best drum machine (software or otherwise)

[mister blinky]

I just took the plunge and bought a mac + mbox. I'm interested in quality drum programming (among other things). What is people's take on the best software drum machines compatible w/mbox/mac? Same question for hardware drum machines.... and why get a hardware drum machine over a software one?

many-a-question ... if there are better forums for this kind of question, please let me know! As i say, i'm brand new to this whole realm...

thanks!

[ejwells]

Three of the most popular software drum modules are Fxpansion's BFD, Toontrack's Drumkit From Hell, and Native Instruments' Battery.
I have BFD. It's a very useful tool. It's also pretty expensive (I've got around a grand in it, with it's 3 expansion packs), pretty much requires it's own hard drive (I have nearly 90GB of BFD data on a dedicated 300GB SATA drive), and is very RAM hungry. I'd recommend a minimum of 2GB of RAM. I use 3GB.

It's pretty darned cool, is fairly intuitive, rewires easily to ProTools, and has amazing sound quality and programibility.
I also have Reason 3.0, and some drum expansions/refills, and i find that to be very useful too.
I have no experience with any of the other drum softwares.

[GeneOuse]

Another cool machine to try is FXpansion GURU for electronic drums programming. Very easy to learn and to get some nice results.

[chrisk23]

also to consider is FXpansion's dr-008 --only bout a 100 bucks

[DmitryK]

Getting into more detail, here is a bit on the two I use:

Guru
Pros:
* Easy to use interface with drum pads reminescent of the AKAI samplers (4x4.. ah.. the good ol' days)
* Lovely loop slicing engine built in. Basically you drag a loop, the software breaks the loop into slices which you can then manipulate. My favourite way of quickly adding drums to a track
* Built-in master FX
* 9 stereo outputs, 1 master and 8 subs.

Cons:
* Somewhat difficult pattern triggering. Takes getting used to
* Only 16 slots for samples in a drum "engine" (there can be multiple engines within one instance of Guru)
* Problems with samples with long tails (cymbals for instance) - I constantly get CPU overloads on just a few cymbals
* At times odd latency issues which I'm sure will be fixed with the next update.
* No sample layering

Battery
Pros:
* Very straight forward and simple interface.
* Built-in FX for each drum cell (EQ,compressor, filter)
* Sample layering based on midi CC information (one cell can contain up to 127 samples per each velocity level - a must for realistic acoustic drum programming)
* A Lot of outputs (don't remember how many off the top of my head, hehe), stereo and mono.
* Many other neat little features

Cons:
* No patterns. Everything has to be triggered via MIDI. This isn't much of a deal for me since I program drums with MIDI most of the time anyway but some people may prefer drawing squares in Guru

Altogether, Battery has to be the most sophisticated of the drum machines I've tried and therefore is the main workhorse for me. Guru is more of a "fun" approach to drum programming but I just love it for its loop slicing feature and easy "drag and play" workflow which works well when I'm just tired of the dry and straight-forward world of the Battery .

[GeneOuse]

One thing about Battery I'd like to mention is there's no multiple outs, which I think will be added in the future.

[jtoole]

also to consider is FXpansion's dr-008 --only bout a 100 bucks

Has anyone tried this plugin? I'm looking for an alternative to battery due to battery multi-output limitations.

Basically I want to load drum samples from WAV and modify simple basic parameters - most significantly pitch, and trigger via midi... Dr-008 sounds like it would fit the bill right?

jt

[DmitryK]

GeneOuse - I beg to differ. Battery had multiple outputs since version 1.0. At least for VST.

[GeneOuse]

Did I miss it??!! I'll go try it out!

[mindnoise]

GeneOuse - I beg to differ. Battery had multiple outputs since version 1.0. At least for VST.

Yes an the PTLE DirectConnect worked remarkably well, too.

BTW: for the price you should check http://www.sonoria.pl/jk/pluggox.html

follow the instruction and download the free DDRAM sampler from JK.

It´s GREAT and FREE!

..and I use Battery since V1.3 as a generic everything sampler, that is NOT ONLY for Drums
but also GREAT on Intruments. V2 can Import Kompakt, Kontakt, and Soundfonts and REX refills.
(besides AIFF/WAV)

Never let me down.

regs