[Julia B]

I've been using Addictive Drums for two years. Recently they did an update to the "Adrenaline Pack 1.5.1" and this was free. The interface is great. You can use the program two ways: plug and play, drop and drag; or you can delve into the depths and find out exactly how much went into this thing. It is as in depth a program as is out there. You can do pretty much anything with it. The kits sound realistic. You can easily adjust the volume of each piece in the kit. You can tune each piece of the kit. You can move mics on most pieces of the kit. And you can do this without getting into the tedious midi velocity editing.

The software does a sort of randomization of velocities so playing the midi track back and you get that one you really like it won't do it again exactly the same -- just like a real drummer. But what I usually do is lay out a scratch drum track, record the rest my bass and rhythm, then tweak the drum track to where I want it for the near final. Then I bus the midi and record a stereo audio track from it. Then I make the Addictive Drums track inactive. This way if I want to do any last minute changes i can go back to the AD track and do it and re-record the drum track.

I'd highly recommend the Retro Pak, and they've got $12 midi paks for various styles, including a "sloppy pak". I also recently picked up the Jazz Sticks Pak. The Jazz Brush Pak is also something I want in the future.

I give the program a 9.5/10. The .5 is that they don't have a Latin Pak ... yet, but I hear they're working on one. It's kind of moot for me now since I'm using Reason with Redrum for that at the moment. Redrum cannot compare on the drum kits though.