Backpullver Vatanator review

This surprisingly capable but slightly chaotic iPad drum machine puts its own spin on the MPC-style approach.

With 140 eight-pad kits onboard (each pad housing up to eight samples) and the option to
import your own, it's certainly not light on content.

The pads trigger in gated fashion rather than one-shot, making them useless for live play; but the notes they record into the 16-/32-step pattern sequencer are of fixed length. The lack of a metronome, meanwhile, is a glaring omission.

Modulation sequencers are on hand for volume, pitch and all effects parameters (Delay, Distortion, LP/HP Filter, Reverb), while the Sample Editor houses an ADSR envelope and a truly bizarre swing control.

Vatanator suffers from quite a few minor issues (confusing GUI navigation, no delay sync, no sample auditioning from the step sequencer page, etc), but we like it a lot nonetheless - it's a solid bread-and-butter drum machine that plays nice with AudioBus, IAA, Ableton Link and CoreMIDI.