Arturia Storm 1.5 Software Review

Feb 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Len Sasso

Version 1.5 of Storm is a major upgrade of Arturia's flagship all-in-one studio software. It now comes in Mac and PC flavors, supports ASIO and VST on both platforms, and sports several new high-end sound modules. Arturia Storm is optimized for creating one-measure, 16th-note loops and combining them into Songs with full parameter automation. It makes the process extremely fast and comes packed with a huge supply of preset patterns. If it were my job to name this product, I might call it Jiffy Loop.

Click here to access files referenced in this article

A Arturia Storm Studio consists of a software Rack of instruments and effects together with a multitrack Song Sequencer. Storm's 11 instruments fall into three categories: drum boxes (5), synthesizers (4), and sample loopers (2). Also, a sampler module records and plays AIFF, WAV, and MP3 files of any length that available RAM can accommodate. Arturia Storm's ten effects include the usual suspects as well as several creative alternatives. The Studio Rack holds four instruments and three effects at a time, which limits each song to that number of modules. However, songs can be recorded and bounced into the EZtrack sampler module for more complex compositions.

Arturia Storm installs from a cross-platform CD-ROM and requires run-time Java, which is supplied for the Mac and PC. (All audio processing is programmed in assembly language for optimal performance.) MIDI is handled on the PC by DirectX and on the Mac by Open Music System, the latest versions of which are also provided. Arturia Storm requires challenge-and-response authorization and automatically takes care of that the first time you launch it if your computer is online. Otherwise, Arturia Storm generates a printout that you can mail, fax, or e-mail to Arturia for the response code. (Storm runs 20 times without authorization.) I had no problems with automatic online authorization.

Software that attempts to run several synthesizer and sampler modules at once generally requires a fast CPU, and Arturia Storm is no exception. A full Storm Rack pushed my Mac G3/300 MHz (the minimum recommended configuration) beyond the 80 percent CPU limit on several occasions. However, on my Pentium III/700 MHz laptop, Storm's CPU meter stayed comfortably within the 25 to 35 percent range. For VST operation, you also must consider the host's CPU load. Storm requires a VST host that supports multiple audio outputs. (currently only Steinberg's Cubase does so.) I tested Storm 1.5 for this review, but version 1.51, which contains several enhancements and bug fixes, should be out by press time.

BUILDING A STUDIO

The first job during any Storm session is to build a Studio by selecting the instruments and effects that you want in the Rack. (Alternately, you can load a Studio from disk.) Fig. 1 shows Storm's Studio Builder screen with a fully configured Studio. To add modules to the Rack, simply drag them from the Instruments and Effects menus at the sides of the Rack. To delete them, drag them back from the Rack to the menu. When you drag a module to the Rack, it is placed in the slot to which it is dragged, moving other modules down as needed.

Arturia Storm Studios don't require any cabling, because instruments are assigned mixer channels according to their position in the Rack, and each instrument has bus sends to each of the Studio's effects. Each effect also has bus sends to the other effects. (Storm 1.51 will feature back-panel cabling for routing instruments to separate audio channels on systems in which the sound-card drivers and host environment support that.) Once you're acquainted with Storm's instruments and effects, you can build a Studio in a matter of nanoseconds.

After you configure your Studio, click on the Start button, which takes you to Storm's colorful Composer window (see Fig. 2). Storm takes a few moments to compile the Studio and then starts playing your song. What song? Most instruments have a built-in Pattern Sequencer filled with preset patterns. If you haven't yet recorded anything in the Song Sequencer, Storm simply starts looping the first pattern for each instrument. I'll look more closely at the Song Sequencer in a moment, but one of its main uses is to let you program pattern changes for each of the instruments' Pattern Sequencers.

