Naked Drums or Reel Drums?

[geoffh]

Hi all,
I have been looking into both Naked Drums and Reel Drums for Pro Tools. Just wondering if people had an opinion about buying them or not. Pros and cons? Any advice would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Geoff

[davidp158]

I have the Naked Drums Rock Vol. 2 product. Its well recorded, fairly well played drumming and the individual tracks give you plenty to mix with.

I do have a few gripes:

The drum patterns are very limited, style wise. There are not a lot of different beats and the fills are marginal in places. I haven't found a single pattern with side stick on it, which seems like a major omission, but maybe these exist on the slower "ballad" tempo CDs.

This product doesn't include a CD with stereo audio files that let you audition each pattern. So, you have to copy all the files from the CDs to your hard drive and then open up each ProTools session just to hear them. I emailed the company over a year ago, and they claimed they would have a CD of stereo mixes "soon", but it still doesn't exist. The CDs aren't even labeled for tempos, which seems rather cheap.

The Naked Drums products are usable, and if they happen to have the beats you're looking for, you're golden. You'll have to do some time stretching if the tempo isn't what you want, so anticipate some serious time involved there. Still, its an OK product, no great, but I've had some fun with it.

Dave Patterson
Knobville