First T2 boxed bundle review-maybe this will help someone...

[koolkeys]

FIrst, there are many acoustic kits included with RMIV. The ManyTone kits were not included, but can be purchased from ManyTone's site for $35.

Also, I didn't count the exact number of Sampletank instruments, but it seemed to be around 30. The samples were about 270MB altogether. I don't think it filled the entire third CD. However, the RMIV did fill the entire second CD.

And I'm glad this was able to help someone!

Koolkeys

[headquest]

Absolutely! Thanks for the help.

Those of us choosing between the $20 online upgrade or holding out for the boxed version ($240 in the UK) for example, are better informed now, for starters!

Cheers Koolkeys

[sonicsmurf]

FIrst, there are many acoustic kits included with RMIV.

Just my personal opinion as a former band drummer and percussion teacher: YUK. Hate them. Absolutely. And today I checked the DK+ drums (with the so-called "acoustic" kits... YUK. Completely unuseable. Don't these people know how real drumkits sound? Try those in a mix and.. well.
Honestly. I am so very disappointed after re-entering the musician scene after years of a pause. Twenty effing years ago when I started with those crappy old Akai and Roland samplers it seemed ten times easier to get a drumkit simulation that sounded more or less like a real kit. It seems most musicians are into electronic styles now (not saying I wouldn't understand that - and yes my style is probably soo eighties) but these ppl don't even care about how these instruments really sound.
I absolutely hate to realize how much time it's taking me to get just one, normal, realistic, useable drum kit. Damn.
Why can't they make something like "Mr. Ray 73" for drums? Why!? Just one simple virtual instrument that you can plug in and it sounds right. Right now I'm working on some Dire Straits covers. Guess what, that drummer used only one kit and it sounded great. Or, I'm working on a cover of Paul Simon's "50 Ways to leave your lover" song (in the original there is this beautiful dry snare drum played by Steve Gadd). Just one drumkit that sounds good: This is my vision. What I want seems impossible in the world of ten thousand drumkits per module (plus the "gunshot" samples - I mean, come on.)
Yeah, right, I should buy BFD. Okay, but I simply don't want to give 10 gigabytes of my harddisk for just having a good drumkit simulation and I simply don't want to overload my CPU with such huge modules!
(so for now I'll keep working with soundfonts that contain realistic kits that can really be used)

(sorry for my rant, I've been wasting soooo many hours with downloading and testing and it was simply disappointing..)

[bovinator]

"they all offer upgrade paths to the full versions"

what are the the upgrade offers?

[koolkeys]

I know that LinPlug said they are working on it, but I've just heard that most have offers or will have offers. You'd have to check with each vendor though.

And with the RMIV kits, I have to agree that they're not all that great. There are a few gems, but for the most part, I'd say that they are mostly specialized kits. There really aren't too many "regular" acoustic kits.

And one thing to note. Most of the kits are NOT put in standard GM format. I should have mentioned this above, but I forgot. So there is a bit of tweaking involved. However, the software itself does have many options, including synth options and it's a good sampler. So the software is rather nice.

After messing with the RMIV, I still prefer DR-008 with Slicey/Fill-in over anything else. More kits, more options, more patterns.

I'm not bashing the RMIV, as it does have several good things. The MIDI's are alright, and the drum kits have their strong points, but there are a few little irritations like the GM thing. If you have the DR-008 and the 3GB of kits with that, you likely won't need the RMIV, but if not, it's a good piece of software that you can load other kits into if you don't like the other kits.

Koolkeys