Groove Agent has lost it's way

Groove Agent 2 & 3 were so good. I could start a song and have a decent drum and percussion vibe happening in minutes. GA3 did become a bit odd in it’s later period, but still worked. I looked forward to GA4. So I was very quick to throw down $100 for the upgrade. I have had to resort to Youtube to even begin to work out what is going on. And those tutorials are crap. They are mostly advertisements, followed by erratic jumping around to features without explaining what is happening. It’s a confusing interface. Imagine for a minute that your new drummer was GA3. “Give me a groove at 102 - sort of funky, straight ahead.” “Add some congas and shaker” Done. Now move to GA4. “Sorry - I need to load my Beat Agent and then a pattern and then edit the pattern then press play then” - forget it. Steinberg is now like the Hall Of Confusion" with this stuff. Hello? Any actual musicians in there guys? Played a gig? For money?

Same to me.

The concept, loved by so many users, is lost. The manual is the worst I ever read.

Maybe there are much more possibilities now, but I don’t need them for a quick layout.

For really good sounding drums I used and will use other software

best regards

+10.000

Totally agreed! GA4 is the worst music software I have come across in 10 years. It does not sound particularly good, the GUI is far from intuitive, the presets does not have names that are usable, the manual is not worth even opening. I seldom have to write a manual myself to use a program, but GA4 made me do it (available through Groove Monkee). But since you already own it and to get most out of it, spend and extra 20 and buy the tutorial from Groove3 (not the same company as Groove Monkee despite similarity in the name).

Agreed. So disappointing. I’ve posted several times looking for that midi out option, have yet to hear progress. Instead they release Cubase 8 that has Groove Agent 4 Se that is strangely similar to GA 4 ! I give up. Unless they fix this, I am ready to move on. No more money to Steinberg. I stop at Cubase 7.5.

Got to tell you that CB8 works very well here and is worth the money +. But I will never buy another Steinberg plugin. NEVER!

I hate GA4. I asked for my money back and was denied. Mathew and the product architects should be fired. They don’t even respond to these issues with meaningful solutions. They don’t give a poop. I liked GA3 for Jazz and blues, I just wanted better samples and better integration with Cubase. They completely abandoned the jazz/blues customers.
Steinberg seems hung up on this shitty HipHop /House/ Euro disco sound in almost everything they do. None of the presets in any of their products cater to quality acoustic basses, jazz brushes, or acoustic related instruments. On top of all this they are discontinuing support for GA3. Cubase still does a good job, but I’ve invested more than a few thousand dollars in their various upgrades and add-on products. Halion 5, Halion Se, Halion Se2, GA4, GA4se. What a bunch of confusing bullshit. I would like to abandon the platform, but at this point don’t want to get started with something new and loose my investment. They’re a disappointing company in many ways. If you are looking to make an investment I would seriously consider another platform if your a musician who wants to record jazz style music. This platform seems to moving more toward a recording engineers needs.

I agree 100% in what you write here, except for I still think Cubase is the best platform. I have 4 other DAWs (Logic one of them) and I do not think they come close to Cubase. I have also worked on ProTools and have had more problems there than with Cubase.

Cubase has the VST standard that not all DAWs have, you would however keep most of your investment if you switch to another VST supporting DAW. I am now looking into Bitwig and so far it looks promising. The VST standard is what opens up for most 3. party pluggs.

When it comes to the Steinberg plugins I find them all inferior to 3. party pluggs. I can not understand why people buy Steinberg pluggs when the market i flowing with alternatives that excells in almost every way. But I was fooled too. Bought GA4. Though it was a 64 bit enhancement of GA3. GA3 was not great at all but had its place in Jazz and some ballads. What a dissapointment GA4 was. Nothing, NOTHING of the things that defended GA3s (or even GA2s) place in my plugg set up were there. Those “attributes” present in GA 4 looses to Addictive drums, Slate and Toontrack. I still use GA2/GA3 through VST link on an old computer. GA2 is 10(?) years old and still better than GA4. As previouly stated: I will not get fooled agian.

Hi,

I have been torn between GA4 and EZ2 Drummer. I watched many You Tube videos on the Latter and it really does look excellent. But watching GA4 videos, it seems very confusing indeed (eg) :-

…and I also did not get along very well with the GA4 TRIAL period.

