KVR :: Instruments » Addictive Drums vs. BFD vs. EZdrummer [View Original Topic]
There are 36 posts in this topic.

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djmino02 - Thu May 10, 2012 1:01 pm

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I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts are on these drum modules. I'm looking for something with realistic drum beats and fills that are comparable to a Boss drum machine.

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MickGael - Thu May 10, 2012 1:11 pm

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By realistic, do you mean how acoustic drums sound before they are processed, dampened or tuned as needed?

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djmino02 - Thu May 10, 2012 1:19 pm

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No. I'm not really sure what I meant by realistic. I guess not too synthetic sounding.

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EvilDragon - Thu May 10, 2012 1:20 pm

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BFD > AD > EZD.

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Dr.Wu - Thu May 10, 2012 1:44 pm

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any of these sounds more realistic than any BOSS drummachine.
i find that EZdrummer has the most organic sound of the three due to the fact that each drum of the kit was sampled in the same room. Also comes with the best selection of MIDI beats IMO.
Addictive is great for tweakers because of its many effects and parameters. Never been a fan of BFD but i heard they came a long way since version 1 which was the last i tested.

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EvilDragon - Thu May 10, 2012 2:12 pm

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BFD sounds the most organic and realistic since they had the least amount of sample processing BEFORE utilizing the engine's effects. EZD is by far THE most post-processed library.

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electro - Thu May 10, 2012 3:23 pm

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BFD is the last word in AC drums. Check out those new Ken Scott SR Expansions too.

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djmino02 - Thu May 10, 2012 4:02 pm

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I went ahead and ordered EZ just because it's the cheapest one.

However, I did see on Sweetwater that Addictive drums is offering a free expansion pack...

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@midnight - Thu May 10, 2012 4:56 pm

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@midnight - Thu May 10, 2012 4:58 pm

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Any of the listed software will be much much better sounding than the Boss drum machine.

I would also recommend Battery. It's not as "acoustic" sounding as EzDrummer but its far more flexible.

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Resonator63 - Thu May 10, 2012 5:09 pm

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If you are looking for the sounds of a boss drum machine look here.
http://samples.kb6.de/downloads.php

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djmino02 - Fri May 11, 2012 4:08 am

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Hey, I actually like my Boss drum machine. It has some decent beats and fills.

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carrieres - Fri May 11, 2012 4:20 am

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BDF is too big and complex for me.
ezdrummer does not allow me to tweak the sound enough but their electronic expansion is very good.
Addictive drum is just right not too complex but tweakable, though their electronic expansion is too small

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braj - Fri May 11, 2012 4:26 am

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I bought EXDrummer a few months ago and now wish I hadn't. It doesn't give you many options at all, I guess that is why it is 'EZ' but since I got it cheap on sale at Audiodeluxe, it is almost worth it for the midi files. I'm back to using iDrum for electronic sounds (you can get lots of kits for any drum sampler including Boss, I have my old DR-110 recreated and love it). http://samples.kb6.de/downloads.php

You may want to get CM as they have a version of AudioRealism drum machine for free now:

http://www.audiorealism.se/adm/adm_announcement.htm

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chokehold - Fri May 11, 2012 4:34 am

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If you're looking for AD, I'm currently selling it for 75€, including the Metal and Indie expansions, plus some single KitPieces.
Doubt you'll get it cheaper anywhere.

From my experience:
SD2.0 > AD > EZD

Haven't got BFD, so I can't comment on that.
The BFD Lite version I once had didn't convince me, that one disappeared from my system immediately.

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braj - Fri May 11, 2012 4:36 am

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I have Studio Drummer from NI, any thoughts on where that fits in? I got EZDrummer because it was super cheap and I wasn't that satisfied with Studio Drummer, but since getting EZDrummer I see the benefits of a more complete package now.

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carrieres - Fri May 11, 2012 4:58 am

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awesome link !!!
thanks a lot

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braj - Fri May 11, 2012 5:00 am

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To be fair Resonator63 posted it first

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electro - Fri May 11, 2012 5:43 am

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You can always just load kits or single kit pieces and monitor output through stereo bus if all you want is simplicity.

