Published on June 11th, 2002.
Author: Darren McEntee
Category: Virtual Instruments.

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Code Audio – BeatBurner
Review brought to you by : Darren McEntee
www: Traxmusic.org

BeatBurner by Code Audio as reviewed by Darren McEntee

What is Beat burner ?

BeatBurner is a loop creation tool which enables users to revitalize their existing sample drum loop collection by transforming them into tones using a sound synthesis technique. Compare it to running all different instruments in a drum loop through a vocoder.

Firstly Id like to give you a brief intro on the interface and its features:

The program comes with a intuitive Interface. Its clean and crisp, and very pleasant to look at! The program is divided into several sections. – master section where you set the bpm / reverse or forworth / volume (handy feature to lock left and right)/ mix between wave and synthesized /randomize button, pattern section pre filter section, a synth section, a wave shaper (5 sort of EQ sliders that you can use to change the sound of the wave) and a key roll … now this is now this is not a very handy screen, the notes you can place over the key roll are to little and the overview isn’t there… so I suggest to the developer to put that feature in a subscreen with more space. The envelope filter -where the fun begins! It copies the envelope of your wave loop and imposes it on the synthesizes one. Finally, a distort section, an LFO filter and a post filter.

Master section :
Primarily, this is essentially the controls of your WAV file that surpasses through this section. It includes pattern stores. You can use these to select and store patterns.
They therefore store parameters which are needed to synthesize your loop except for the input waveform.

Here you can actually see you waveform on the spectrum analyser. You can change the waveform’s original properties like altering its tempo, changing its pitch and also reversing it to play backwards.

Filters :
Next up is the filters section, which includes the pre filters,
They consist of a pair of band pass filters (bpf), called Pre Filter 1 and Pre Filter 2 and are applied to the waveform prior to the synthesis operation. Also in this section of the syntheses process is a slider that tweak’s the sound-mix between filter 1 & filter 2.

In addition, within the filters section there lies (1) Synthesis: This controls the waveform interaction with the pitched sound. (2) Delay: consisting of feedback, mix and timing of the .WAV file (3) Waveshaper:Sequencer: which controls the melody notes. It can also be used either by a MIDI keyboard, computer keyboard or by simply being able to draw on the spectrum grid. essentially this alters the timbre of the sound. And finally the (4)

Enveloped Filter :
This section consists of a post filter, flanger, low frequency oscilator, and a filter distortion. There are four filtering profiles; A, B, C and D for the envelope filter, all for different proportional variance’s from the filter to the envelope.

Sounds nice ! But is the sound quality good as well?

The Playback Sound Quality is pretty reasonable. It sends out a signal in 16 bit with a good bit depth. Because it rebuilds the wave form with it’s own oscillators even bad sounding drum loops give a good end result only if you don’t mix them with the synthesized version. I like the tone warmth of the oscillators and the filters sound great as well.
Yes yes, sounds great!

Tell me about the Usability, is it easy to use and would you use it often ?

Ok, this package is very easy to use, anyone that can play with my first Sony can play with this as well. But one thing I wondered .. when will I use it and for what ? If it had a midi out function I would use it on a daily basis. If beatburner could only export a midi file from a imported beat. It would be great if it could make a midi drumscore from a drumloop wavefile but that is a completely different application altogether… a nice effect that I will probably use one or two times in a mix. But that’s personal, I guess someone could easily fall in love with the sound and use it often.

What about the Installation ? Is it hard to install ?

Press the installation icon and go … a good and simple 3 step installation that went fine on a windows 95 / 98 / nt / 2000 and a XP machine.

OK … I understand what it does, any more Features ?

Synthesizing pulsating tones from sampled drum loops is not the only feature, It does have an envelope follower, which puts the envelope on the wave file you import, on the synthesized wave it can export. There are lots of buttons to change the sound of the loop, which is very good! Now I tried to find some more information … because I see a very nice key roll as well, and being the midi freak that I am, I wondered, wouldn’t it be great if I can export this to a midi file? But that’s not the case. It does have an envelope follower, which puts the envelope on the wave file you import, on the synthesized wave it can export. So it does have nice filters and nice distortion. But as far as I can see … no midi output

OK, and if I by any chance still have a question ?

Manual: short and clear html … says all it needs to say in a minimal but effective way … compliments to code audio, I didn’t need to read it and I didn’t need to contact the author, so the support is fine with me as well.

Would it work on my PII 233 ?

Aaaah here we have the big question about CPU Usage: Very good result on that! … not the smallest problem on a PII 233, didn’t try any lower but we did try it on a faster PC. dMAC also tried it on his P4 1.5GHz … flowed along without a single CPU prob.

The pros: Lots of tweak buttons which is big fun / great sound quality / easy to use. Great for cool effects, especially for voice!

The cons : Only usable for one thing, synthesizing beats. But it was created for that sole reason and in my opinion couldn’t have been created in a more gracious way.

The Price : I find $50 a very good and reasonable price, there will be an infinite number of artists out there that would have been longing for this, as its an extremely handy and useful application.

So do you need one?

Hard to say really …. Making beats is a creative process that has gone far beyond using sampled drumbeats for me, and changing the way my drum loops sound isn’t what I personally was planning to do! But if you like vocoded and synthesized beats in general this one is definitely for you! Some artists might seldom use it, others might use it now and again, but some of you out there with certain styles of music could not live with out it. This application is excellent in what it solely does, in my opinion.

Final thoughts…

A nice tool to play with until 5 o clock in the morning (Yawnnn) … again depending on your musical style this will be either a *handy* utility, or an *essential* part of music making!

Enjoy,

Darren McEntee.

Some BeatBurner links:

CodeAudio : codeaudio.com

Direct Download of free BeatBurner demo:

Purchase BeatBurner @ CodeAudio.

Overall impression: (7.8)
Ease of use: (7)
Timing: (8)
Stability: (9)
Value: (7.5)
Learning curve: ( A few minutes for experienced users, *slightly* longer for intermediate & beginners.)

Review brought to you by Darren McEntee.

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