Hi all,
 
I've been really enjoying X3, especially Melodyne, comping and customizing colours. It's been very interesting reading about all of your experiences, tips and opinions, too.
 
I'm wondering whether or not it's worth it to download Addictive Drums because I just bought EZdrummer and many EZdrummer packs last month. I also own Abbey Road Drummer (60's, 70's, 80's), which I love but find take me lots of time and effort to use. I can't record very often and tend to forget any non-intuitive steps to take in set-ups, etc. I end up having to try this and that and look things up. I always get everything working eventually, but the next time, I'm likely to be back at square one (I know, I'm not the brightest bulb). So I sometimes end up frustrated and/or tired and uninspired when everything's finally all set up and I can finally play. I'd much rather still be energized and making music from a few minutes after I turn the computer on. EZdrummer fits the bill perfectly in that way, but I wonder what more experienced users think of the quality of the sound, etc.?
 
For anybody who might know, where do you think Addictive Drums would fall in terms of sound and ease of set-up and use in comparison to EZdrummer and/or Abbey Road Drummer? Do you think it might be beneficial in some way to take the time to learn how to use it?
 
Thanks for reading,
LJ
 

Addictie drums load fast and there's a lot of very usable presets in there. I'd say it's as plug and play as a piece of drum software is likely to get!

Thanks for the quick response, SvenArne. That sounds promising! I was also a bit intimidated by the posts about importing drum maps and putting the information in certain locations, but I guess I could figure that out.

I have ezdrummer with quite a few add-on packs as well. I definitely recommend downloading Addictive Drums. It's pretty straight forward and very user friendly IMO. 

You might also try setting up a project template with your drums all set up, that way you can load the template and you are ready to go.  There is a thread in the forum where someone has provided a template and drum for Addictive Drums (haven't tried it yet).
 
I don't get to record very often either, and I find that the project template allows me to get to the creative part very quickly.

 
From my short time experimenting with Addictive Drums, I would say absolutely go for it.
 
It's very intuitive, and the samples that come bundled with the X3 version are very good indeed.
 
I would say that sound-wise, it's definitely on a par with my Steven Slate stuff and my EZ Drummer kits and expansion packs. I don't think it's quite the match as yet for Superior Drummer 2, arguably quality-wise, but definitely not in terms of sophistication.
 
Once you've installed Addictive Drums, you might not find anything in it that's necessarily 'better' than EZ Drummer, but you'll certainly find some excellent and very useable sounds in there. And the control you get over the various sounds in AD is definitely more sophisticated than EZD.
 
 

It's included as part of the upgrade so I say go for it and try it out for yourself :)
 
We've used it here and we love it.

 
I would add that how I've been 'experimenting' is by opening a few projects in which I've used either EZD or Superior and then using the (excellent) Replace Synth command to drop AD in to play the MIDI.
 
In one unfinished song, I actually kept it there as it fits the song better than the Superior Kit I was using.
 
And as Andrew says, it's included so there's no reason not to try it out - as I say, it's not so much a question of whether it's 'better' than EZ or not, but it is different, and offers you some great new options.

I would also like to recommend you to take a look at expanding your midi drum pattern with groovemonkee.com. I bought a couple packs of drum pattern to use with Cakewalk's session drummer months ago. End up  that the same pattern is also available in Addictive Drum format and can be seen in AD's own browser.

Thanks very much to all of you for taking the time to reply. The consensus seems to be to go for it, so I will! I'll also try to make a project template and check out groovemonkee.com.
 
See you later and cheers,
LJ