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EvilDragon - Fri May 11, 2012 5:47 am

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BFD isn't really complex, it just has everything you need to make great sounding drum tracks. However you can always bypass its own processing if you want to use external effects you've grown accustomed to. It's really flexible. I love how BFD Eco sounds, it's definitely more natural than both AD and EZD, and I LOVE how AD sounds (but in a different way)

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BERFAB - Fri May 11, 2012 6:21 am

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+1

Cheers
-B

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skipscada - Fri May 11, 2012 6:59 am

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If you mean options of different pieces of kit, expension packs take care of that, but of course that's extra money.

When it comes to tweaking the sounds, you can chose between everything from 100% close miked to 100% room, so it does everything from dead to live. And you're free to send outputs wherever you want for processing. It does the job for me, but then again my needs are surely a lot simpler than the expert tweakers and drum-fanatics out there. I just want to get something decent quickly. The midi-files are generally far too busy to be used as they are, but with a bit of pruning they can work fine.

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BERFAB - Fri May 11, 2012 7:48 am

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I recently posted this on another thread:

I recently did back to back A/B listening tests for several of my drum vsti's using the same grooves along with my favorite acoustic kits. Included were Superior Drummer, BFD2, SSD4, Studio Drummer and Addictive Drums. I like and use all of these programs, but I have to say that the best quality (to my ears at least) was Studio Drummer. Rounding out my rankings were BFD2, SSD4, Addictive and, lastly [and ironically], Superior.

Couple of thoughts on each:
Studio Drummer is a really high quality sounding sample set. There are a few presets for different sounds, i.e. Studio kit, stadium kit, etc, and fitting in the mix is easy. My guess is NI will take the HUGE Battery collection of kits and turn them, somehow, into expansion packs for Studio Drummer. But if you already have Battery, I have found that many of the kits already play quite well with SD MIDI files.

BFD2-Highest quality kits with the most diverse choice of styles. Also, you can tweak to your heart's content. Included groove library is very good too. A lot of expansion options, with a fair number of 3rd party developers using the platform as well.

Steven Slate v. 4 - The new SSD sample player is actually quite impressive, and the included MIDI library covers a lot of bases. Bonuses include a very intuitive re-mapping function, as well as easy auditioning of grooves.
Kits are presented in a wide variety of presets. Tweaking is a bit more difficult than in similar programs, but fortunately, the presets are made to really slip well into a mix.

Addictive Drums - Only a couple of kits are sampled for raw material, and this keeps the footprint very small for a program like this. The dozens of kit presets represent a lot of different styles, but this is achieved through the extensive use of effects. Expansion packs will provide more raw material for even more diversity. Excellent groove library with very easy auditioning.

Superior Drummer (big brother to EZD) - Certainly better sounding than EZDrummer, but there's still something a bit Mickey Mouse about this one to my ears. I know a ton of people swear by it, but in comparison to the other programs listed above, the overall sound doesn't measure up. That said, I think the MIDI groove library and the MIDI expansion kits on offer for this are excellent, but I try to use them with re-mapped BFD2 or Studio Drummer.

Cheers
-B

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EvilDragon - Fri May 11, 2012 8:00 am

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Let me just let you know that that won't happen. Why? Because it's not feasible nor easy/user-friendly to do that in Kontakt.

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chokehold - Fri May 11, 2012 8:11 am

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Maybe with the un-pimped default kit, I give you that.

There are 3 unsuspicious little boxes at the bottom of the first page, called "Layer Limits" and "Soft", "Gradient", "Hard". Increasing them will make SD use more than the default 6 (IIRC) different samples per velocity, so turn them right up and you'll notice hardly a difference to a real kit!
Plus there's a snitload of articulations like center/edge, flam, roll... use them correctly, and no one will know SD2.0 from real drums.

I have the Metal Foundry SDX, and that gives me 3 Kick mics, 3 or 4 Snare mics, and 4+ Ambience and Room mics to play with. These mics deliver just the real and plain sampled studio recording footage, just as if you had recorded them yourself.
Mix and route them as you wish, you could mix them internally and just get the Stereo Out back in your Host, or you can route each mic to another Output and mix them externally, right in your host.
It even has a load of great Sonalksis FX on board, from EQ to Comp to Limiter to Transient Modele... everything you need in A+ quality right at your fingertips.

I don't mean to "talk down" or so, but maybe you should educate yourself about SD2.0 a little more.
If there's anything you can't do with that or something you're doing sounds Mickey Mousey ... it's not SD2.0!

(And no, I'm in no way connected with Toontrack.)

