Groove Agent 4 is here!

Virtual instruments Groove Agent
14

I guess I am a little late to the party but after using GA SE 4 in CB 8 and viewing various videos on GA 4 (ClubCubase) , I decided to give the full version a try. Am I glad I did! I had mostly used NI Abbey Road or Studio drums and did not use previous versions of GA since the acoustic drums are my particular needs. Here is the reason I switched.

  1. Vintage kit/drums are really good - except maybe the low tom
  2. The workflow within Cubase is the deal breaker. Dragging patterns between GA and CB and having them saved with the project is the highlight of this.
  3. Automatic drum mapping is a real time saver. I had to find or manually create the NI drum maps.
  4. Having mixer control over the individual mics/drums is better than the NI approach
  5. Although I have not yet used them, having the percussion and beat options is a plus
  6. The Price - less than the cost of NI 70’s + 80’s drummers which was my other option.

What I would like to have in the next version:

  1. Alternate Toms for the Vintage Kit - maybe “Tea Towel” versions similar to NI Abbey Road 60’s drummer
  2. Alternate Cymbals similar to the snare and kick alternates.
  3. Three snares for each kit. For example in the Vintage Kit, a 50’s, 60’s and 70’s snare
  4. Additional velocity layers for each kit/drum. NI has GA beat in this department.
  5. Sync to Host - it would be nice to just hit the space bar to preview the current patterns in the song
  6. Remove the dongle requirement because it would be great to load this on my laptop to work on custom patterns without having to reach in the back of my desktop to get the dongle and have it stick out of my laptop. Come guys - NI has found another way to do this without the ridiculous dongle. To make things worse, I have iMac with a Cubase 7 license on another USB Dongle and using GA 4 will mean 2 dongles - since my GA 4 is on the CB 8 dongle.
  7. More stock patterns
  8. More styles - although I have only previewed this feature, it seems rather limited and not as nice as the Logic X drummer feature.

Thanks for all your effort in creating such a detailed and useful program - John