Addictive Trigger Review

XLN recently had a 50% off deal, so I picked up a copy of Addictive Trigger. I do a lot of drum work, drum triggering and layering with AD2. 
 
First let me say that AT (Addictive Trigger) is a useful tool and I will use it quite often. However, there are a few shortcomings that are a bit disappointing.
 
In the past, my method of triggering AD2 sounds was to use AudioSnap to create a midi file for each close miked drum track. This is an art unto itself that I've gotten pretty good at. Using gates and various techniques to capture an accurate midi file. Then the midi track is routed to AD2 to trigger the sounds. 
 
In AD2, I have a number of adpaks for various kits and have created many kits of my own from the AD2 samples. 
 
Addictive Trigger
 
The object of AT is to avoid all the difficulties of using AudioSnap, copying midi data to a track and triggering AD2. AT is inserted on a track as an FX and detects the hits in a similar fashion to Sonar's drum replacer, although more detailed and effective. Then you load a kit piece into AT and use it for the sound. There are sections for editing the sound and applying FX in AT that are consistent with the same screens in AD2. Then there is a "blend" button to blend between the triggered sound and the audio from the track. 
 
The hit detection is much better than drum replacer, and you can make use of what they call "fingerprints" to detect the hits. Find a hit that is below the threshold, select it, and assign it to a fingerprint. Then AT will trigger on anything with that fingerprint even if it's below the threshold. You can also make a fingerprint a "negative" so if you have a kick or tom that is louder than your threshold, you can select it and assign it to a fingerprint and make it "not detect" anything with that fingerprint. The fingerprints use spectrum characteristics to determine if it matches or not and there is a slider to adjust how close it has to match before it matches the fingerprint. 
 
All this makes it very useful for detecting transients, possibly the best transient detection I've used to date. And being able to immediately assign that detection to a sound and blend it with the audio track is a real time saver. 
 
However, there are a few problems (aren't there always!). The first, and most significant problem in my mind, is that you can't use presets from AD2! By this I mean, if you have an AD2 presest which contains a full kit with FX and tweaks, for example the Studio Prog ADpak contains a preset called "DW Beat." You can't use that preset's sounds directly in AT! You can use AT to export midi and create a midi track that subsequently triggers the AD2 kit. AND you can use the kitpieces from the Studio Prog ADpak and use the FX inside AT to recreate (painfully) the preset for that drum in AT. But you can't just use your already created presets from AD2.
 
Creating a midi track from AT is a bit easier than doing it with AudioSnap and the fingerprint algorithm makes it as good if not better than doing it with AS. Which means getting my AD2 presets triggered is possible and AT is useful for that. But it's not as convenient as just using AT directly with the sound. 
 
The other issue, minor in my mind, is that you can't use your own samples. But that's really more of and AD2 limitation, as it doesn't allow the easy use of 3rd party sounds. There are work arounds for sure, both for getting sounds in AD2 and of course there are many ways to trigger an audio sample from midi so you can use an exported midi track for that. 
 
All in all, it was a good purchase. The beat detection is very good, the samples from all your AD2 kitpieces are available. And even though you can't use the AD2 presets, the screens to modify the kit piece sounds are the same as AD2. So you can recreate the AD2 preset sounds if you take down all the settings and create a new preset in AT with those settings. Or you can export midi from AT to a new midi track that triggers AD2. 
 
However there are still improvements that XLN can make. Hopefully they will make the integration between AT and AD2 a bit tighter in the future. 
 
gabo