I've done a few songs with drum loops. Mostly I use one of the many drum programs I have (EZD, Superior, BFD3, Steven Slate SSD, Addictive, Platinum Samples Accent, Jamstix and libs in Kontakt/EastWest) and I have used live drums and enhanced them with Slate's Trigger2 or Drumagog.
 
Loops felt the most limiting to me (as others have noted here).
 
But whatever works for the OP, bless his heart, he should keep doing what works for him.

I don't really understand using audio drum loops, especially if SD/EZD/AD etc are available.
They all have kit/mix presets so you don't have to nit-pick with settings if you don't want to.  Then you can feed MIDI clips from the various libraries.
To me that seems to be the same functionality as an audio loop, except that you can edit the notes if you want to.

Like the OP says, you can slice and dice loops to build your own patterns, but I personally have never used loops, the PRV is so familiar and comfortable for me that I can't imagine doing it any other way, except for maybe hiring a drummer and telling him/her what to do. 
 
I guess it's all in what you're comfortable with. The better you know and understand a given tool or technique, the more the tools get out of your way and allow you to focus on the music. In that regard, if loops do it for you, that should be where you work. On the other hand, I suspect (but I don't know for sure) that MIDI gives you some capabilities that are harder to manage with loops.
 
For example, I think Addictive Drums for one is pretty smart about using different samples for the same piece of kit based on velocity settings, which is one area that I would think MIDI might be superior to loops. I monkey with velocity all the time and would miss that feature an awful lot if loops didn't allow me to do the same thing.

they are both just tools. use either or both. 
kitchen utensils are also good.

Drums on Demand has some great sounding stuff (Billy Martin is my favorite drummer - and he created some of their content - such as the retro 60s loops).  However, I would think if I limited my music creation to their packs, it would be expensive pretty quickly.
 
Working in a MIDI groove environment with a "player" like EZ Drummer or AD means all you need to buy is more MIDI grooves to get new material to work with.  This also means you can create homologous sounding tracks as they are all playing through the same "kit."  If you are stuck with loops, it can become very difficult to create an "album" that feels like it was recorded using the same kit and the same way.  
 

The biggest reason not to use loops is it severely limits your ability to mix them in context. EQ and compression would apply to the loop as a whole rather than the individual tom, kick, snare, etc. Having said all of that, if you aren't mixing for release and are doing this for fun, there is no reason to not use loops. If the song sells, the studio would hire a real drummer anyway...
 
Regards,
Dan

There's two words I hate to use and I guess I'm about to use them both here. I still have ProTools on an Apple MacBook that had the good Superior Drummer template on it. I'll see if it's still there and play with it some and see how I like it.
It does sound like you guys who are serious about drums all prefer midi and these various drum programs mentioned.
Thank you again. This has been a very informative thread for me and may alter my opinion and use of "computer" drumming.
DS

There's a role for loops, there's a role for more realistic drum parts and there's a role for the more "traditional" kind of drum machines like the 808 and 909 and their more sophisticated modern descendants such as the Elekton drum machines.

It all depends on what you want the music to sound like and what kind of feel you want it to have. For a genre like blues it can be very hard to find a loop that fits a particular song or guitar riff because subtle timing and emphasis differences are so important for the right feel. Even someone like Bo Diddley who basically used one riff most of the time played it with different nuances for different songs and the drums have to lock with the guitar and bass or the whole thing becomes a mess.

For four-on-the-floor kick-based electronic styles loops can provide parts that fit quite well, though I prefer to use a Machinedrum because it gives me more options without being too complicated and it keeps things musically simple which I find helps prevent arrangements getting too cluttered.

It has to be said that programming a reasonably realistic drum part that sounds like a human played it can be very time consuming indeed. Which is where algorithmic sample players such as Jamstix or Logic Pro's Drummer instrument which can "invent" complex parts that can be tied to other instruments for "feel" can come in handy. Though even they often need a bit of MIDI hand-editing if e.g. a cymbal crash is wanted in a particular place.

I've still got Logic Pro X from when I was still planning to use Apple. I can check it out. I'm not opposed to composing drum tracks on other machines and importing them. But like you said, this can be a very tedious and time consuming process, and even more so if you don't have a passion for it.
Good ideas on here for sure! Thanks guys!
DS

DS, what type of music do you do? If it's a style I enjoy, I would likely do drum parts for you for free..  I have a full studio and have played drums for about 40 years. I do this a lot, all that's required is an mp3 or wav of the song, without drums, and the tempo it was recorded in. I import the file into sonar set to the right tempo so it lines up with the grid. I send you back individual drum tracks. PM me if you're interested. You can hear lots of tunes I've done via my bandcamp link in my sig. 
 
gabo