I got the DR-008 with Sonar XL a while back, and really hardly used it, not that it wasn't good, but it was just easier to go on using my hardware drum machine whose kits and program eccentricities I was used to.One day I came across a huge zip file of several classic drum machines, and mapped them out to the DR-008 and found the process to be extremely intuitive, "nice" I thought, but again would only use the DR-008 when I needed one of those kits. So then I discover a very large drum kit on the net with multiple velocities which needs to be mapped out. Now I'm thinking this is going to be a pain as opposed to the single velocity analog style drum machine sounds I had mapped in the past, but this thought couldn't have been more wrong. The DR-008 made mapping out this huge (200+MB) kit a breeze, and extremely intuitive. Having access to all the pads in one screen, then the method of assigning/editing modules (anything from a sampler to a drum synth) to those pads was not only easy in a relative perspective, but so easy that never having done anything like this before, I only needed to consult the manual (extremely well written BTW) to find out which of the four sampler modules was the one I wanted to use. From then on in I was home free. Angus has a forum here, and has always been extremely helpful anytime I've ever had a problem with any FXpansion product. The GUI is a bit intimidating at first, but insanely easy to come to grips with, it's just not as sexy as it probably could be, but extremely functional. As far as I'm concerned this is THE drum sampler to own.Read Review
