I noticed bayoubill commented that AD2 is more CPU hungry than AD1. Depending on how hungry could be a deal breaker for me as well. I may come off of the fence and cough up the money in the long run. I just had to grumble for a while about digging in my wallet again. The wife wouldn't be too happy about that either. Hee-hee!
This has been a great thread and I think we all learned a lot about XLN. Funny how upgrades can be great advertising on their own.

I said I didn't know if AD1 paks would work with the free version of AD2, though It seems unlikely. If you upgrade, AD1 paks are upgraded to AD2. It seems that the Retro Pak has been divided up into several other Paks though.
 
I think AD2 sounds much better. IMO, it has more depth and AD1 sound thinner. I may not get it close to done until Monday or so but I'm working on upgrading a project to AD2. I have a project using the Brushes AD Pak and I'm looking forward to updating that to AD2.

bayoubillI upgraded to AD2 and got the upgrades for all I had in AD1 free. I wish I had to money for Fairfax. The demo sounds very nice. I like AD2 cuz it gives more choices on an already great sounding soft synth. Different engine and takes more CPU than AD1.

BOLD: me too....
I've been trying to get familiar with the AD1 free with X3 also and (somehow) got through the AD2 online installer process.
I like AD1's kits and although AD1 works just fine with little to no latency AD2 is a different story.
While trying AD2 there is a weird sort of latency and the patches have this fuzzy, unclear sound.
It's hard to explain but AD1 does not exhibit this at all....I'm baffled by the AD2 behavior.
Now that I think about it I am using the Delta44 ASIO drivers (up to date according to device manager) rather than ASIOFORALL which could also be factor.
Don't know if the comment about the CPU demands are the cause or not as mentioned by another poster.
 
Admittedly, my system is a less than ideal but X3 works well given my work flow and the fact I'm not a power user like many here.
I know I'll have to upgrade the DAW eventually as it's only a very meager (8 year old) Sempron 2800+ 1.6ghz w/2 gig memory from the Sonar 5.0 days.
 
A good day to all....

I gotta share a trick I figured out with Addictive Drums that I really like.  If you do hybrid orchestral stuff....
 
grab one of the midi, tom tom heavy songs from AD, swap out the AD Snare and Toms with big Orch toms from a Orch library like Albion or 8dio.  Do this how ever you'd like (copy and paste, or drum map) and viola!   You have yourself a great perc track much like Damage or Storm Drums.  Albion has a metals percussion patch that I can either swap or blend with the AD cymbals.
 
If you are doing music library stuff you have got to try this, 

gkephart
 
As for the upgrade there are just barely enough features that justify it (much like every Sonar or NI or fill-in-the blank software company upgrade)...

I think Sonar does pretty significant upgrades, actually. The X3 upgrade gave Melodyne integration with Melodyne Essential, seriously reworked comping, VST3 support (I can run PadShop Pro now), much better video handling, and the QuadCurve flyout with spectrum analyzer. Given that Melodyne Essential alone is $100, getting all that other stuff for $50 is a pretty good deal...in some ways I think the comping alone almost justifies that. But then you throw in Addictive Drums, the Blue Tubes effects, and all the other enhancements, and I think there was a lot to justify the $150.

UNBELIEVABLE! My birthday is tomorrow. My wife informs me to check my XLN account. SHE BOUGHT THE UPGRADE FOR MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT! She's been snooping around and heard all the hubbub going on about the forum thread and figured that it would be a good present. Well, I guess I'll have to shut up now. Maybe that was what she wanted.
I can't help but wonder what this is gonna cost me for her birthday.

I thought I would be exited about being able to us both the main outputs as well as the individual. It doesn't sound right or, I need to tweak some more.

Happy Birthday Sidroe
 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FchMuPQOBwA
 
 

Well, I downloaded the infamous AD2 upgrade. After a couple of hours of downloads and playing around the verdict is in. Great upgrade. Like all the beat features but like I said before, I write my own so that won't help me much but it's nice to have it. Sound quality somewhat improved but not a HUGE difference. I do like the Studio kits. They sound pretty good. First negative! This thing is CPU hungry. Even on my i7 this thing is sucking power. Superior doesn't even break a sweat in the same project. I substituted AD2 in it's place and my first core shot sky high and bounced around in the red! I guess it's a good thing I spent the last week pulling Superior in to my performance tracks. I will try raising my buffers to see if it will play nicer but I am concerned about having higher latency when trying to record.
Overall, I'm fairly pleased with AD2 and I can see where I will continue to use AD1 and AD2. Lastly, I still think the price was a little steep. I do have to keep reminding myself that I got AD1 for free. I guess it's just fair to have paid for the upgrade. I thank my lovely wife for a very, very shocking surprise for my birthday. I thank my lucky stars I have her. 

BTW, Thanks BENT! I really do appreciate the thought. I honestly got a kick out of the video. I downloaded it and will pull it out for birthdays from now on. THANKS, my friend!!!