I would hesitate to criticise the recording techniques of a George Massenburg.... The kits will sound great.  The extra channels  are for the movie sound track crowd I believe.  
Let's see.... New drums, better workflow, more effects, able to stack drums without x drums, import your own samples, audio to midi conversion,  triggered replacement with mix control, a midi loop player, midi editor for velocity etc . Seems like a lot of bang for the buck to me.

scottfa
I would hesitate to criticise the recording techniques of a George Massenburg.... The kits will sound great.  

Maybe I missed the spot in the videos where you could clearly hear the drums.
I think I listened to the first video all the way through, skipped though a lot of the 2nd.
There's actually very little drums in either video.
 
I have a lot of respect for George Massenburg, just don't know if this is his finest work.
Recording & producing a sample library isn't the same skill set as producing an artist or album.
 
As for included SD3 content - for the moment I'm reserving final judgement until they post SD3 sound samples.
I've been disappointed too many times in the past by big hoopla, low content advertising campaigns to get excited.
 
BTW I'm not dissing SD3 - it looks like it has a lot of fine features.  Even if it turns out that I dislike the included audio content I might at some point pick it up if the price point is right. 

scottfa
I would hesitate to criticise the recording techniques of a George Massenburg.... The kits will sound great.  The extra channels  are for the movie sound track crowd I believe.  
Let's see.... New drums, better workflow, more effects, able to stack drums without x drums, import your own samples, audio to midi conversion,  triggered replacement with mix control, a midi loop player, midi editor for velocity etc . Seems like a lot of bang for the buck to me.

...and Electronic Drums included, mallets and brushes lots of midi included, stand alone version where you can build your track. There is a good bang for buck. There is a lot of samples even without the surround but the, still hasn't been on sale, Progressive SDX is 80GB or so. The drop from $209 to $147 helps my outlook on this a bunch.

Game changer! Been waiting for years for this. 
Lovely design. Totally awesome!
 
Just saw the artificial intelligence with the drum replacer features and it is well thought out. 
I guess I need another external drive to hold all the samples!
 

Hey, TheSteven!
I wouldn't read too much into the video. It is just a snippet. I have no doubt that those baffles were moved a lot during the recordings. Anyway, time will tell how the kits sound. Excited to get some info on using an e-kit with SD3. $150 sounds good to me...... 

msorrels
The FAQ says SD2 will stay put and is completely separate.

So the added bonus for me is my VST count goes up by one. 
 
 
yay

In trying to determine if $209 was reasonable for this upgrade, I figured I'd make a list of new features and total up what I'd be willing to pay for each of them.
 
Scalable UI, $30
Floating mixer window, $20
Readable labels, $50
Reversable samples, $5
Electronic kits, $0
Loss of 16-bit samples, $-50
No box option, $-50
Macros, $5
More MIDI loops, $1
New effects, $10 (could be more, we'll see)
Drum replacement, $10
Pitch envelopes, $2
"Hide unused busses", $30
Sample import, $20
Support for surround, $0
14 more kicks, 18 more snares, an additional 219 GB (!) of samples, $holy_crap$
 
Total: $OKYouGotMe$
 

Dave,
 
Get that CC out. It's even cheaper here too

And shakers - with a sequencer to shake 'em. That's a clincher for me.
 
Mitch Galagher from Sweetwater has a pretty good overview, that shows some of the new effects.
 

 

yorolpal
It's not just the upgrade cost.  It's getting yet another drive to house the dang thing!!  Looks like it's time to sell a bunch of stuff, get Jim to build me a new DAW that's even more hot**** fast with even more Terabytes of drive space and totally rethink my whole system.
 
Dern!
 

Oh hell, you're right!
 
I have 357 GB free on my samples drive, which I thought would be adequate for another dozen sample libraries. So this will end up costing me more than $209!
 
Maybe that $199 preloaded SSD is the way to go.