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rcat - Fri May 11, 2012 8:58 am

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I'm curious why Jamstix isn't mentioned much anymore?

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BERFAB - Fri May 11, 2012 9:05 am

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Not yet 'officially' 64 bit. As a result, it fell out of rotation in my rig, and I'm sure others are similarly affected.

Also not getting any love lately is Kitcore/Drumcore. This is also not x64 which is a shame because Kitcore (kits with midi files only - no loop samples) is an amazing sounding cost effective drum solution with a ton of included kits in all styles.

Cheers
-B

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BERFAB - Fri May 11, 2012 9:23 am

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I got into EZDrummer because of some ultra-cheap offer. I didn't really need it, considering the other high quality drum programs I already have. But I figured the EZD MIDI files would at least be worth the price of admission. Well, I wasn't very impressed with the overall sound, but I wasn't really expecting much in the first place. (I should add that I own a number of other Toontrack products which I do like. And, overall, I like their EZ concept which I certainly have use for in certain situations.)

Some time later, Toontrack offered a very cheap Superior upgrade, so I figured I would see what all the fuss was about. And again, the added MIDI files would, at the very least, make it worthwhile. You are correct that I have never explored more than the standard default kit. But I did try to tweak as best I could to get sounds that I could use. Just couldn't do it. At least not anything that was better than the other excellent products I already own. And since I prefer to spend my studio time making music, and not tweaking software, I never felt the need to invest any more time in it.

I look forward to further tweaking using your suggestion about the layer limits. However, I have to say that, in a very competitive market, I find it odd that Toontrack wouldn't want to really tweak out the default kit right out of the box. Why would I want to purchase any of their expansion packs (which cost some serious money) if the default kit from the main program (again, serious money) doesn't sound as good as it could.

Cheers
-B

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BERFAB - Fri May 11, 2012 9:36 am

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I'm not a programmer like you (and others here), so I'll take your word for it. However, my experience has been that the relationship between the Battery interface and Kontakt is about as seamless as it gets. In fact, I will re-map a lot of sample and loop files in Battery's GUI (drag and drop into those huge, user-friendly cells) and then bring the whole shebang into Kontakt for further editing. Nice as you please.

I can't imagine that it would be all that difficult to add a feature to Studio Drummer that exploits the relationship between Kontakt and Battery, essentially allowing Battery kit samples to replace existing SD samples. Build in some copy protection and some added value in the form of MIDI files, and, voila, you've got some SD Expansion packs. No?

Cheers
-B

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Burillo - Fri May 11, 2012 9:37 am

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maybe because it's not so much a drum sampler as it is a MIDI track generator? I personally very rarely end up using its samples.

EDIT: there was a post asking about why Jamstix wasn't mentioned

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EvilDragon - Fri May 11, 2012 12:11 pm

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The problem is that Battery doesn't have Instrument Busses that are featured in Kontakt 5 (and heavily in SD), and virtually EVERYTHING relies on the scripting, which can and will misbehave if the groups aren't lined up in the order the script expects it, etc.


So yeah, I'm pretty sure it won't happen.

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BERFAB - Fri May 11, 2012 12:18 pm

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But wouldn't a function that swaps out the SD drum sample data for the Battery data solve that problem? i.e. Battery snare samples replace SD snares, Battery cymbals replace SD cymbals, etc. That way the remaining buss routing remains in tact, it just works on different sample data.

-B

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EvilDragon - Fri May 11, 2012 12:39 pm

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That might be possible, but I don't see the will in NI to do it. Hell, Kontakt still doesn't have a way of batch-replacing sample references at all.

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hibidy - Fri May 11, 2012 1:21 pm

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Superior drummer is the only thing I use. Recently I got the "roots" kits and the sticks kit is fab.

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djmino02 - Fri May 11, 2012 2:03 pm

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Nice link. That's quite a library of samples.

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hibidy - Fri May 11, 2012 2:28 pm

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The key to superior drummer to me is having things separated, using eq and x drums allot. I hate most of the kicks for example. I can make most of the snares sound great, but I usually have to pull the snare out of OH/room quite a bit and then use a separate verb for that (though I actually really like a pretty dry snare most of the time)

Complex? You betcha. But the samples sound the most realistic to me so it's worth it. I've considered getting BFD again, but the examples sound so poor It's like might as well stay with what I have.

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There are 36 posts in this topic.