Abbey Road 60s Drummer

This Sample Set is a fantastic piece of software! It's looks and sounds gorgeous. I've been playing drums for 30 years, and these samples are very, very realistic. That's probably due to the fact that each drum and cymbal has 30 velocity layers.

The mixer controls are easy to use, and well laid out. The randomize works well without making everything sound too randomized. And the GUI is gorgeous. Seriously, these graphics kick butt.

The Lite kits are easiest on my CPU. The fully loaded presets take awhile to load, but are very stable and glitch free once loaded.

Not only that, but the FREE Kontakt 4 Player is stable, and glitch free too! Bloated-overly-coded-slow installer aside, well done NI: You deserve a case of beer for this one.

However...

Installing this on my PC was a trial by fire. It tested every ounce of my PC tech ability. In the end though, it all worked out great.

Let me explain what I had to go through to get this up and running:

1. My HD space was quite full (I had less than 3gigs left), and NI's verifier/installer refused to complete it's process. At first I thought the installer was the problem, or might have even been corrupt.

2. So I called NI support. They were GREAT and very helpful. They suggested I "make room" on the C drive. I couldn't free up enough space no matter what I tried so...

3. I did some research and figured out how to clone my C drive to the other larger drive in my PC (I ended up using HDClone). Then I had to merge the free space with the clone using Partition Magic, as well as reposition the drives on the boot chain. After erasing the original C drive contents I was all good to go!

It sounds easier than it reads. It actually took 4-6 hours to troubleshoot, clone, etc..

If you're impatient, word to the wise: Even after all that the NI install process took about 35 minutes. I'd even go so far as to say that the installer is the slowest I've ever used in my 10 years of DAW plug-in use (especially considering that the 16GB Braunschweig Upright Piano I use took far less time to complete).

All in all, though, the Abbey Road 60's Drum Sampleset is a winner.

Best,
DG
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