Arturia Storm's Pattern Sequencers operate slightly differently for different kinds of instruments, but with a few exceptions, the patterns are always one measure of 16th notes. (A built-in global Shuffle setting frees you from the constraint of straight 16th notes.) Each of Storm's five drum boxes has eight drum sounds, and their Pattern Sequencers generate Velocity-sensitive triggers for those sounds. For the synthesizers, the Pattern Sequencers generate MIDI notes and, in some cases, MIDI Control Change (CC) data. The H3O sample looper has four four-bar sample tracks, and a pattern for it is an arrangement of samples on those tracks. Scratch has no Pattern Sequencer; it simply loops the samples assigned to each of its two turntables.

In addition to MIDI Notes, triggered drum sounds, and looped samples, a Storm Song consists of sound-parameter changes (such as control-panel knob and slider changes), mix automation, and global chord changes. Again, those are recorded in different ways for different types of instruments. For the drum boxes, the sound-parameter changes are recorded in real time as part of the Pattern Sequence. All control changes are therefore one-measure loops. The Pattern Sequencers are always in Record mode. Everything else (instrument and effects parameters, mix automation, pattern selection, tempo, time signature, and key signature) is recorded in the Song Sequencer.

Arturia Storm's control-panel knobs and sliders can be assigned to MIDI CC messages. Right-clicking (Control-clicking on a Macintosh) on the control opens a window in which you can select the MIDI CC number and MIDI Channel with the mouse. Any MIDI CC message received while the window is open makes the assignments automatically. The keyboards of Storm's synthesizers can be assigned to incoming MIDI Note messages in the same way. (MIDI triggering for the drum boxes will be added in Storm 1.51.) Once assigned, automation can be recorded using MIDI or the mouse.

Arturia Storm's Song Sequencer has five tracks — one for each of the four instruments in the Rack and a fifth Mix track for recording everything else. The tracks are arranged in four-measure blocks across the top of the Composer window. The Song Sequencer has two recording modes: Real Time and Static. In Static mode, you select a group of measures, and any change you make to any control (for the relevant track) becomes the setting for the whole selection. You can delete all the data in a selection of measures, but you cannot delete just the data for an individual parameter, thereby regaining manual control of that parameter. (That is a tremendous inconvenience that I hope will be remedied in a future update.)

Once you've composed a Song, you naturally want to record it, and Storm's built-in audio recorder allows you to do just that. (When Storm is operated as a VST plug-in, the recorder is not necessary.) Recording can be started and stopped manually or set up automatically for a specific range of measures. Audio is recorded in Storm's compressed-audio Cassette format. Cassette files can be exported in AIFF, WAV, and MP3 formats. Even though Cassette recordings are compressed, they can make Storm Studio files large and slow to load. Generally, it was more convenient to export them to my hard drive in one of the other formats and then delete the Cassette files from the Studio. The three MP3 files accompanying this article on the EM Web site were exported directly from Storm with no need for any other encoding software. (Very nice!)

THE SOUND OF THE STORM

As mentioned, Arturia Storm has three kinds of sound-generating instruments: drum boxes, synthesizers, and sample loopers. In addition, the EZtrack sampler is for recording and playing back samples of arbitrary length in AIFF, WAV, and MP3 formats. For bouncing submixes, creating extended compositions, and extracting fragments of samples for use in the sample loopers, EZtrack is an essential ingredient of the Storm package. Unfortunately, it is the one Storm module that did not perform up to standard. I encountered multiple crashes as well as extremely unreliable playback and eventually gave up trying to use it. (I transferred Storm mixes to my sequencing software as a work-around.) Arturia is aware of the problems and says that they have been fixed in version 1.51.

Drumming up a storm

Four of Arturia Storm's five drum boxes — Hork, Meteor, Psion, and Puma — are virtually identical drum-sample players. Each has eight sampled drum sounds with controls for pitch and decay. Hork's samples are from an acoustic kit. Samples in Meteor and Psion are from Roland TR-909, TR-808, and TR-606 drum machines. Puma contains samples of ethnic percussion instruments.

