I’m a bit of a drum freak. I own Guru, Battery 3, Maschine and BFD and I’m always thinking about getting something new!
However, I’m on a very poor student budget! I’m looking for some hard/crisp drum sounds for the dance/electro/dub/hard-house genre and there’s so many to choose from (and I obviously already have quite a selection).
A friend of mind showed me one of the Vengeance Club sound libraries which I though were awesome. However, they’re about £60 each.
So I looked around and found the Wave Alchemy Drum Tools 01 bank which is £20 right now. What’s your opinions? How does this stack up against the vengeance stuff in terms of versatility and professionality?
Also looking at Sonic Couture Konkrete 2 which is £20 now too!
The Vengeance stuff is good, but it’s almost too good - if you buy a pack you’ll start to hear it on every commercial release going and realize there are a lot of lazy producers out there, only the price keeps it from being in every production heheh! (Although, it would be worth buying a pack to faithfully re-produce that ‘2010 Sound’ much like you can do with those 80’s DJ vinyl sample packs today).
At the moment I’m liking Hy2rogen’s Full Phat drums: http://www.soundstosample.com/info/Hy2rogen/Full_Phat_Drums/753
… as all the hits are pretty much tuned so it’s a breeze to scale the kick to the bass root etc. and no-one has rinsed it to death… yet. So, fresher than V but only £12
Soundstosample are pretty good at releasing freebies to get you interested in the full releases, I’ve bought quite a few from them, plus Sharrooz is one of the business partners. He’s a great example of how to succeed in this weird music climate, check him out and be inspired.
… all those weird beeps & clicks at the start of Tocadisco’s remix of The Egg were Vengeance samples. Now if you hear them you immediately think ‘The Egg’ rather than ‘Oh, that’s fresh!’
Either be very quick or just mangle familiar samples beyond all recognition
How do you like Battery 3 and Maschine? Is it sutible to use for house/tech house/techno/electro/deep house?
Can I do with Groove Agent one the same as with Battery 3 or does Battery 3 has more useable options?
Well for me I have not used Groove Agent much, the features seem to very limited compared to Battery. I don’t want to talk bad about it , I am sure it does what it does just fine, however, Battery has a detailed and far more sophisticated interface which allows for much much more control of the samples.
Comparing Battery to Grove Agent is like comparing a bus to a sportscar, yes they are both a way to get you there, but the sportscar has many more “comforts”.
well I’ve not really used Groove Agent that much as like I say, I’d always used Guru, then battery when I got it and now Maschine also.
To be honest, for more dance based stuff you may want to look at FXpansion Geist (which is the successor to Guru) as I always found Guru good for quick programming and quirky beats, especially for IDM etc…
Battery is a great sample player and is really very expandable and I would rate it over Groove Agent one in terms of library quality and functionality.
If you go to Maschine, you get even more control but then you’re venturing into the ‘MPC’ world. Back in the day, if you werent using an 808/909 you were most likely using an MPC instead. Also, the upcoming Maschine update includes VST hosting! So some of my productions may be completely done outside of Cubase!
Having said that, Maschine is a far greater investment than battery. Maschine is £500 but I think you can get Battery for £80 now.
I would defintely check out the Battery 3 demo on the Native Instruments Website and give it a try.
Thank you for youre reactions.
If i’m correct Groove Agent One has not changed in Cubase 6, so I will check out FXpansion Geist and Battery 3. Battery looks very user friendly
Cool. Yeah Geist can be a bit imposing. Although If you want similar features to Maschine then Geist would be a good compromise. Its about £100 more than Battery 3 though
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