I need drum software recommendations

[Sir Ricardo]

Hello!

I'm doing some home recording.....1 pc (Windows XP, Dell laptop, 2gigs RAM, 100g drive), M-Audio 410, Cubase 3sx, 2 keyboards, and my voice and guitar.

I'd like to use a drum program for my drum sounds.

Can you fine folks recommend something for me?

My preferences:

1) easy to use
2) I don't need to do much programming, would rather just select drum tracks and put them into the appropriate place in the song.

thoughts?

thanks much -

Richard

[TurboD]

XLN Audio's Addictive Drums is one of my favourites - really great sounds from the off and really quite tweakable if you want to delve in a little deeper. My go-to for realistic programmed drum sounds.

Addictive Drums

There's also a demo there with unlimited use of a kick, snare and hi-hat so you can get a taster.

[Freuman]

EZdrummer would suit your needs by the looks of things, some decent sounds for you to play with and all you have to do is simply drag and drop midi from a explandable library.

[Remeniz]

EZ Drummer or Superior Drummer.

Both are great soft drums.

[Stef Andrews]

I have Superior Drummer and absolutely love it. It's amazing how tweakable it is, and how real it can sound. Absolutely great.

[Dynamic Mike]

My preferences:

1) easy to use
2) I don't need to do much programming, would rather just select drum tracks and put them into the appropriate place in the song.

Hi Richard,

Perhaps you don't need drum software at all. I posted a similar question a while back cos I hate programming drums, & someone directed me to http://www.producerloops.com/ & now I just get audio drum files from here & drag & drop them into whatever I'm working on. I'm sure there's loads of other similar sites which are equally good though but these hit the spot for me.

[aim]

I'd go with Addictive Drums, they are really processed already, so you don't have to do that much, EZdrummer is more raw and unprocessed sound, but also nice though.

[N WILLIAMS]

Have a look at Native Instruments Battery 3. There is everything you need in one program when it comes to drums.

[Richie Royale]

Have a look at Native Instruments Battery 3. There is everything you need in one program when it comes to drums.

I've used Battery and Battery 2 and I liked them both a lot, just waiting for Battery 3 to drop on my doormat, should be here this week! I can't comment on how it (Battery and Battery 2) compares to others, but I like it and it has a good mixture of real drums and electronic/alternative sounds.

[Kwackman]

EZ Drummer or Superior Drummer.

Both are great soft drums.

Another vote for these programs.
I don't use loops, but they come with midi loops played by real drummers that you can use.
IMHO the sounds are superb.
Demos on toontracks site.

[Jabba1]

EZ Drummer or Superior Drummer.

Both are great soft drums.

Another vote for these programs.
I don't use loops, but they come with midi loops played by real drummers that you can use.
IMHO the sounds are superb.
Demos on toontracks site.

+1 for EZD. Expandable, plenty of extra midi loops available from both themselves and third parties. Very flexible. Sometimes not always what you want though - might also be worth having a look at Drumcore and Kitcore as well. Thats a good intuitive product, particularly if you cant be arsed (like I cant half the time) combing through about 3000 midi loops trying to find the right pattern; I find more often than not, certainly for demo-ing ideas that Drumcore is pretty useful.

Lots of choice!

[The_BPP]

Again - EZdrummer for me. They make the drums sound polished out-the-box. Very little needs doing to them.

[jaminem]

BFD2, its the best.

Honest...

[Ed_J90]

EZ for starting out and Superior for lifes end

[humandrums]

Bfd2 love it! the functionality and quality of the sounds are superb

[Darclinc]

I don't think anyone's asked this, but what type of drums do you need ?

Pretty much all of the recommendations so far are for acoustic kits only, which limits you to an acoustic drum sounds. If you're looking for something with more flavours, and I do mean many more, do check out NI Battery ( as mentioned above ). It really is a revelation.

It also comes with good acoustic kits, albeit not as good as the full blown acoustic sample sets, but they're still very usable and you can always expand with Battery compatible 3rd party drum libraries later.

D.

[Freuman]

Just as EZdrummer now has ElectronicExpansions! These are also compatible with Superior 2.0

It depends what you need! But EZdrummer now does a bit of everything.



p.s. I don't work for Toontrack!

[onesecondglance]

i spent a bit of time listening to the demos of the Electronic EZX, and it all sounded a bit samey, despite the claims of the product to cover pretty much every electronic genre you can think of. i'm still interested in it though - i wonder if an SOS review will be done?

[daposti]

By the sounds of what you want to do and the fact you dont want to have to program much yourself. I'd go with Ez or superior drummer its certainly got the most votes here. Battery is a great program but requires alot more work by yourself. I'm using battery 3 and its good but not so much at loops and midi loops etc.. more overall control and building your own sounds from scratch. I'm sure if you only have a guitar and your vocal a program like superior drummer will be more your cup of coco

[Tom Pritchard]

Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt I would plump for the Steven Slate drum samples. These work through the Kontakt player and are simply the best samples I've heard.

These are not completely raw samples but have been processed professionally by Steven Slate and co to a very high standard and the results are outstanding in my opinion. For each of use, I don't think that much comes close.

I wouldn't recommend them for jazz for example, but rock, metal, pop and I think you can cover pretty much anything. The way they cut through a mix is great.

Before I start to sound like I actually work for them, just head over to Steven Slate Drums and have a listen for yourself.

[Tom Pritchard]

I forgot to add, if you want MIDI loops for the samples with half-decent, realistic velocity programming, humanisation etc, then Groove Monkee is a good starting point.