Most of Storm's Pattern Sequencer patterns work well together, and that goes for Studios with multiple drum boxes, too. I dropped the four drum boxes just mentioned into a Rack with delay, compression, and flanging effects. Then I programmed some pattern changes into the Song Sequencer and, in about five minutes, had a viable multidrum loop going. You can hear the results in the 4drums MP3 file at www.emusician.com.

You're not limited to Storm's canned patterns, and programming the drum boxes' Pattern Sequencers is extremely easy. Fig. 3 shows Psion's Pattern Sequencer and control knobs. The patterns are represented by the eight rows of 16 LEDs. Clicking on an LED cycles a pattern step through four Velocity levels and then off. Moving any knob by sending it MIDI data or using the mouse while the pattern is playing causes the motion to be recorded in the pattern. (Clicking and holding a knob in the same position for one measure results in a fixed value.)

Arturia Storm's fifth drum box, Tsunami, is a synthesizer rather than a sample player. Four of its sounds are based on noise, and the other four use a sine-wave oscillator. Each noise sound has controls for level, pan, lowpass-filter cutoff and resonance, and an amplitude attack/decay envelope. Each oscillator sound has controls for level, pan, an attack/decay pitch envelope, and an amplitude-decay envelope. Tsunami's Pattern Sequencer is the same as on the other drum boxes.

Storm's synthesizers

Storm has four synthesizers: Arsenic, Equinox, Bass-52, and Orpheus. The latter two are new to version 1.5. Arsenic and Equinox use the same, basic synthesis engine with one oscillator (sawtooth or variable pulse wave); a 2-pole resonant lowpass filter; and attack/decay envelopes for amplitude and filter cutoff. The difference is that Arsenic has a single voice and is designed for synthy lead and bass parts, whereas Equinox has three voices and is designed to play chords from the dominant (mixolydian) or relative-minor (aeolian) scales.

Bass-52 is a physical-modeled bass synth and is probably the best sounding of the lot. It features a lowpass filter with attack/release envelope and vibrato. Its Pattern Sequencer has controller lanes for vibrato amount and Velocity. Bass-52 and Arsenic let adjacent notes be linked for a legato effect with portamento. (Portamento is always on, and the glide speed is linked to Storm's tempo.) Bass-52 can be played through MIDI but is programmable only with the mouse using its piano-roll editor.

Orpheus is the most sophisticated of Storm's synths and takes up two Rack spaces. It has 16 voices, and its Pattern Sequencer holds patterns as long as eight measures. Patterns can be programmed in real time with incoming MIDI Note messages. The Pattern Sequencer has controller lanes for Velocity, filter cutoff, and balance between its two oscillators. Orpheus is the only Storm synth with preset memory (64 factory and 64 user).

Orpheus's synth architecture features two wavetable oscillators with vector-waveform mixing. Each oscillator has 32 dual waveforms, and hard sync and FM are available. Orpheus has a multimode 4-pole filter with ADSR envelope. The amplitude envelope is also ADSR, and there are two multiwaveform LFOs. A MIDI-controllable x-y vector is provided for simultaneously adjusting the mix level of each oscillator's two waveforms, and the LFOs can be assigned to modulate the two dimensions of the vector. (In short, you can get a lot of timbral motion out of this little puppy.) Orpheus is the only synth suitable for pads, but it will also crank out good-sounding leads. Processing an Orpheus pad with Storm's SeqFilter effect can produce vocal results. The OrpheusPad MP3 file at www.emusician.com illustrates that technique.

Get in the loop

Storm 1.5 has two loop-based sample players: H3O and Scratch. H3O is a 4-track, 4-measure sample player that plays samples in AIFF, WAV, and MP3 formats. Storm comes with a small selection of acoustic-instrument-riff samples, but you will quickly want to get into using your own. H3O's Pattern Sequencer remembers the samples and their arrangement on H3O's tracks and, like the others, holds 64 patterns.

