Spectrasonics Stylus RMX Xpanded (Boxed) Reviews

No software does everything great. Many pieces of software do one or two things great. Stylus does many things great.

The reviewers that gave poor reviews have not learned enough about the software to use it effectively.

Love it. Great way to get a song going fast!

Man... I literally love this plugin to death. I didn't love it at first and set it aside for awhile. It's dated and goofy in some ways. But I keep coming up with awesome beats with it and use it in conjunction with other plugins. I take back what I said before, you can get real dope realistic sounding drum kits. I use it in kit mode actually, but it seems like most people might explore the loops initially. Its such a shame they have not updated this software because it could be like an omnisphere power plugin for urban drums. It sucks you can import your own wav samples and stuff but the included sounds are banging. The effects are smackin. I wish stylus just released effects plugins too. Their tape saturator, limiters, distortion and all effects are worth being standalone plugins IMO. PLEASE COME OUT WITH A NEW STYLUS I LOVE THIS PROGRAM. You can do some really cool bussing in kit mode. Great for starting songs out with a groove. Then layer your samples up in your DAW. I take back my old review. The kits are laid out in the best possible manner for playing keyboard drums. PLEASE COME OUT WITH A NEW ONE ASAP SPECTRASONICS I AM BEGGING YOU!!!!

Best way to creat new beats on the fly. The sounds / samples are amazing, but the best parties, you have the full set of loops, you add choos or select any combination until fully perfect..
Up to 8 parts for each setup, what more can you ask for.
If you are into tweeting, you the full control over each parameter.
Best investment!

Love it….Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I can get lost for hours in this one. 3 thumbs up!

I got this as a birthday present in January 2013. I finally got a chance to dig into it. This is a very deep plugin that allows you to work with drum grooves in several different ways up to and including midi editing in your DAW. You can edit grooves in the slice mode, trigger with a midi controller in the groove mode, process with a huge effects rack, change the feel, pitch, and time signature, import REX files, easily assign parameters to control surfaces for automation, run in stereo or multi-timbral mode and process each drum or loop separately, and much more. If you own Omnisphere or Trilian there is more. Spectrasonics is a top shelf company. Their instructional videos on their site are helpful, the product has a complete manual and first and foremost, you can get meanigful help from actual English speaking, knowledgeable staff people. They're prompt and helpful. This is a great piece of software from a great company, with excellent customer service. It doesn't get any better than this.

I play guitar, trumpet, and keys........The Stylus Xpanded is flexible, intuitive, easy to use and sounds FANTASTIC.
I have Omnisphere and Trillian and with that arsenal you can create TOP FLIGHT , PRO music . The barrier for sonic perfection has been broken and Spectrasonics is the champion.....ALL their products are worth every penny....

I can't say enough about Spectrasonic's stuff. They'll take your music to another level. It's the real deal.

RMX is a fairly old product by VST standards, but still ROCKS. For my money it still has some of the phattest drums out there, dripping with charisma and character. There are tons of inspiring loops which can easily be re-arranged to suit your own purposes, in addition to hundreds/thousands of one-shots, including fantastic metals and booms that are great for cinematic work. The majority of the drum sounds are of an electronic nature, though the expansion packs fill out the acoustic end of things. The FX are great as well, and the sounds are very tweakable, everything from filter/pitch/volume envelopes to the Chaos Designer.

All in all, even approaching $400 this is still pretty great value for the money. You can buy lots of mediocre loop/one-shot drum packs in the quest for phat drums and percussion, or get Stylus RMX and be happy!

Eric Persing and the Spectrasonics designers always do an amazing job and Stylus is no exception. I originally bought the first Stylus classic back in my OS 9 days but in the transition to OS X it slipped through the cracks and I never upgraded it. A couple years later I finally upgraded to the RMX Xpanded version and I don't know why I ever went without it in the first place.
First of all the drum sounds are fantastic, very cinematic. Some are huge, some are middle-ground and others are clicky; there's something for any type of music you're working on.
Secondly it's VERY stable. In fact, it's the most stable instrument plug-in I own. Even with every slot filled, FX on some of the slots and aux's and the Chaos tool on (which is pretty sweet) it didn't choke or crash ProTools. I can honestly say I use this plug-in every day on both sound design and music; it's extremely flexible! When people ask me what are the main plug-ins I recommend and couldn't live without, Stylus is on the list.

