Funny you guys mention what you've mentioned.
I've been watching those overviews quite a bit to help myself get a grasp of what I like from each.
The fun part comes in when you talk about the kits.
At the studio last week, we ended up with a quick test kit that we all liked for a quick example of what we can do with this. My sound guy, Aaron, has the complete lineup. He gets paid to do drum replacements on albums and such, so they have a Lot more than just AD2. He just recommended it to be because of much of what Chaser has said about the niceties of AD2's small resource footprint.
We used Black Velvet for everything except that he really liked a kick from United Heavy. I will be digging much deeper when I make the final default kit.
To get there, he first mapped out my Sample Pad Pro sends.; When we got to what was connected directly to the trigger inputs of the DM10, AD2 already had the plan.
I voiced my opinion of not liking the sounds I was hearing - not knowing at the time that the signal from the PA to the in-ear box was too hot and overdriving the signals, even though the volume was fine in my phones.
He told me to play anyway. As I did so, my singer who owns most of everything noticed the hot feed and fixed that as I played. The magic of these very nicely recorded acoustic drums filled my ears. As this was a hybrid kit, I only rarely heard the AD2 china and cowbell, though they came through my phones perfectly mixed with my acoustic Sabians and Zildjians.
Okay, I had no idea that he was recording my thumping around. Luckily I was playing something cool to hear back.
So he instructs me to get out from behind the kit while he played back the recording.
The next thing was very cool to behold, and sold me on wanting to take this direction right away:
Aaron explained to us that, not only did he record audio (WAV) of the performance, but he also recorded via midi - both done using Reaper.
So he initiates playback of the midi performance. Wow. Listen to that wonderful meter I pulled off when I was just listening for what was going on!!! LOL
Playing a bit of a rhythmic solo being sure to nail everything available to me, it made the perfect thumps for what came next. Aaron started changing the instruments in real time within the AD2 interface.
AD2 has amazing features for sound and 'feel' shaping for everything individually, and the many presets are great for getting an entire kit as close as possible before making individual tweaks if needed.
My singer and I agreed that this is deserves further exploration - but I'm pretty much sold on going this route - it'll be really nice for getting the perfect sound and mix with the live band, but will also fit the bill perfectly for the movie soundtrack I'm about to orchestrate. It just feels like a big win Win to me.
So when I was messing around with the demo version of Fairfax at home on this laptop, the last major part that I discovered was the "Beats" page - something that I've been purposely ignoring since I'll be performing the beats.
I'm glad I came to my senses and checked it out!
The Beats page contains a very large list of great midi performances to try out when setting up the kit. I am very impressed with what come with the free standalone AD2 - I mean, there are a lot of very nicely played arrangements!
As I mentioned, I was using the demo version of Fairfax (1) and that only includes the kick and snare as far as drums go. Very limited. But the cool thing is this: Since at the demo stage we have very little to no instruments to choose from, in order to keep messing around in demo mode, we begin playing with all of the various ways to alter the behavior of each instruments sound and dynamics, etc., A really cool, yet not overly-complicated set of tools that are really fun to mess with!
I have a gig coming up, so as much as it would be nice to wait for a sale, I'll be getting at least the Custom collection very soon to get started, but I'm fairly certain that I'll be able to scrape up enough to go ahead and begin with the Custom XL collection and start with six full AdPaks, six midi packs, and six individual instrument packs.
I checked it out and that will still leave plenty of stuff left for me to want to grab when sales arise!
Thursday night we go in again and dial in my knowledge of running this stuff (as a backup for when Aaron isn't present) as well as to try removing all of the acoustic elements and go back to an all e-drum setup. I love the stealth of a quiet backstage!