One of H3O's most unusual and useful features (called Fragmentation) is the ability to overlap samples on the same track. Option-dragging (Control-dragging on the PC) copies of the same sample, each with its own transpose and volume levels, to adjacent 8th- or 16th-note positions on the same track produces interesting repetitive patterns. The piano part on the PianoScratch MP3 file at www.emusician.com is a Fragmentation of a single piano riff.

Scratch is a dual-turntable sample player. You can crossfade between the two turntables, control their speeds independently, and scratch on either. Scratching is done by clicking on the turntable — horizontal motion crossfades and vertical motion scratches. Scratching, crossfading, and speed can also be automated using MIDI CC messages.

What key are we in?

Storm provides a four-measure Pattern Sequencer, called Kepler, for selecting key and mode (major or minor). It holds 64 patterns, but in this case, each pattern step represents a key signature that lasts two beats. All the synthesizers and the H3O sample looper adjust their pitches to the root key of the current Kepler step. Equinox also adjusts the third and sixth degrees of its chords to Kepler's mode, lowering those degrees when the mode is minor.

Just for effect

Storm has eight effects modules. Two noteworthy additions, a vocoder and a limiter/compressor, are downloadable from Arturia's Web site. Compressor sounds good and is an especially welcome addition for Bass-52 and the drum synths. It features graphic adjustment of the compression ratio, threshold, and output gain as well as knobs for attack and release times. The ten supplied presets cover most of the bases.

Vocoder has a built-in carrier synthesizer with two oscillators, a noise source, a lowpass filter, and an LFO. The carrier has ten presets and a real-time programmable x-y control that can be applied to four parameter pairs. The modulator source can come from any of Storm's instruments. Most likely, that would be a vocal sample from one of the sample players, but the drum boxes also make good modulators. The carrier plays chords selected on an onscreen keyboard. Eight programmable chord presets are available, and preset changes can be automated. You could not call it a high-end vocoder, but it can be quite effective, especially buried a bit in the mix.

Two rhythmic effects are worth mentioning: SeqFilter and Dual Delay. SeqFilter is a resonant lowpass filter with 16 sliders to control the filter's cutoff frequency. The slider values are stepped through in sync with the sequencer (each slider represents a 16th note). SeqFilter's main drawbacks are the absence of slider presets and of automation for the sliders. Dual Delay is a stereo delay line with delay times set in 16th notes and knobs for direct and cross-channel feedback.

The other effects — Chorus, Distortion, Flanger, LPFilter, Reverb, and Ring Mod — are just what you'd expect to find. They all sound decent; none are fantastic.

WEATHER REPORT

Storm is a terrific loop machine; I was addicted from minute one. Its strong points are its excellent array of drum boxes, its ease of use, and its well-thought-out supply of factory patterns to get you started. Its synths are good sounding, and Bass-52 is excellent. H3O and Scratch fill a niche in sample looping, and H3O makes combining multiple samples into creative new loops a breeze.

Aside from a few minor glitches, the Pattern and Song Sequencers are well conceived and fast to program. For generating good-sounding loops, this is probably about as easy as it gets. Given its array of modules, Storm's price tag seems reasonable and is about in the middle of this expanding genre of all-in-one software studios.

Minimum System Requirements

Storm

MAC: PPC G3/300; 64 MB RAM; OS 8.6

PC: Pentium II/300; 64 MB RAM; Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP

PRODUCT SUMMARY

Arturia
Storm 1.5 (Mac/Win) software synthesizer workstation $199

FEATURES	4.0
EASE OF USE	4.5
QUALITY OF SOUNDS	3.5
VALUE	4.0
RATING PRODUCTS FROM 1 TO 5

PROS: Fully loaded Pattern Sequencers. Extensive MIDI and onscreen automation. Records directly to disk in AIFF, WAV, and MP3 formats.

CONS: EZtrack sampler performance is erratic. Can't delete individual control automation. Onscreen controls sometimes respond slowly.

Manufacturer

Arturia/Thinkware (distributor)
tel. (800) 369-6191 or (360) 594-4275
e-mail sales@thinkware.com
Web www.thinkware.com