# Addictive Drums or Superior Drummer?



## Iheartmidgetbooty

Both sound really great. Just having troubles discerning the two, so I need some help. Which one should I get?


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## thedrummerkid

Well I went from EZDrummer to Addictive. I like it a lot, but for a proper kick, you will have to blend with samples (I've heard you have to for SD as well). I don't feel qualified to answer on SD's part, but I really love AD (especially once you send out each channel).


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## SymmetricScars

I've been using AD for a few years now. It's not bad, though I've never gotten a snare sound that I truly love. The samples are pretty damn tweakable though. But all in all, SD is probably the better product, in my opinion.


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## Iheartmidgetbooty

I've been demo'ing AD for about 2 days now. I am pretty impressed by this program... It took about 6 hours of tweaking the kick to finally get a good sound, but I think this is where the money is at. I haven't tried out SD 2.0 yet - but there must be a reason as to why it is so popular.


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## fwd0120

There should really be a SD demo. Really wish I could try before buy.


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## Krucifixtion

Superior is the way to go. Especially if you really want to build your own unique drum sounds. I used Steven Slate before and I have heard the Addictive samples and those are decent if you really don't want to mess with stuff a whole lot. Superior is better, because the sounds are completely dry like when you track a real kit so you can EQ and shape the tone to whatever taste you like. It does take some time and patience, but in the end you get much better more realistic sounding samples.


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## newamerikangospel

However, I would recommend superior just due to tweak-ability of drum sounds (you dont have the kick front/out blend slider, you have two actual channels you can eq independently). The hit pools/layers and engine feels smooter and better in general. The only thing Addictive has on SD2.0 is price.


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## itscurbe

Superior 2.0 is so incredible. You can get just about any sound you want out of it. From what I've heard, the samples sound more like a drummer is playing them. There is a reason why the most popular bands on this forum use SD2.0 and not AD for their programmed drums.


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## HollowmanPL

Of course SD2.0


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## Andromalia

I've only used SD2.0, so the only thing I can say is, Toontrack customer service is top notch. I lost my CDs when changing countries and they mailed me new ones for free. (Ok it's not a 20&#8364; software either, but still)


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## jaco815

AD is awesome for some things, bad for others (hard to get a good metal tone with the stock AD soundset). I originally purchased AD with the Retro expansion Pak. For any kind of vintage styled rock, I would take it over SD2 anyday. The Retro ADPak dead-on nails the Led Zeppelin and Jimi hendrix Experience sounds. It's also incredible for funk and soul. Then next came the Jazz Pak. It is so great and I have used the toms and cymbals from the Jazz pak on a pop tune to great effect. Then they released the Funk pak. That Pearl Ref snare is awesome and is great when layered with other snares (to do this I use 2 instances of AD chained together with Logic's environment window). Then they released the Metal ADpak. The kick in that one is incredible. The pack includes 2 kick and 2 snare triggers that you can blend with other snares for a perfect sound. I don't like the toms though (especially the high tom, it sounds like hitting a plastic bucket with a piece of rebar) which are super punchy with little sustain (perfect for metal styles), but I like my toms to be a little more open and ringy sounding (more like Alex Van Halen's toms).

I have SD2 and metal foundry as well, but have not been able to get the snare sound just right. It just doesn't ever have that open natural sound that I want and I think that most of the snare rimshots are too "crack-y" sounding. The toms, kicks and cymbals are great for me though. Lots of variety available.

I personally love AD (especially the new Metal Kick and triggers). For my upcoming album drum mix, I am going to blend the Snare and Kick from AD, the cymbals from Metal foundry, with the toms from my friend's copy of Mixosaurus. With some EQ'ing, it's possible to blend different libraries together. I can chain all of these through Logic to trigger them all from one MIDI file.

Have you considered drum samples from somewhere else? NI's new studio drummer looks and sounds really good. Also the Neil Peart Kit from Sonic Reality is awesome. My problem nowadays with AD and SD2 is that everybody has them, and I can recognize those samples all over the place. I get tired of hearing the same samples on everyone's songs (especially SD2) so I have been on a quest to make my drum presets blended from different sources so I don't sound like everyone else. Just food for thought.


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## brutalwizard

well it depends on how much work you put into it really, cause i multi-out and use seperate plugins, i so normally find the sound i want with enough tweaking. i dont use SD anymore cause its a ram annihilator, and my comp barely runs all my plugins as it is.

but sd sounds pretty sick out of the box,


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## anne

I luuuurv SD, and my only complaint is that the built-in plugins sound incredible but eat CPU like you wouldn't believe. That can definitely be a deal-breaker though.


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## GATA4

Though you've probably made your decision by now (and because this thread hasn't been updated in about two months ) I'm still going to offer my opinion just incase anyone else is in your same boat.

I use AD, and I really like it. It's no where near as tweakable as Superior, though. If you don't play metal, I'd say it's more for you because the stock kits sound good pretty much right off the bat. If you play metal, you will be spending a whooole lot of time customizing your tones (obviously this is the same with Superior, but for me, there is just a different level of frustration involved when using AD ). With me, I actually have to layer two instances of AD on top of each other. I was not able to get a good, solid, punchy metal tone with one instance of AD (but then again, even the guys that get good sounds out of Superior still layer samples and borrow from different editions). 

Basically, with AD, I feel like I'm trying to make kits sound like they weren't meant to sound (when playing metal). However, with Superior, the stock samples are much more dry so they don't necessarily have any genre-binding character to them...thus, you are more free to craft the sound you desire. 

I'd say AD has two advantages over SD: price, and less steep of a learning curve. SD, though, is much more tweakable and pays you off for hard work tweaking/mixing samples in the long run. 

It's just about your needs. Both are capable of essentially any tone, be it metal, jazz, or what have you, it's pretty much just the degrees of their capabilities that differentiate them, IMO.

Also, one instance of AD has fewer cymbals allowed on a kit than one instance of SD. So, if you want more than a Hi-Hat, Ride, and three cymbals, you have to open another instance of AD. Whereas, with SD, you can have more than three cymbals (to my knowledge). That's just a little thing that I noticed at first with AD...kinda annoying but not a huge problem to get around.


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## Sepultorture

i wonder why no one brings of BFD2?


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