recorded using the EZTrack module. There is also a tape recorder, which captures as much of your sequenced groove as you want and saves it as a separate file, which can be reloaded into another module or application.

Red letter day

Samples in WAV, AIFF or MP3 format can be imported, and users can also look up Hall, an online file-sharing community for Storm users where new samples, sound banks and modules are posted. The level of help is good, and the program includes an informative manual.

By Arturia's own admission, Storm is 'very greedy' with system resources. The minimum specification is a 400MHz G3 running Mac OS 8.6, although on a 600MHz iBook running OS X 10.2.2 the 80% CPU load limit was reached with just three synthesizers and FX. The manual's solution was to remove a module. The stuttering screen redraw when the CPU load is high also makes it hard to move faders or dials with any subtlety.

Audio playback performance through an Edirol USB interface (albeit using a beta driver) in OS X was flaky, although playback using the Mac's built-in audio in OS X was fine. Performance with the interface under Mac OS 9 using ASIO drivers was also good.

It has its flaws, but Storm is supplied with an excellent base of sounds and preloaded loops, and it is easy to get engrossed when working on an idea. Given that audio recording is also possible, entire compositions can be produced within Storm - and at a bargain price. Whether used alone or with other music applications, Storm 2.0 has a lot to offer the virtual studio.

Needs: PowerPC G3 400MHz, 128Mb RAM, 200Mb free hard disk space, Mac OS 8.6 or higher, Mac OS X 10.1.4