Which way is GA going?
Full of hope I threw in a bunch of bucks to get the update of Groove Agent, GA 5 after having enjoyed GA 1, 2 and 3 (which doesnt work at all on a recent mac computer today since they are outdated now (which says something of the longetivity of Steinberg products). I was totally disapointed with version 4 when it arrived some years ago. I may be said that the download of the trial version didn´t work in the first place, and Steinberg now refuses to accept return of GA allthough it useless for me.
I dont know why this makes me so mad. I think it is the serious need of a true drummer plugin for the serious musician. I also know there are sensible people at Steinberg with good intentions that I dont want to hurt, but there are so much here that is nothing but kids crap.
Now 2018 I thought Steinberg ”today at least must have come to their senses” regarding GA, and took a chance to buy the update.
But no, not at all. GA 5 is just as far off for any serious musician as before. In the ads for GA5 Steinberg says it is supposed to serve many different genres. That is true only to a certain degree. I find it in practice totally mainly geared for the aspiring young teenager doing hiphop, techno, punk or whatever of similar sort. If you are looking for nuances look elsewhere my friend. This is not for someone playing drums, this is for those beating them!. The sound estethics of GA reminds me of ”as many and as hard hits per beat as possible” This is what you get evrytime you are to try out a new ”groove”, before you have manually tweaked every single button down to something more human. (it´s like evrytime you turn on the radio it has to be on full blast!)
Look at the so called ”media bay” or browser database which is an absolutely nonfunctioning system to my mind. This is maybe actually the most senseless concept of Steinberg in the whole of Steinbergs lineup, allthough the original idea might be well meaning, but it just doesn´t work, and it never really has either. It jumps from one menu to another and redraws in the spur of a second until you go mad. Still Steinberg stubbornly sticks to it. crazy! Of all the myriads of choices there is still no way to follow any logical structure in picking your genre, style, beat or part in the flow of verse or chorus. Grooves being classified by names like ” The London way”, ”young and proud” or ”College bound”. Is this for kindergarten, one might ask.
Have Steinberg not discovered that a drum hit consists of many parts where the striking agent plays an important role, the stick, hand or brush or mallet, but there are no mallets here and definetly no brushes and most drums and mixes has the same (loud” velocity. For an all round musician working in many different genres GA 5 strikes me as totally useless and a complete waste of time and money, I am sad to say. This makes me finally having had it with most things Steinberg, I doubt there will be use keeping up even Cubase on my system. GA 5 is not a serious tool to my mind. And definetely not suited for many different genres.