

Windows can be dragged around and re-arranged to suit your way of working and it's then possible to save the layout in one of 10 ‘sets' which you can flip between, depending what you're doing. Underneath, everything is a tabbed area where you can display a range of components such as the mixing desk, loop creator and more.

The main arrangement window is in the middle, transport and editing controls at the top, a channel strip down one side and the media pool on the other. Despite the makeover, X1 Essential's screen layout is pretty conventional. We still think the entire process is too opaque and believe that more could be done, to make the documentation more accessible, better organised and easier to follow.

We paired X1 Essential, with a Lexicon Lambda MIDI/audio interface, where after a few shenanigans (the Lambda's fault, thanks to unsophisticated Windows 7 drivers) we were up and running.
