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XLN Audio: Early bird sale - 50% Off


MusicMan

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Such a weird company.  They don't add anything to Addictive Drums for years and years and years.  Nothing new to buy.  

Then they recently introduced four packs for XO.  So I felt, "Oh I get it.  They see XO as their future."

But since then, there has been no more XO packs.  It has been a while.   And these are not labor-intensive for XLN to create, as they are programmed by outside artists.
Get the patterns and hire a graphic designer to do the art.   But no.

I am very deep into Addictive Drums, because I like the sound.  Aside from that, it seems like they are turning to new customers and demanding that they buy from Toontrack instead.  Or even ujam, with their excellent Beatmakers.   Any company that appears to still be in business, moving forward. 

In general, I feel that most existing drum programs are aimed at the 50+ crowd.  60s -80s Rock.  Jazz.   How long has Toontrack been making stuff and they have a single EDM pack?  Toontrack and XLN  have ceded the business for "new" styles of music (ie maybe only 20 or 30 years old)  to sample packs and ujam.  And this is why I felt XO was an excellent path forward for XLN.  Put a toe into the non-codger/geezer market.   But they have a very long way to go to fill in those blanks. I guess they pooped out with four packs.  Time to take a long, long snooze.  Wake me up in 2025 maybe.

Compare that with Audiomodern.  They introduce a new Playbeat 3 pack (mostly free) practically every two months.  In no time it will be quite a collection, most of which will come free at time of purchase. And the two paid ones are super-expensive--five bucks!   It's also now my favorite drum machine.  Really exciting state-of-the-art tech.  AI intelligent randomizing that slaughters Sample Logic IMHO, as far as drums go.  It's one thing to randomize, and something else to come up with what is truly musically useful.  Soon it will be the standard for young musicians and the future.

Don't get me wrong, I think XO is a great program with a lot of potential.  But imagine what Omnisphere would be today without all these brilliant programmers making patches for it.  They continue to make it shiny and new by showing what is possible.  I think that companies like Audiomodern and the Cube people understand this very well by putting out their own free packs. 

 

Edited by Reid Rosefelt
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1 hour ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

Don't get me wrong, I think XO is a great program with a lot of potential.  But imagine what Omnisphere would be today without all these brilliant programmers making patches for it.  They continue to make it shiny and new by showing what is possible.  I think that companies like Audiomodern and the Cube people understand this very well by putting out their own free packs. 

I think I'm leaning more towards Atlas 2, but XO looks pretty nice as well. Atlas seems like there's likely to be more regular updates and new features which is something I'm taking into consideration too. I'm giving Atlas a demo (only a basic one so far, it's still scanning all the samples!) but I might also still demo XO.

RC-20 from XLN is one of my favourites in that space and I don't mind some of their pianos.

Edited by MusicMan
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3 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

Such a weird company.  They don't add anything to Addictive Drums for years and years and years.  Nothing new to buy.  

Like you, I really like the sound of AD, but I'm getting to where I use it less because it's starting to feel a bit like abandonware, although I think they added VST3 support recently, so that's a step forward.   If they'd show it just a little more love I'd feel a lot better about it.

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I guess this is finally my chance to switch over to AD from SD2. It's time I updated my SD2 (and I don't even have many packs with it either), and in reading about ease of use and quality of sound w/ AD (and price vs Toontrack pricing) I'm gonna go ahead and change over to AD all together and leave Toontrack behind, no offense to Toontrack. 

What are the best Adpacks to get? I'd probably get the 6 pack, but maybe the 10 pack if I really needed all that. I know I want Reel Machines, and I like big hard rock and grunge doom type drum sounds, so I'm seeing that 70's kit there. 

 

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29 minutes ago, Christian Jones said:

What are the best Adpacks to get? I'd probably get the 6 pack, but maybe the 10 pack if I really needed all that. I know I want Reel Machines, and I like big hard rock and grunge doom type drum sounds, so I'm seeing that 70's kit there. 

The best is in the ear of the beholder. To each his own.

If you already have AD2 installed, you can explore the different kits and listen to the preset demos from the main AD2 GUI. The advantage that way is that you will hear the presets through your audio gear. A lot of them are heavily effected, so any available dry sounds should indicate what base sounds you are actually getting with a kit, and the weird stuff shows off possibilities with FX.