Ta,

Paul

What I liked best about GA3 was the semi “artificial intelligence.” You could pick a style easily, complexity, put fills that varied every 8 bars, hit play and either record or jam with the drummer. It was just a little cumbersome when it came to setting up intro’s and outros when it was time to lay down a track. Not impossible but I was hoping GA4 would continue that “ease of use” approach, yet be able to drag intros and outros easily and convert the midi track to audio. Cubase 8 provides the rendering now but I don’t see how GA4 can achieve the ease of use with the “drum machine” style interface. Very Klunky. Personally I have no real need for 4 agents simultaneously. Bringing up one agent chokes my system. Oh, I forgot, its also not very efficient and eats memory and CPU. Has crashed Cubase many times. My PC is older but meets the minimum documented requirements. I’m going to shut up about GA4 and just use GA3, EZ drummer, and loops, like I did before.

If you have not bought either I would strongly suggest EZDrummer. It is by far the better of the two. I have been using both a long time now. Well, “using” GA4 is perhaps not the right term. “Tried to use and given up” is the right term. Entering the Toontrack world of EZDrummer is like playing in premier league compared to some obscure club just founded by fat 40 year olds trying to play football.

I think GA4 is such a bad product that the best advice to Steinberg is to pull it from the market and come back next year with something new (in the direction of GA2/3).

Thank you Red Rum,

I appreciate that. I have pretty much blown out GA4 I guess. Which is a real shame because I like trying to stay loyal to a company and to keep everything under the same umbrella. I am very disappointed with what I have seen of GA4 so far and I would have given anything for them to have based the GUI etc on GA2/2. They have just taken off in a meaningless and complex direction for some bizarre reason!?

Yes, EZ2 does look the real deal and member LBro has also given me personal assurance on this. The only other VST which keeps popping up is JAMSTIX (RE : ShadowFax [who again has been great here]) and so I am going to spend a couple of days checking that one out before making a FINAL decision after Xmas.

Getting a bloody £100 SPEEDING TICKET last week did not help much with the matter! :imp: lol

Best,

Paul

OT: If you opt for the Speed Awareness Course instead of points, try not to refer to it as the ‘Speed Camera Awareness Course’. They don’t like it! :wink:

Jamstix is a toy for kids compared to EzDrummer. However I would like to mention that if you lay down your own beats/grooves and don’t use premade grooves at all, you should have a look at Ministry of Rock. It is expencive (also contains guitars and basses), CPU heavy and does not contain a MIDI player for premade grooves, but it is by far the best sounding soft drum around.

Hi WH,

I paid the fine and my sister copped for the 3 x points.

But what I did do, is you can request a copy of the UNMANNED CAMERA PHOTOGRAPH. Also, you can ask for a copy of the certificate of when the camera was last CALIBRATED (which not a lot of people know about)! If it was not calibrated within the last 12 x months, then the fine is void! But, both of my attempts here did not result in my favor.

Cheers,

Paul

Hi Paul,

You might want to remove your last comment. Remember, an MP went to jail last year for doing that! :wink:

Hiya RR,

Not heard of ‘Ministry Of Rock’ ever thanks (though please note my preferred genres as below).

Well, I would be looking to put grooves/compositions/arrangements together in the way that I had hoped GA4 would have favored. So having the same kind or regular GUI, but with a Drag&Drop (and song-form creator) facility like EZ2 has.

I mostly like Jazz/Latin/Funk/Pop and all that… Here are a couple of snippets if you are interested and if it helps to clarify (I am still very much a novice with Cubase, so please forgive any audio glitches etc!). I would most probably be happy with the Preset Intro/AABA/Outro inclusions of the software :-

Best,

Paul

WW,

Ha ha, a bloody COPPER on the Steiny forum! pmsl :smiley:

No - not a copper. Just making sure any that are don’t see it.

I’ve never used Groove Agent before, but I bought GA4 recently and really like it.
I don’t see any reasons for not being able to load any samples into it that one wishes.
I use GA4 sometimes, then different samples from NI Maschine…whatever I fancy at the moment and for different flavours.

WH,

Groove Agent = Secret Agent = Copper ! lmaf :laughing:

Paul