What are the advantages of using Jamstix over or with Addictive Drums? I'm not very familiar with Jamstix. I have a lot of problems getting phrasing on drum parts with AD2 and it taxes out my CPU. I spend more time on drums than all of the other instruments combined because I wind up going measure by measure in PRV to get the feel right for the song. Anyone use Jamstix here? Thanks for any info!

Jamstix is an absolutely amazing program but you have to invest a lot of time learning how to use it. It wasn't created by a large commercial team so isn't as "polished" as something like Addictive Drums (the interface could use a lot of improvement), but that in no way reflects the kind of results you get out of it. 
 
It's basically as close as you'll get to having a real drummer without, you know, having a real drummer. You can specify and tweak every aspect of the performance, from just giving it a style and a drummer model and letting it do its thing, all the way to programming the hits and accents yourself and letting the drummer play around them. You can fine tune the timing from behind the beat, to on the beat, to ahead of the beat. Every element of the style is adjustable and fine tunable. You can work with the resolution of entire song sections all the way to individual bars. 
 
There are tons of styles and you can add more with expansion packs. There are also tons of drummers each with their own interpretation of the styles. You can mix and match everything. 
 
If you already have a ton of MIDI drum patterns lying around, you can import these into Jamstix as a style and let the drummers do their own interpretations of that pattern with endless variation, just like a real drummer. This to me is one of the most amazing aspects of it. I have loads of Groove Monkey patterns and Jamstix breathes life into them. 
 
You can also drag bars into a MIDI track in your DAW and edit them there if you want. It's just totally versatile - any approach is doable. Jamstix comes with lots of drum kits and you can buy extra ones. They're certainly not the best kits out there, but they're OK. But what you're probably going to want to do is use Jamstix to "play" your favorite drum VST's (via MIDI out) like AD, EZ drummer etc. It has mappings for a lot of the major ones, but it's pretty easy to set up a custom mapping. I've gotten it playing some pretty wacky Battery kits and the results are amazing. I think most people use it for "natural" drumming styles, but I've gotten some great results using it for electronic styles as well. 
 
The manual ain't the best. It took me 2 or 3 reads before I "got it" -- the basic concept of how Jamstix works is confusing at first (at least it was to me), but after a couple of readings it starts to make sense. I'm still nowhere near an expert but I understand it enough to get things moving and tweak things from there. If you know a lot about drumming (which I don't) then the various style widgets are going to make a lot more sense. 
 
Anyway it's great, a fine addition to anyone's drum toolkit, and it will revolutionize your drum parts if you work with MIDI. I love it. I also have Jamcussion which is potentially great but I think the design and the documentation leave a lot to be desired - I have found it confusing and troublesome. I really wish Rayzoon would revamp and update it. 

It's light on the CPU.
 
Usable as just a regular drum synth, too, although it doesn't have the same depth as high-end drum samplers, e.g. gobs of round-robins and articulations and alternate microphone positions.
 
Customer support is excellent.
 
The percussion pack is my go-to for tambourines and shakers and such.

I am constantly amazed by just playing in parts with a click track, and the after all tracks are there , I will load in Jamstix and just let it do it's thing. It always comes up with something pretty cool, and lines up with the track pretty well. Some minor tweeks with where the fills land, and I have a great start to flesh out the rest.

I want to try the demo, but it wont be recognized by Sonar. It's there in the plug in manager but not in the list when I go to insert it. So I am not able to try it yet.

Grem
I want to try the demo, but it wont be recognized by Sonar. It's there in the plug in manager but not in the list when I go to insert it. So I am not able to try it yet.

Ralph at Rayzoon should be able to sort that out for you. 

sharke
 
Ralph at Rayzoon should be able to sort that out for you. 

Thanks Sharke, I give that a try. Maybe I need some kind of code or something.

I really need to learn the program better.  Sometimes the "real drummer" is one I wish I could play with for real.  Others the "real drummer" is more like the guy you jammed with once who has good time but played stuff that didn't really fit with what everyone else was doing.  
 
There are definitely the times it works like magic and that's what I keep it around for.

Magic Russ
I really need to learn the program better.  Sometimes the "real drummer" is one I wish I could play with for real.  Others the "real drummer" is more like the guy you jammed with once who has good time but played stuff that didn't really fit with what everyone else was doing.  
 
There are definitely the times it works like magic and that's what I keep it around for.

I think the key to getting exactly what you want is to really learn the ins and outs of the styles and their parameters. It often sounds great when you just set up a basic groove and hit play, but if you want it to gel with your song then it takes a bit of work. I remember one time on the Rayzoon forum someone asked Ralph how to go about getting a drum beat that sounded like the intro to Babylon Sisters by Steely Dan, and he obliged with some very specific instructions. I didn't try it out but the guy replied by saying something along the lines of "wow, that's spot on!"

 
Bill, maybe shoot Herb (Guitarhacker) a PM and pick his brains - he knows all there is to know about Jamstix.