If you don't have AD2 yet, the website has a demo version of the Fairfax Vol 1 ADpack. The core AD2 software is included with all ADpacks.

https://www.xlnaudio.com/demos

Also there's a lot of audio demo clips of the various kits at XLN Audio.

Edited by abacab
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I really don't understand people complaining that vst instruments/plugins are not updated all the time! I am glad if plugins are stable and do their job perfectly!

On the contrary there are some developers that I have marked red, because I feel that their newest updates just bring instability, performance issues and permanent update chore. And there are more and more that get on my list! ? For them I prefer definitely to stay on older versions!

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The XLN product line may not have been updated very much lately, but they do regularly issue minor code updates for maintenance, so it is far from abandoned.

And since XLN is apparently co-owned by one of the most successful music producers and song writers in history, Max Martin, maybe they don't feel an urgent need to be on the bleeding edge of music tech. Their stuff just works. https://www.xlnaudio.com/about

Martin is the songwriter with the third-most number-one singles on the chart, behind only Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin

Edited by abacab
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1 hour ago, marled said:

I really don't understand people complaining that vst instruments/plugins are not updated all the time! I am glad if plugins are stable and do their job perfectly!

On the contrary there are some developers that I have marked red, because I feel that their newest updates just bring instability, performance issues and permanent update chore. And there are more and more that get on my list! ? For them I prefer definitely to stay on older versions!

I'm not suggesting they come out with Addictive Drums  3.  Addictive Drums 2 is fine the way it is, IMHO.

I'm talking about content.  I believe the last drum set was the Mallets.  My memory is they came out in 2016.   And not a single MIDI pak since then AFAIK.

How are Addictive Drums fans supposed to get excited about sale after sale after sale when they bought everything a long time ago? 

My point is that when the competition is bringing out a flood of new content and you sit on your *****...  you are going to get left behind.  Because when new buyers are making a choice of drum programs--they can count.  They can see the page of content at Toontrack.   And that makes me sad because I think Addictive Drums is terrific.

 

1 hour ago, abacab said:

The XLN product line may not have been updated very much lately, but they do regularly issue minor code updates for maintenance, so it is far from abandoned.

And since XLN is apparently co-owned by one of the most successful music producers and song writers in history, Max Martin, maybe they don't feel an urgent need to be on the bleeding edge of music tech. Their stuff just works. https://www.xlnaudio.com/about

Martin is the songwriter with the third-most number-one singles on the chart, behind only Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin

If Max Martin is a co-owner, why doesn't he curate a new drum set and MIDI pak for them? 

 

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1 hour ago, marled said:

On the contrary there are some developers that I have marked red, because I feel that their newest updates just bring instability, performance issues

Word. I think it was NI that really p!$$ed me off w/ Battery, when they removed a major feature from Battery 4 - didn't make the feature better, but just straight up removed it. I don't remember what that feature was now, I just remember it really making me mad and seeing on the forums that many shared that anger

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8 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

How long has Toontrack been making stuff and they have a single EDM pack?  Toontrack and XLN  have ceded the business for "new" styles of music (ie maybe only 20 or 30 years old)  to sample packs and ujam.

Good point. SD3 has some electronic drums in there but it's not as extensive as their sampled drums. I think it comes down to the difference in the drum types though - for (new sounding) electronic drums you probably want a drum synth engine more than a set of samples. Electronic drums are also different in that they more or less have the same timbre regardless of how hard you 'hit' them.

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5 hours ago, Christian Jones said:

What are the best Adpacks to get? I'd probably get the 6 pack, but maybe the 10 pack if I really needed all that. I know I want Reel Machines, and I like big hard rock and grunge doom type drum sounds, so I'm seeing that 70's kit there.

For that, in addition to both Fairfax 1 & 2, make sure you check out the Indie!

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17 minutes ago, chris.r said:

For that, in addition to both Fairfax 1 & 2, make sure you check out the Indie!

I have the Fairfax 1 & 2, as well as the Studio sets. But I think my favorite so far is the United Heavy. :)

I also have the Vintage Dry and the Session Percussion for more vintage and acoustic stuff. Some of the beats for the associated Session Percussion MIDIpak are very cool, particularly those from Opolopo!

Don't be afraid to mix & match the MIDIpaks with various kits, although some like the Session Percussion will have a different map from a standard kit.

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