Part sound design tool and part audio engine, the new Toontrack Beatstation virtual instrument offers useful sound design and music-production must-haves for making and editing tracks.

Beatstation comes ready with the tools to create and arrange your own drag and drop-ready drum, bass, and lead instruments, as well as a large sound library full of recorded instrument patches, loop-ready REX files, and completely customizable MIDI arrangements. With simplicity and versatility in mind, Toontrack designed Beatstation to be a one-stop plugin that can help you create tracks for any kind of music-production, quickly and easily.

In addition, Beatstation has full MIDI and REX file support so that you can work with the included sound library and your own audio files. You can use Beatstation as a standalone instrument, or as an Audio Units, RTAS, or VST plugin with your choice of digital audio workstation (DAW). What's more, Beatstation also lets you use and combine all of your existing Toontrack EZX and SDX drum libraries together to create personalized, unique-to-you drum kits and sounds.

According to Toontrack, if it makes sound, you can use it in Beatstation. Use the new virtual instrument to record music, create instruments, drag and drop sounds into a DAW, layer instrument tones, and in general, play music.

Beatstation comes standard with a 1.5 GB core content library packed with instrument patches, REX files, and customizable MIDI arrangements. To further customize your music sessions, you can choose from a number of different interface skins created by others, or make your own Beatstation skin that better suits your style.

In the near future, Toontrack will be offering BTX expansion kits, which will add your chosen combination of basses, drums, MIDI, REX files, and tonal instruments to Beatstation.

Beatstation is now available for both Macs and PCs for $129. For more information, please visit Toontrack's official Beatstation Web site at beatstation.com.