Session Drums vs Addictive Drums

[necho]

So a friend of mine has XLN Audio's Addictive Drums - it absolutely kicks ass. But I like the idea of having high quality live drum kits fully integrated into Live. Has anyone compared Addictive Drums to Session Drums?

[Chisel]

I also use Addictive Drums with Live. I created a Drum Rack preset that loads Addictive Drums with the entire kit mapped to Drum Rack pads so the proper names appear in the piano roll (AD doesn't use GM mapping). I don't think you can get more integrated than that! I bought AD for the amazing sound shaping tools and effects that allow you to turn a single drum kit into dozens of different sounding kits. The support is also top notch.

Peace \/
chisel316

[supamonsta]

AD rocks!!

hey, Chisel, would you share your AD mapped rack?

cheers

[elxicano]

AD all the way. I have both and I personally prefer AD over Session Drums. I find AD easier to browse/load sounds and the drag n' drop midi pattern feature is great. I love the Retro expansion as well as the freebie Wooferland add-on. I also love the organization... being able to sort by timing/genre is a nice feature.

Session Drums, requires a bit of work and patience. Maybe I'll enjoy it more when I have much faster processing power, but right now it often feels more trouble than it's worth. Just my opinion though.

[glitchrock-buddha]

Addictive Drums FTW!

Lighter on cpu, loads fast, sounds great, fun to play. 'Nuff said.

[Guff Tong]

Question RE: AD -

I have a six pad drum controller (AKAI LPD8) and it maps the snare (in its variations) over several of the pads.

Q: Is there a way to have these multi samples mapped to the same pad using its velocity sensitivity to determine the triggered snare multi sample?

Have been using note mode, not CC btw...maybe that would do it?

Only triggered with my midi keys before so not had to delve into AD's midi map.......

- Incidentally, where isAD's internal midi map section as I can't find it?

chars.

TG

[yearlongyeti]

I have both, brought Addictive drums after session drums drove me nuts. Session drums take forever to sample the different sounds and is really cpu intensive. Addictive drums = turn on and create

[Jekblad]

i have session drums so i can't comment on addictive, just want to say session drums is a usable product for me, but i had to re-save all the patches so they mapped to pad kontrol nice. also they need a little mixin out of the bat.

i spent an hour or two changing the pad location and actually organizing the presets, so each kit name is in it's own folder. This def makes em easier to find and actually use more.

not very good for auditioning kits.

if you like the "racks" system in live then it's nice to have session drums.

i like em fine for making plain ole rock music, i find them easily adaptable via changing the tuning etc, not the same sound over and over

[necho]

thanks fellas.... pretty unanimous.

Addictive Drums it is.... I gotta say, from what I've seen, I think AD might be one of my favourite plugins of all time...

Making a custom rack with the drum pads mapped sounds like the way forward.

[Chisel]

AD rocks!!

hey, Chisel, would you share your AD mapped rack?

cheers

Addictive Drums Ableton Live Drum Rack

Enjoy!

Peace \/
chisel316

[necho]

cheers - built my own though

Been using Live since version 4 and every day I discover a new way of using/abusing it...

[Dan Dare]

AD rocks!!

hey, Chisel, would you share your AD mapped rack?

cheers

Addictive Drums Ableton Live Drum Rack

Enjoy!

Peace \/
chisel316

Hey Chisel, thanks for doing all the hard work in mapping AD to the pads.

I was hoping for some help with sending the multi outputs of AD to appear in the corresponding drum rack channels.

I changed the external Instrument "audio From " from kick to snare for a pad with a snare on it but of course there is multiple pads that use that same snare channel from AD so you get a double up of audio.

I might need a fresh perspective on how to route the audio out of AD and back to the corresponding drum rack channels. Any help greatly appreciated.

cheers

[theophilus]

haven't done that for addictive drums (had the free version, didn't really like it all that much) but have done that for some kontakt-based instruments. the secret: use chains, with nested drum racks and external instrument instances. I put the main instrument on the kick channel
(because for kontakt, that's where outputs 1/2 go and you can't change that), create chains for each of the channels in AD, and add an external instrument to it. Then in each sub-drum rack, add chains, and set the from/to note both to what you want. Hard to describe but not too hard to figure out when you're doing it.

btw... i had the 'free' version of addictive, and didn't think that much of it. It sounds fine, but I didn't think it was better than session drums. I really like session drums actually, it works well with edrums, it sounds good, and it's very flexible. It does require (or allow depending on how you look at it) a little bit of mixing, but there are a few presets for processed kits that sound really good (and give you an idea of what is possible). I also have some oceanway & drum masters stereo kits, plus steven slate, and while they are good for different things, I wouldn't say they are better or worse, just different - and none of them played well with my edrum kit (based around an alesis trigger i/o) like session drums did.

[AceLuby]

I use the session drums raw wave files to create my own drum racks. Grab all the kick sounds, thrown them in a sampler, macro up the selector w/in sampler, macro that selector to the drum rack macro and whalla! Now I can have a MIDI clip run and select the best voice for the kick drum (and any other drums in my rack). No presets needed and a very simple method to create a master drum rack that can be used for anything.

[Dan Dare]

Thanks Theophilus!

I think I follow I'll give it some further exploration.