XO by XLN Audio Review
Under review is a smart and helpful beat creating a tool called XO (Affiliate Link) developed by XLN Audio. We did look as well as a similar product like Atlas. Different to Atlas XO follows a different approach and both can co-exist in parallel and be helpful to you as a beatmaker or producer. XLN Audio did send a review copy with no strings attached.
Installation
The XLN Audio Online Installer makes installing and updating your products super easy.
XLN Audio actively tests on the host applications listed below:
- Ableton Live 9 & 10
- Apple Logic Pro 9 & 10
- Avid Pro Tools 11 or later (Pro Tools First is not supported)
- Cakewalk by Bandlab
- Propellerhead Reason 10.3 or later
- Reaper 4 & 5
- Steinberg Cubase 8 or later
Sound
Starting in 2018 and continued in 2019 we do see new ways on how to sort and categorize the never-ending and always growing the catalog of sounds, loops, and one-shots. XO has a new and unique approach as it allows you to browse through your complete collection of one-shot samples. Similar instruments are grouped together and XO assists you to switch a single drum/percussion if it does not fit the vibe you are looking for.
Beside sorting and browsing your samples XO offers tools to create beats with an inherent sequencer. The sequencer includes the needed fundamental effects and productive transformers.
XO (Affiliate Link) was designed to bring “Ordnung” to the drum one-shot samples on you different hard drives it can safely add new samples. XLN XO comes with further 8000 meticulously curated samples, and now you can manage that with XO without a headache. You have to try the demo to fully appreciate the power and usefulness of this excellent drum browser at the highest feature level.
Crucial features like the similar option which enables XO to find you a comparable drum instrument sound to replace the current one-shot with a new option. Never it has been so easy to adjust a drum set.
User interface & Usability
You need to invest some time, especially when you enter the sequencer space. This is as expected as you can grow with your sequences and XO will be on par with your needs. The UI reminded me of a bit of The Infinite Drum Machine which was built by Kyle McDonald, Manny Tan, Yotam Mann, and friends at Google Creative Lab. Moving around the XO space is support with normal shorts cuts and mouse support.
The UI supports you after selecting a midi to play to swap out the different drums playing along. This is excellent when you need to settle on a beat and swap out a sound for a better fitting one.
Scaling the UI is possible as well which is a must-have in today’s world with the widely used 5K Monitors. This feature for MAC OS was introduced with Release 1.0.2 and supports UI Scaling (from 50% —> 200%)
Rating: Five out of five stars
XO (Affiliate Link) by XLN Audio is a very advanced new way to deal with your large collection of drum sounds. On top of that XO includes an amazing collection of included drum sounds. The innovative way to quickly swap sounds out for similar sounding with the help of machine learning. Next, to audition the collection to confirm if it fits your needs and then drag-and-drop your midi pattern into the DAW is a huge time saver when you want to be creative and productive. XO (Affiliate Link) is worth the investment of any professional beatmaker and producer to allow us to move as fast as possible to keep up with the creativity flow. XO is the next generation for Drum Machine Synth and Drum Sequencing.
