Well I think its about time I buy a new Drum Soft Sampler, A

[Basic Pitch]

Hi all,

I have been using NI's Battery for a very long time now and while it has certainly served its purpose well, the current crop of newer softsamplers just completely roll over the app feature wise.

The only two other other big supported name samplers I have looked into was the DR-008 and the LinPlug RMIV. Both of these samplers offer effects, filters, modulation routings, synthesis, midi pattern programing and more. The DR-008 seems to come with a 1G library and have an online trading base that houses over 3 Gigs of sampled data for share, the app seemed pretty easy to use, but seemed to lack a bit on the output section, weell in the demo.

With the DR-008 The GUI looked like it could use a serious update, not a big deal but simplicity wise and graphical does not stand up to battery, one other really wierd fact was that this sampler does not let you audition samples from the file window, instead you need to choose a sample in a directory and then using arrows can skim through the folder, not major but a bit clumsy feeling. Another odd thing is that in order to load a cell as a sample you need to define that cell as being a sampler and choose the sype of sampler it will be. One interesting this with the DR-008 is that it offers to aux channels for return effects, not a bad idea for things like delays or vers for some samples, not an absolute must have but a decent idea thrown into the mix.

There are a few types of samplers and each one has a different or for better words a more complex tool set, this gives the DR-008 a modular feel which I believe was the goal when designing this device?

All in all, it was super easy to use and being so used to battery probably just made it feel a little longer in the way of setting up samples because its methods are different.

Now on the RMIV...

The RMIV seems to have ripped off alot of style from Battery and some of the features from DR-008, GUI wise, this device is miles ahead from the DR-008, this is purely asthetics but it does give the device a more proffesional look. Sound quality seems to be roughly the same between the DR-008 and Battery, one thing that struck me as odd is the device has a built in compression stage per channel, this seems like a good way to cause excess CPU cycles on channels that are not used.

This device also like the DR-008 has filter stages and also gives an addition to the ADSR from the DR-008 and gives you an ADHSRT set, to be honest I have never even heard or seen this before lol, its sort of like the transient designer in regards as you can mellow sharp peaks and extend transients with it, which is a nice bonus.

This device also boasts having analog modeling synthesis, but to my ears did not sound as good as the DR-008s, in all honesty the only thing synthesis wise that sounded decent on either of these devices was the 808 bass drum models, the snares are just harsh white noise and the cymbols are funky flang noises, cool for some but far from practical. This device also suffers from the same auditioning issue that the DR-008 does.

I am really torn on which device I should migrate too, Battery is still a great application, but these days its just falling way to far behind the pack, the positive gains from these other applications make it hard to not want to migrate.

Any one have an real experience with either of these devices? If so could you make some recommendations on what the better choice is..

I know Fxpansion is going to be releasing the update called Drum 9 soon, I have no idea what it entails but it might be the tilt leaning to the upgrade path I need hehe.

[EDIT]: I should probably add that the current percussion synths/samplers I use now are-

- Reasons Redrum
- FL Studio
- Sonic Charges MicroTonic
- Spectrasonics Stylus
- EWQL Storm Drums
- EWQL Drumkit From Hell 2
- CW's EDSi 8 & 16
- NI's Battery
- Akai MPC-2000
- EMU SP1200

Cheers!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Basic Pitch on 2004-08-29 15:09 ]</font>

[Basic Pitch]

Well since no one was able to help out with any info I took the executive desicion and ordered both hehe.

Got a good deal on em, I figure I spent more money but the RMIV comes with 270 kits, over 1 gig of samples and roughly 2700 midi loops. The DR008 has roughly 3+ gigs of one shots available on their site and also has many midi grooves, so I guess it will all work out in the end and ill just use which ever one I like the most

Cheers