Review: Regroover Virtual Beat Machine by Accusonus

Accusonus released a new plugin called Regroover Pro, giving us a rare and awesome feature, this plugin is the bigger version of Regrrover Essential, allowing separation on 4 to 6 layers from a standard Wav/Aiff file by frequencies, dynamics, magic audio algorithms, all this to allow the extract and tweaking of any rendered new audio layer.

The GUI of Regroover Pro has 2 main views: Layers and Editor. In the ‘Layers’ view, the sample you import by the Menu/new action can be outputted in seconds (showing a little popup quickly calculating) to 4, 5, or 6 different loops. When playing all these newly calculated layers together, it will recreate your original single Wav file imported from the beginning.

The first thing to do is to listen to parts by activating the Solo function while playing by Preview on the plugin, or MIDI events launching layers or samples in the host DAW you use. I found really good the extracted results, sub, low, mid, high frequencies. In this particular example where you would have a hi-hat closed and an opened hi-hat, the plugin is able to recognize these 2 different instruments playing in nearly the same high frequencies. It extracted well sub-bass, kicks or snares too… Magic!

In the ‘Editor’ view in Regroover Pro, we have up to 16 samples set from D4 to D#5 notes. These samples are extracted by CTRL + drag-n-drop on any sample found in the Layers’ main view. In the Editor, it is possible to remove any undesired sound before starting to play (loop in/start) and possible to set the sample endpoint too on the extracted samples.

It’s a really incredible feature for loop makers, beatmakers, sound designers, and this is the goal of this new quite unique Regroover Pro. I found the quality is really good for the Layers extraction, from 4 to 6 parts with the activity level setting allowing different analysis each time you set parameters in the top right area “Analysis” from the Layers view.

FL Studio by default on my Windows 7 is set to have the notes 2 octaves higher: playing C7 will play C5 in Regroover Pro. To play Layer 1 to Layer 4 parts, FL Studio will have C5 to D#5 in the piano roll to play C3 to D#3 layers. Maybe other hosts like Ableton Live will have this difference on the target octave number.

In this example with the screenshot below (C5 and D5 samples), I extracted the little gray part on the layer 2 which is a clap/snare instrument with typing the CTRL key while using a drag-drop to the sample I want to save, in this case, I put this short clap sample on the D5 note in the right bottom area Expansion Kit.

The envelope, mix volume, pan set can be adjusted here, and it’s possible to send up to 16 out to FL Studio (screenshot below showing settings).

This is really impressive how loops are well separated. It’s then easy to get single shot samples from loops! If you have a given BPM in your song (120 BPM) and if you notice the loop started on your Regroover Pro project has another BPM (100 BPM), a simple click on Sync (top area) will synchronize the samples to the good BPM which is 120 BPM. The original BPM is still written on the plugin, between Preview and Sync buttons.

I noticed that the Sync is good for my ears on drum loops, but as in many time stretch audio processing, the BPM going too low (divided by 2 from 120 to 60 BPM ) will slow down a lot the playing speed of audio samples, and then the sound can get not as good as the original in quality. A techno drum loop from a TR-909 can sound like gaining metallic resonance or added resonance due to the way samples were at the start, if you Sync at a too low BPM. For a small difference in BPM, it’s really good on the drum loops I chose to test.

Inside FL Studio, playing C5 and D5 from the Expansion Kit extracted samples :

D5 sample is the clap sample (Gray selected) extracted on layer 2 :

On Accusonus website and YouTube channels about Regroover Pro, you can watch musicians playing on a remote (any MIDI controller, launchpad…). The user interface is really easy to use and you can get and save single shots samples in seconds.

The main file menu allows us to start a new project based on a wav file or save the project and expansion kit sample slots. To avoid loading problems if I lost memory on filenames later, I save the FL Studio project001 song and a Regroover Pro project001 too, to be sure it will be ok when loading the whole song later.

Another great feature allows the user to export to layers and MIDI events, so it will be possible to import events and samples again later. On the CPU side, I recommend a quad-core pc (even a 5 years old PC with quadcore will be enough !), I tried on an old dual-core and sometimes it’s not fast enough to render immediately playing, so I had to loop at least one time the playing sequence (Preview) so it’s well-played after.

On the Settings part of Regroover Pro, we have 3 different playing modes on the samples in both Layers and Expansion Kit parts, which is very nice for the user, you can adjust these 3 settings so that note events in the Piano roll will trigger, hold or toggle MIDI events when playing the samples. If not sure at first use, the best is to try the 3 different settings on a simple block/pattern and watch the results. This is giving good flexibility on MIDI events editing.

By default, plugins have a stereo track as output, but they can have a lot more, in the case of Regroover Pro, the user is allowed to use up to 16 outputs from a single Regroover Pro plugin to the DAW receiving audio in its Mixer. I look at this part of settings and click on “Automap outputs”, then it will set 16 outputs connection between the plugin and the host, which is a great way to get insert effects and send/return effects later on the Mixer for any of the 16 outputs :

Conclusion

Regroover Pro is a fine plugin with quite unique features, working well on separating loops and extracting samples and MIDI events to 4 to 6 sub-layers, all this with a Sync to host BPM, all this from single Wav/Aiff files. All the needed features are there to work on, it is possible to deeply discover the magic drum loops which you wanted to extract for years and then it’s now time to get this magic kick, snare or clap alone on a new track. The extraction of high frequencies or low frequencies is awesome. I would say it is a very nice and useful product for electronic musicians, beatmakers, or even for sample makers.

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