Reid Rosefelt

For those of you who use Groove Agent, you know that it allows you to control the main pattern of the acoustic drums with an XY pad.  This is what they call  "styles." One parameter is "Complexity," which makes the pattern more "complex" when you move it to the right; volume is up and down.  So you can get very realistic results that respond in real time to your song. Your DAW records all these movements as automation.   This only works on the main acoustic drum set.  The other agents, except for the Percussion agent, use MIDI. 

The percussion kit works like the acoustic style, but has more power.   You control the complexity and intensity of each instrument in your percussion kit separately.  So, for example, you can turn your shaker or bongos on and off, change the patterns or volume as the song is playing.  There is even a random button where it does a bit of that for you.  All of this recorded in automation, which results in a lot of lanes!   You can also take one of your settings and save it on a pad.  

You can buy a great highly multi-sampled drum kit (one of the main features of the full program)  now for $40 with this sale.  But you can only get the percussion agent if you upgrade to the full program.  It's one of my favorite things about the program.  I hope that Steinberg will come out with more percussion modules in the future, like African, Middle Eastern, Indian, etc.   

@Greg The MIDI patterns can be found by clicking the folder icon on the right side, underneath the Agents.   Each title found there loads up 24 patterns:  8 main,  8 fills, 4 intros, and 4 endings.   

I wrote in detail about this here

Get it HERE

Use Code GROOVESETS19 at checkout    Ends on 1/30/19

Acoustic Expansions:   Drum Sets, Multiple Mics, Styles, MIDI
Simon Phillips Jazz Drums  played with sticks & brushes, 20 styles, 560 MIDI files, 7.6 GB  - $40
Simon Phillips Studio Drums includes 14 styles, MIDI grooves,  6 GB $40 
Metro Heights  Indie Rock, 21 styles, MIDI grooves, 5.8 GB  $30
Nashville  21 styles,  7 GB  $30
The Songwriter's Drums & Rhythms  Acoustic Drum Kit played with sticks & hot rods.  20 styles for folk, country, soft rock, and indie pop $30

Styles:  10 in each - includes mixer presets  $12.50  
Alternative Essentials  80s Alt-rock
Beat Essentials   British Beat 
Blues Essentials  
Funk Essentials
Fusion Essentials
Jazz Essentials
Metal Essentials
Modern Jazz Essentials
Pop Essentials
Rock and Roll Essentials
Songwriter Essentials

Beat Expansions:   (Drum kits and MIDI, $20)
Future Electronica (30 drum kits, 240 patterns)
Colliding Worlds (World Percussion, industrial, traffic, etc.  by Simon Stockhausen, 240 patterns) 
Metronomic Cinema (acoustic and electronic, intended for movie scores, 30 percussion kits)
Neuro Mindset (drum & bass, dubstep, 30 electronic drum sets, 353 patterns)
Future Past Perfect (NY House, Future House, 33 drum kits, hundreds of grooves)

More info on the expansions HERE 

FYI, Steinberg provides free demo downloads for many of these. 

For me, what makes Groove Agent unique is the styles. They let you do something beyond any other drum program I'm aware of.

To my ears, the Simon Phillips Jazz expansion sounds the best, both in the playing and the sound of the kit. It has brushes and 20 styles.  If you like brushes, you have to hear the demos.   I'm going to demo the Studio Drums. It only has 14 styles, though. 

Aside from those two, IMHO the best deals in this offer are the Metro Heights, Nashville, and Songwriter's Acoustic Expansions.  They offer as many styes as two Styles expansions ($25) and for $5 more you get a drum set.   

On the basis of quantity of patterns, the Beat Expansions compare very well to the kinds of expansions you get from Toontrack and Addictive Drums.  I can't speak to their quality.  But again, they  are sounds and MIDI patterns, not styles.  

I like it.   It has a new UI plus a lot of new instruments from PrecisionSounds.   At least the samples come from there.  I'm not sure which ones, but I'm guessing stuff like Bulgarian Tupans, Nordic Upright Piano, Finnish Concert Kantale, Indian Santur,  Hungarian Cymbalum,  Lyra, might be the ones.  

Most of the instruments have multiple articulations and sound pretty good.  It's very easy to find stuff because it's organized both by Region and types of instruments.
There's a consistent, easy to use UI, 

As one would expect for such a big library, the quality of the instruments varies a lot.   I really like the many accordions and string instruments.  It takes quite a bit of time to explore it as it is such a huge library. 

There are a lot of loops too, integrated into something they call the Travelers section, which allows you to combine different loops from various cultures, like Indian Traveler, Middle Eastern Traveler, African Traveler, etc.  

I see it as a way to explore the sounds of world music and maybe incorporate unusual sounds into all sorts of musical styles.   If there's something I start to play a lot, then I usually end up buying a dedicated library to get something more realistic.    

During Black Friday, I got EthnoWorld (instruments) for $150.   I would recommend it before World Suite.   But I'm happy to have World Suite too, because there are many instruments that WS has that EW doesn't have.   I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of WS and it's well worth the money I paid for it, which was a lot more than this.