MOTU BPM Review

motu-bpm-review

MOTU BPM was one of the hotter pieces of music software to come out of the 2009 Winter NAMM Show, because it is designed to turn your computer into an advanced MPC-style virtual instrument.

MacMusic has an early review of MOTU BPM, and they’re impressed:

BPM is a force to be reckoned in the drum machine world. With its huge library and strong feature set, BPM can easily hold its own compared to hardware drum sequencers. BPM’s compatibility with all major DAWs deserves bonus points. I would have liked to have seen a MIDI programmable sound repeat button as well as a hi-hat decay slider as on MPC drum machines- perhaps in a future update.

Nonetheless, BPM is by far the strongest software drum machine currently available. I’ll be looking to see how musicians find creative ways to use BPM, much like the MPC, but in my opinion, MOTU may have officially put all hardware drum machines on notice.

No faint praise!

Have you used BPM? If so, leave a comment and let us know if you think it’s the strongest software drum machine currently available!

More on MOTU BPM.

9 thoughts on “MOTU BPM Review

  1. This would and could be a great piece of software ,except it was not ready for release,it still is not.The sounds a very good overall, however the multi-sample instruments are very few in number and limited in scope, I guess the idea is that you can use the filters to created variations ,but for a 15 gig library , a hand full of source instruments seems short considering the marketing for the software made this aspect seem much stronger .
    Now ,most of the things that make the BPM fall short are minor but do add up to make the unit not a go to first for Hiphop .
    1.The BPM loads file slow, even with small files.
    2.The timing is not tight, (wait for the update)
    3.The back lighting for screen is too weak and thus much of the info appears in poor contrast and difficult to read.
    4.Unit has difficult time saving songs as wave files.(unit will crash)
    With all of that said, the unit has many really good features that will eventually will give it the top spot for this type of program, but that will be in the update that’s not here, yet.

  2. I did not have the chance to try the Bpm yet, but as an owner of NI-Maschine I really don’t get what the fuzz ’bout with the Bpm.
    Why is it uniqe? Why not just use apps like Battery3 or similar.
    Peoples first impression from the thing is “wow, there is a new MPC on the market from MOTU!”
    the second impression turns into slight dissapointment ” Oh! it comes only as software.
    If it were a hardware like the Maschine it would have been more than intresting, that’s my opinion.

  3. I was really disappointed how MOTU marketed this to appear as if it were a hardware box, as Steve above also shares — really savvy cats will know the difference but it’s easy to be mistaken otherwise, and perhaps look forwards the Maschine.

  4. I'm actually glad that BPM is not the hardware box. It's so much more flexible as a software plugin. Except that it crashes a lot it's fairly nice and inspiring instrument. Perhaps over-hyped – yes.

  5. BPM I LIKE IT AND HATE IT AT THE SAME TIME ILOK I HATE IT TOO MANY NO UNDO FOR
    THE SEQ THAT WAS A WAIST I GOT NOT KNOWING THESE THINGS SO NOW IM SICK

    TITANIUMPRO8

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