Potential ...
I think comparing this to Beatmaker is something of a false positive. They strike me as very different implementations of composition tools - I like the fact that SynthStation lets me play instruments, rather than working with pre-determined collections of sounds. I think this is a good 1.0 release and I hope that future releases will let us play our parts "live" on the mini-keyboard / pads rather than writing them in on the grid editor. I also think the sounds and editing functions are pretty good.
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SynthStation