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XLN Addictive Drums Sale


Larry Shelby

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11 hours ago, Last Call said:

Maybe some kick drum is salvageable.

For me the kick is the most weak point of AD2. There is almost no old style pure kick sound available. Everything sounds hippi hoppy ?! Short, hollow and too much room in the direct recordings!

I tried to improve several kicks with volume envelope and FX. I did not really succeed. You cannot heal poor recordings! If I compare the kicks of NI or SSD, they sound much more realistic! At least as I remember the kick sound of our drummer's kit many years ago! ?

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21 hours ago, abacab said:

Bottom line is that nobody listening to your music will know what drums you used in a mix. It all comes down to whatever is easiest for your workflow.

If it sounds good, it is good! :)

But that is often a fail when trying to impress your DAW buddies.  Play a track and never mention software used and that silences the critics.

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Idk, I hate the snare in You Could be Mine (GnRoses, love the song but I don't listen to it because of it), but love the snare in Some Kind of Monster, Frantic, All Within My hands (Saint Anger, Metallica, love those songs).

One was recorded in  10000000000 bucks studio, the other is a sample replacement, lol.

With my DAC and headphones, lots of stuff is clear to me: bad sound vs great sound. (Thank god I ditched output wise all these audio interfaces).

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I use AD2 a lot. But I don't love most of the toms in AD2 kits -- it reminds me of sound pros I've worked with that want the toms to have zero ring and basically have you tape them up. I greatly prefer the sound of Toontrack kits -- they sound more like the way I've historically tuned my drums, with a lot fuller sound. That said, AD2 often sits really well in a mix and I've had a bunch of compliments on drums sounded good using AD2. Although I never see anyone mention it as a favorite, I think the kits in NI's Studio Drums sound really good. If anyone here owns KOMPLETE and hasn't tried these out, they're worth a second listen.  

Edited by PavlovsCat
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8 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

I use AD2 a lot. But I don't love most of the toms in AD2 kits -- it reminds me of sound pros I've worked with that want the toms to have zero ring and basically have you tape them up. I greatly prefer the sound of Toontrack kits -- they sound more like the way I've historically tuned my drums, with a lot fuller sound. That said, AD2 often sits really well in a mix and I've had a bunch of compliments on drums sounded good using AD2. Although I never see anyone mention it as a favorite, I think the kits in NI's Studio Drums sound really good. If anyone here owns KOMPLETE and hasn't tried these out, they're worth a second listen.  

I don't know what drugs I was on, but I tested it today again, and loved ADDICTIVE DRUMS (sometimes I am a mo r on ??
Made a raw kit, no effects, played with the OH and Room Sends of the Toms (they were too much, specially on the Room Channel),
and realized there is a KEY for every tom that hits the side or the rim or whatever and that was what was driving me CRAZY!
(I am using a previously own made Tom riff, where the kits used didn't have this feature).
Finding where to change the Midi mapping to GM was irritating, although found it quite fast.
I've got like 6 kits or so, and tested so far 3 brands of toms, fave so far are the DW Collectors. Wacco ones are pretty nice too.Gretsch (blue) the least fave but
modding them with the Volumen envelope so they don't have too much attack was such a great solution.
My fave so far are the DW Collector's Series (I own a real DW Collector's Snare and Performance 24" Kick).

I find now that AD has weight (body) on their percussion pieces (Snare, Kick, etc).
Cymbals are kind of hit and miss so far, or maybe for what I want them in my head they suck, but don't suck per se.
Fave Hihats are Zildjian A Custom, the other cymbals are Zildjian (weird, I used to have a K set but didn't like them, switched all to Meinl).,
but here they sound very very good I think.

The most surprising thing to me was that Addictive Drums has aged gracefully, or not aged at all, meaning they still sound great these days.
And that it has this 3D thing that not even SD3 has (even when I like SD3 a lot, but it's like they are more like left and right) as if not only there is left and right but there is a lot of depth in it, maybe it's the room channel, or OH and Room combined, idk.

(I am crazy and I might change my opinion in the next 3 minutes, haha)

Edited by Last Call
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FWIW, many moons ago, I was wondering about the bit depth of XLN's samples. That info wasn't listed anywhere, so I contacted their tech support. Toontrack's EZD1 libraries are 16-bit. Everything after that is 24- bit. XLN told me that they use a proprietary variable bit depth algorithm,, removing bits (down to a min of 16) when they don't add any perceived audible value and adding bits (up to a max 24), when they do. They did that to minimize the size of the libraries.

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I had the most difficulty making the kick drums work but actually like the cymbals!  
 

I bought into the  AD2 whilst using SPlat years ago and found the MIDI to be EXCELLENT.   I just wish it could be pulled out of the proprietary XLN format and used elsewhere.  

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I do it all the time - sorry, I was really referring to having a browseable folder that I could integrated into SD3.  The Beats feature in AD2 is the second most user-friendly implementation of MIDI browsing I've seen after SD3 but it would be great to have all of these files searchable/browseable/auditionable in one place.

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16 hours ago, Marc Cormier said:

I had the most difficulty making the kick drums work but actually like the cymbals!  
 

I bought into the  AD2 whilst using SPlat years ago and found the MIDI to be EXCELLENT.   I just wish it could be pulled out of the proprietary XLN format and used elsewhere.  

There used to be a hidden page populated with the standard MIDI files for each XLN MIDI pack that you owned. That page disappeared at some point. I haven't purchased any new MIDI packs since it vanished, but I managed to download all of the ones I was entitled to. Unfortunately, I replaced my desktop with a laptop when I moved, and those files never made it to my new DAW. Does anyone know if that hidden page still exists somewhere on the XLN website? I just contacted their tech support and asked.

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Edited by John Maar
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