Addictive Drums or Battery?

eyeknow · Post by **eyeknow** » Tue May 01, 2007 10:15 am

Ok, I've gotten many conflicting reports on macintel (my setup) about battery 3.

One reason I have not upgraded (oh, the NI upgrading of late....

) is that I keep hearing it is NOT stable......and as just about everyone knows, Ni is not the quickest update company.

Chriminy, it's hard to keep up!

philipc · Post by **philipc** » Tue May 01, 2007 11:59 am

I downloaded the AD demo and thought it sounded horrible. Are the sounds in the full version much better? I've heard elsewhere that they just chose some bad sounds for the demo, stupidly.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Tue May 01, 2007 12:15 pm

philipc wrote:I downloaded the AD demo and thought it sounded horrible. Are the sounds in the full version much better? I've heard elsewhere that they just chose some bad sounds for the demo, stupidly.

I thought the demo sounded excellent, I bought the full version based on my experience with the demo. If you didn't like the demo, you probably wont like the full version.

I can't quite believe you thought it sounded horrible though. Horses for courses.

eyeknow · Post by **eyeknow** » Wed May 02, 2007 6:40 am

I'm gonna have to do like a youtube/myspace or something to get my "sounds" across.....

I still think bfd is the "quintessential" sounding virtual drum.....it's just so damn picky and complicated.

Think of ad as kinda a "live" of the drum world.

Oh, and of course there are many different sounds in the full version.........confused yet

Cyberstar · Post by **Cyberstar** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:09 am

I hear there's a BFD 2 coming out soon, also BFD 1 is now 199.99.

R.J.Dubya · Post by **R.J.Dubya** » Wed May 02, 2007 9:22 am

Personally a huge draw for me for AD is the size. It takes up under 2 gb of space on my hard drive, yet I've about four full drum kits with tons of production/mixing options within the plug.

I am extremely turned off by something that takes up 35 gigs when something else that takes only 2 gigs sounds so frickin' awesome.

dancerchris · Post by **dancerchris** » Wed May 02, 2007 7:45 pm

There is no free lunch. AD uses a proprietary compression scheme that makes the claim of 44.1 khz samples with variable bit depth that is the equivalent to 24 bit samples. Of course they make the caveat that this is "virtually" lossless. In addition it is clear that AD is missing some of the details and articulations available in DFHS (and BFD?), brushes being one of them, somebody mentioned ruffs as another. They only use 12-16 velocity layers whereas DFHS uses upto the mid 40's for just the medium level hits.

So you are basically sitting with less information. AD does sound good to my tin ears, and I think it fits a specific market niche. There is a reason why DAWs work in a nonCompressed format and clarity/detail are the results. I think all these drum VSTis have their strengths and weaknesses. BFD and DFHS fit one niche, AD and EZDrummer fit another. I think for the typical LIVE user AD or EZDrummer may well be the better solution.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:16 pm

dancerchris wrote:There is no free lunch. AD uses a proprietary compression scheme that makes the claim of 44.1 khz samples with variable bit depth that is the equivalent to 24 bit samples. Of course they make the caveat that this is "virtually" lossless. In addition it is clear that AD is missing some of the details and articulations available in DFHS (and BFD?), brushes being one of them, somebody mentioned ruffs as another. They only use 12-16 velocity layers whereas DFHS uses upto the mid 40's for just the medium level hits.

So you are basically sitting with less information. AD does sound good to my tin ears, and I think it fits a specific market niche. There is a reason why DAWs work in a nonCompressed format and clarity/detail are the results. I think all these drum VSTis have their strengths and weaknesses. BFD and DFHS fit one niche, AD and EZDrummer fit another. I think for the typical LIVE user AD or EZDrummer may well be the better solution.

There is the argument that you don't need to record at anything above 88.2khz sampling rate. Its the same thing with velocity layers. You really only need about 8-20 layers to get a good representation of a drumkit, or any instrument for that matter.

But as usual people favour quantity over quality.

BFD isn't so bad, but DFHS would always crash on me and was very slow to load a kit, and was also a pain in the arse to install. This isn't the quality I expect from software.

For me, the reason AD beats all is because its fast to load up, has a wide selection of pieces - and there will be more coming - and it sounds great. It sounds good enough to make an entire album with, and I know, because I've done it.

But hey, its totally down to ones perception. Feel free to favour DFHS, its that freedom that keeps life interesting

PiLLO · Post by **PiLLO** » Wed May 02, 2007 10:01 pm

battery 3 for me is the best choice, you can use it in experimental way or just load very good real sounds...there are some libaries for that(battery studio drums for example) but you can load other formats...i have a lot of kits, real and electronic...i use it on liveset (2 isytance of battery 3 on 2 tracks on my macbook pro) and i haven't any problem(version 3.01)

...

eyeknow · Post by **eyeknow** » Fri May 04, 2007 7:22 am

Someone mentioned bfd 2.......

for the record from someone who has endorsed/beta tested/loved/AND HATED fxpansion for many many reasons....

a. What is it? I'm not putting any more money into vaporware. I'd imagine the things that it could be, but without a definitive answer, I can no longer endorse the product. Don't get me wrong....I own it, and I use it and I basically like the fx guys.....but we are talking YEARS of service....

b. Which is my next point. In the 3to4 years I've used BFD (damn, it's been that long?) it has been in perpetual beta.......I can remember when the build was ".09ish" and needing "whatever" build to get it to work. Then, once they finally got .21 to work by and large, it was time for "1.5". We have been there every since, and the engine is out-dated, cumbersome, and really buggy......which is a joke considering they are the "industry standard"

Ok, my long winded BLURP is not to pan fx or say "don't get that one" or to be a "fan boy" of ad.....but cash is cash. And in money terms, right now....unless you cannot live without brushes.....AD is the most sensible current position, regardless of opinion.

Despite any "nerdy" facts (which I do love btw), AD will get you stability, great sound, ease of use, some honest flexibility, at a price that is no worse than equal the competition.

Ok, sorry.....end of rant........

Chris TT · Post by **Chris TT** » Fri May 04, 2007 1:03 pm

I stuck with Addictive Drums and I'm extremely happy with it - I've been amazed at the difference the note velocity makes to the drum sounds. I'm having to learn to "play" the drums now rather than draw notes in but it's been great fun so far.