XLN Audio

really good product-would be great if it had a way to add random offset and pitch deviation to samples so it can avoid the machine gun effect.
Browsing and exporting are top notch, sequencing is good but i lack the ability to add different time bases to different samples-it would be useful to have a HH pattern in 16ths and kick and snare patterns in eights, for example.
Ideally, the offset would work for individual notes, not the whole pattern.

Even though i ended up using it only for browsing and creating very simple loops, i'd buy it again as it does those things amazingly.

Really like this Expansion for XO, some nice textures and vocals used for patterns. A bit on the expensive side for what it is I feel but quality is top notch.

I use this purely to find one shot samples so not even utilitising all of it's functions but just for the indexing alone this is worth the money. An absolute breathe of fresh air after spending almost 2 decades searching through folder structures, this just opens things up in a way I didn't realise was possible. Amazing.

Ill keep this short and simple - for Rock and hard rock and even a little touch of heavy metal - this kit is perfect.

very versatile for all kinds of rock.

There are a lot of metal packs from many great companies - Toontrack and FXpansion having the most impressive libraries at 250+GB per....

Now, that really is impressive, and extremely complex - but you know what not only do I not have that much space on my HDD just for drums, I don't need or want anything that close to that amount of space and tweak ability as a guitarist who uses drums because I can't play and don't know anything about them.

To me, these presets ($90) rival SD3's Death and Darkness ($150) kits, and I like them More myself honestly. They are definitely just as good, and when on sale, they are like $40-50, so 1/4-1/3 less than SD3.

Most of all you can get XLN addictive drums 2 with this and 2 other packs ($90 each, so $180 In value alone) for $170. so thats $220 in libraries and the program itself, which should cost like $100 stand alone, comp. in value to SD3 easily, but at a fraction of the cost....

if your into a metal drum VST, and you want the best for your money, and the best VST for metal drums in general, this is your pick.

Dollar for dollar, this is the best drum set VST you can buy. Not only are their sales incredible, but they offer discounts for teachers as well. The one I bought was the Rock and Metal edition because that is the style I play, and it came with also a Fairfax set, which is for all around pop and any music etc....so its complete but geared for metal.

And man is it! The Adpaks and Midipaks for Metal and Rock are excellent, you can build a song in seconds, drag and drop MIDI thats ready and segmented into parts (which is like SD3 but the interface and gui is superior).

The presets, kits, and grooves, all just come together perfectly in a balanced way - even though its the most extreme metal and rock VST, it actually is quite easy to handle unlike SD3 or BFD3....which require some tweaking, and mixing your own sets and kits....too much tweaking and settings for a non-drummer. Thats' the difference -

XLN is the happy medium between EZdrummer2 and SSD4 or 5.5 which are very useful but overly basic - bare bones VSTs and the top tier SD3 and BFD3, which are DAW's in and of themselves for drums. That's not to say they are better, they are just much more tweakable.

Addictive is compact but because its processed with 8 channels, it makes things very easy as all kits and Paks correspond to the same 8 pieces, so you can tweak the tones and sounds of each instruments. The studio tweak ability is somewhat like Logic Drummers, its not a lot, but its there and its enough.

These are virtual drum sets, or drummers, and special features are what stand out to me. Now to this point XLN wins in the overall, but not only is it simple, easy to start a song, and make great sound kits with, it also is easier to adjust than the rest. You can transform the sound, style, and MIDI programming of each groove you drop into the editor, and it's really cool to be able to get the same back bone while the pieces may change in their amount, velocity, timing or whatever parameter.

For the price, you can't get a better a deal, and it does fall between EZD2/SD5.5 and SD2/BFD3 - at $150 (on sale its under $100 though), especially Black Friday and summer time...so fi you are a metal guitarist or metal musician, or hard rock producer, and you wanted ONE best all- in one package deal - it would be this.

A pricy but really amazing sampler. It's not just the visual map organisation of your samples, you can also swap samples lightning fast. Even preform really creative and fun functions like set a filter (sound category, length, percussiveness, etc.) and then swap your whole kit for sounds that are sonically closest to the previous ones while obeying the filter settings.

Pattern editing is pretty smooth, you can drag export MIDI or a WAV right out different, you have a lot of groove control (global or per sample track), accentuator. Good routing options, each sample can be routed into 8 different outputs, a single master output, or both! Each track can be sent to one of 2 build in effects (9 reverbs, 6 delays) and they do sound good. However these effect are affecting the master output, same for the distortion module that's built in.

When the sample is loaded into your kit, you can edit where it begins and ends (basically really easy to mace a glitchy kit out of anything real fast), fades out it, collapse it to mono, etc.. You can set how punchy or soft the transient is, hold and decay. There are more features to modify the sounds themselves, some standard (pan, vol, you know).

And yet there's still more I could mention.

Also, the samples it already ships with are really good. It's a very effective sampler that is not only fun to use but it can really speed up your workflow if needed. Definitely a pricy product but I use it very often (bough it when it came out for the introduction price) and I can't think of any major flaws, nor have experienced any issues or bugs ever.

Awesome Rhodes sounds with a good amount of presets for classic sounds you would want. Very CPU friendly. Some sounds a little darker than you might want but nothing some EQ can't fix. Worth the price and especially on sale or if bundled with hardware.