Addictive Drums is a "Complete Drum Production Studio". It includes 3 complete kits, and lots of extra drums and cymbals. The samples include every nuance from the softest to the hardest hits, many stroke variations (hihat has 12 variations, snare has 6 for example) with alternating samples through-out. All sampled drum/cymbal sounds are recorded with a multi channel mic setup, just as you would record a real drum kit.
The Kits:
Shaping the basic sound is easy within AD's sampler section. Controls for volume and pitch (with envelopes), levels (adjust balance of Close, Overhead and Room levels of each Kit piece), and filter (cut the low end on hihats for example) means you can do anything from slight tweaking to major reconstruction of the sound.
12 mixer channels, 52 insert effects and 2 reverbs are at your disposal, with everything quickly accessible, no hidden menus get in your way.
The included presets make it easy to try out different styles for a track, and lets you save and re-use complete drum productions in new songs. You can create your own folders with your own presets and they immediately appear in the Preset menu.
A vast library of MIDI files in different styles, all easily accessible from within AD gives you the building blocks to create drum tracks quickly. The built in browser lets you search by keyword ("Ride", "Metal"), or sort by Category, BPM, Time signature. Drag'n'drop files the files you like to AD's favourite list, or drag them right into your host's arrangement window.
AD is a multi-out plugin; every channel in the AD mixer can be routed to a separate output if required.
Sampler; For each Kit piece:
Effects; For each channel:
Master and Bus channels additionally include:
Reverbs include:
Presets:
MIDI Library:
Reviewed By trmupstage [all]
March 12th, 2012
Version reviewed: 7 on Windows
I have a hard time giving anything a 10, but this almost deserves it. I've owned BFD, BFD XFL, BFD 2, Battery and now Addictive drums. First, I'm a musician/producer who needs quick tools that sound great without having to tweak forever. When I was younger and had more time, I loved all the synths with tons of controls. I was one of the few people who bought a Kawai K5 and edited each partial. anyway... I digress. Now that I'm busy in the studio with deadlines, I no longer want to tweak. I want great results and I want them very fast. I made all my own drum samples for Battery and then moved to BFD to make things easier. BFD was pretty good but I still have a hard time getting exactly what I want from them. I've used BFD since it came out, so I'm not new to this. I have also mixed many records with live drums, so I don't think my experience is what is lacking. I made drum kits in Addictive Drums over a weekend that I can't rival with BFD after years. It also works great with my electronic drum kit (Alesis DM10 with extra pads). And let's talk about load times. AD is almost instant. A large BFD kit can take a minute or two to load.
To say the least, I'm happy with AD. The price is completely reasonable and the sounds are great. If there were better variety of cymbals, I would give it a 10. I know many people think "How good can it sound with so few velocity layers and samples?". At first, I was concerned about that too, but it's proven to be a non-issue. These drums sound more real than the largest BFD2 kit I've used. They sit great in a mix too. I never get that machine gun sound out of them. In short, AD is the best drum library I've used. Great sound and easy on the CPU and RAM.
I highly recommend AD to anyone who is tired of tweaking and just wants great results fast.
Reviewed By Mistheria [all]
December 13th, 2009
Version reviewed: 1.5 on Windows
Reviewed By Spyro [all]
January 29th, 2008
Version reviewed: 1.1.1 on Windows
I have version 1.5.3!!! it's up-to-date!!
The download time for Addictive Drums is very, very slow -- stupidly slow, actually.
How slow, you ask? 2.75 hours for a 1.3 GB library...and that's on a fast (broadband cable) Internet connection. You have to use XLN's Online Installer application, which manages all licenses, downloads, and updates. It's a convenient interface but ohmygawd it's SLLLOOOOWWWWWW. Just be aware that you can't use an efficient download manager (such as Speed Download, which would be way more cool), so you're in for a loooonnnggg download process using the Online Installer.
I had the same problem as you and I was so concerned after 15 minutes that I cancelled and restarted, it then dowloaded quite fast.
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