I would like to hear your opinions and comments please!
Am thinking about purchasing either GROOVE AGENT4 or NATIVE INSTRUMENTS’
STUDIO DRUMMER. interested to hear from anyone who has experience and knowledge of
both as to which you think is best and for what reasons.
Thank you in advance to ALL who reply!!
Best wishes to all!!
GA 4 is trying to be all in one drum solution. You get acoustic kits, percussion kits, beat agent, you can play and edit patterns, create custom kits using your own samples.
Also you can slice loops and use it as a simple sampler.
Lots of flexibility and things you can do with it.
NI Studio drummer is a acoustic drum kit, but sampled rather well. When compared to GA acoustic kits, Studio drummer kits sound better in my opinion. It comes with lots of midi grooves for different styles which are quite good as well.
I have both and I use GA most of the time. For me it’s easier to work with, more versatile and I find it easier to mix it in even though Studio drummer sounds better on its own (acoustic kit).
The previous poster summed it up pretty well, I too think (in isolation) the Studio Drummer kits do sound a bit nicer - but I find it easier to find room for GA4 in the mix. GA is a jack of all trades (and a bit harder to use IMHO) if you’re into sound design and layering sounds GA4 is the way to go, if you just want a drum machine (in the simplest terms!) then Studio Drummer is your tool. I do get a few annoying quirks with NI drum romplers sometimes - the most annoying ones are the volume zeroing when I load a project and output bus assignments reverting to a single bus - but as I generally only separate the kick drum out (mixing the kit in the product) it’s not too much of a hassle.
I have all the NI drum products and Studio Drummer is the best all rounder in their product list - what is really annoying is the MIDI mapping changes from product to product! Why? How daft! 