Imperial Drums XL is a virtual instrument based on Steinberg's HALion Player and is therefore available as a VST, DX and AU plug-in plus standalone and ReWire for Windows XP and Mac OS X.

Imperial Drums XL is made up of 48 GB of sample data (44.1KHz/24 bit, recorded at 88.2 KHz) coming from 51 different drums. These drums were sampled with up to 101 velocity switches for each technique/playing hand and using no less than 12 different drumstick types and 3 bass beaters.

The library is divided in two sections; the first features direct-to-disk Multimic samples allowing the user to mix programmed drums like they were played live and beyond. The second one features Stereo Processed drums, both dry and processed to varying degrees; this section still features lots of expressivity and 24 velocity switches per technique on snare drums and 32 on bass drums for example.

This follow up to Scarbee's Imperial Drums is a completely new product featuring over 39 GB of new material and a whole different structure, philosophy and programming, but retaining the same production team (Simone Coen producing and Elio Rivagli on drums) and the same approach to sampling drums. The Multimic drums are programmed in a way that let you easily control the volume of each single microphone coming from each drum, allowing for a new drum mixing experience and sound design possibilities.

The huge amount of samples is easily controllable thanks to the use of Key Switches, MIDI CCs and the Mod Wheel. The newly conceived programming makes it possible to load a full kit in different slots but on the same MIDI Channel, thus not limiting the real time playing experience. Each single drum program is also presented in a GM/Roland V-Drums compatible version letting drum pad users exploit the potential of the sampled drums; Scarbee went so far to include hundreds of MIDI Groove files ready to use and played by Imperial Drums drummer Elio Rivagli.

The new 3.2 version of HALion Player features Ram Save to allow huge savings in memory needs once the MIDI parts have been laid down. Imperial Drums XL comes with a printed quick install manual, a full PDF manual, hundreds of MIDI Files customized for it and tutorial videos.

Imperial Drums XL features 8 assignable editing knobs/switches in the Q-Control section. These real time controls are assigned to different parameters like Mic volumes, Tuning, Decay/Release (length of the drum sample), on-board EQ, Compression, Filters and Reverb.

Imperial Drums XL is now available for a MSRP of $299; upgrades are available for current Scarbee Imperial Drums library users.