Stylus RMX by itself was already a killer buy, but now with this Xpanded offer its simply too great to pass out! If you are looking for a drum and groove module for your music which covers a great spectrum of musical genres at that; its a no-brainer! Just get this Xpanded bundle!!

The drag and drop chunks of MIDI data are nice with a few fills, endings, intros with the programmed kit beats.
If you have Addictive Drummer 2, it is the same, only a new track doesn't appear every time you drag and drop a MIDI file.
Sound quality between AD2 and RMXX; Get both, some of the sounds need to be tweaked while others do not for better mix cohesion choices.
AD2 is better for attempting to emulate a REAL drummer such as Jazz/Rock/Folk, while RMXX is great for Rap, Hip Hop, House, EDM where room reflections and stereo image are at a minimum.

I love the ease at which I am able to build loops, patterns, and grooves. I cannot believe I have been producing without it for so long. This is a definite "must have" for any serious producer/arranger/composer--no matter the genre!

The libraries sound great, and there are many note values in which the beats can be altered...Various time signatures, and a number of parameters that can be adjusted to your preference.

This is one of the best purchases that I have made.

I wanted to love Stylus RMX as much as I love Omnisphere 2.6. It's a brilliant piece of software, BUT there's literally no way to make the UI large enough to read without really straining on a 4k display. While I could turn my resolution down, I've already scaled my other various 3rd party tools and DAW to work the way I'd like at 4k.
I contacted Spectrasonics and they said UI scaling is currently not an option - with how long this software has been around, I'm a bit bummed by this (considering the price). While it's one thing, it's a huge thing - besides that it's a really great tool.

Stylus RMX is from the makers of the best in category Trilian bass plug-in. Everyone should get Trilian, only some should get this Stylus RMX.

If you are into electronic drums for things like hip hop kinds of things you might very well give Stylus RMX five stars. There is so very much you can do along those kinds of lines. You can read other reviews and watch the tons of how-to videos on Spectrasonics website.

What I was hoping for were awesome acoustic drum sounds for rock and folk and movie score kinds of things and those awesome drum samples are not to be found here.

If you want killer drum kits with amazing acoustic drum samples, you need to look elsewhere, such as East West's Pro Drummer which will give you simple drum kits that have amazing sounds and tons of editable loops.

I desperately wanted Stylus RMX to be the ultimate drum plug-in for all styles of music and that is simply not the case. You want electronic drums that can do all manner of things? Get Stylus RMX. If you specifically need awesome acoustic drum sounds you really need to look elsewhere.

Very cool plugin. Has a lot of unique and nice sounding drum samples & loops. I just think that the interface is pretty dated. The plugin has a lot of potential but has a slow workflow because of the interface. You also cannot use your own non REX drum samples. The grove components of Stylus are powerful and fun to use. The FX are very fat but I wish I could use them on other tracks too! I hope that Spectrasonics updates this plugin.

Don't get me wrong! I love Spectrasonics and I have loved using Stylus. But it's now 2015 and Stylus' grooves, sounds, and sonic quality are not top notch anymore. I still will use it from time to time to fill in the gaps with perc loops, etc. but we NEED an update on this thing!!

I really find this product to be amazing in its capabilities. I think Spectrasonic is way ahead of its time! But, I find that almost every single one of the sounds are outdated. They all seem bit-crushed, and seem lo quality. I love spectrasonic, so this is a very honest review. I own Omnisphere and Trillian, but Stylus sound bank sounds way to retro for me. Yeah you can import your own sounds, but only as a REX file! Which for me isn't worth buying the propeller head's software to do so. The file hierarchy is pretty poor as well. They are all filed by their names, which are just titles, no descriptive aspect to the drum sounds whatsover, for instance, the drum sounds will have names like, Florian, Rider, and so on. So you need to sample each and every one.

In conclusion, the effects in this software are amazing. You can drag and drop midi performances into just about every parameter to fit it's groove. But the sounds for me, are just awful. I have found useful sounds maybe 3 or 4 times. Hope this helps anyone who's looking to purchase it.

Also with this midi instrument, if you want to use the Multi aspect then you need to have an 8 multi timbral channel. So you have 8 tracks running one drum software.

I'd rather go somewhere else. This was probably mind blowing back in the early 2000's....

I bought Stylus Rmx and I was very disappointed. There was no sequencing at all, just loops. I want my money back. Stylus sucks!