Best Budget Drums - Steven Slate vs EZ vs KitCore

[partyofone]

OK guys I'm getting ready to demo some songs and need a good v drum plug. I've heard them all just about and am leaning towards a few. I'm trying to stay under $200. Here's the good news though... Steve Slate LE is on sale for $150 through end of month. EZ Drummer has $50 mail in Rebate through end of month making it $100.My main concerns are1) Ease of use2) Sound3) Price4) Inclusion of grooves as I do NOT want to program from scratchI HATE programming drums and have considered just hiring a real one as my friend does session work. My concerns with that are:1) Every song I demo will require an expense as opposed to a one time investment in a plug-in.2) Little changes and tweaks will be harder using drummer. However, I want to ultimately pitch these songs to labels and producers in hopes of re-recording everything in a top notch studio so it doesn't necessarily have to be PERFECT. And the nominees are...1) EZ drummer - Sounds very nice, easy to use, includes tons of grooves and fills.2) KitCore - Inexpensive, sounds nice, easy, inclusion of grooves.3) Steve Slate - Sounds IN-CRED-I-BLE!!! Includes grooves but I can't get any info on how they work and it may not be as easy to use as other two.The demos of Steven Slate make me wet my pants and what I could do is use grooves from GrooveMonkey.com which are very reasonable but this method won't be nearly as easy the other two. However the trade off is incredible drums!I know there are some EZ users on here and any thoughts are appreciated! If you think I need to bite the bullet and hire tell me that too ha ha!P.S. I did some more digging and found more discussions on similar VS topics..http://taxi.proboards.com/index.cgi?act ... 849&page=1

[partyofone]

Ha ha hey Mark thanks! I'm afraid we're about to owe ourselves too, and plus the house we weren't able to sell and thus had to rent is without a renter! But gosh darn it I think these deals are too good to pass! Yeah was talking to Bill in a PM and he said he preferred their sound too. If Steven Slate stuff didn't sound so good than I might NOT do any more thinking! I'm a natural over-thinker anyway, ugh!

[mazz]

I don't think using MIDI loops played by a pro drummer is cheating any more than triggering samples yourself from an e-kit or a trigger finger or whatever. If I had the budget, I'd be hiring Hugh McCracken or one of those other guys that do drum tracks online, and maybe some day I will. There's nothing like a real, great drummer (or any other instrumentalist for that matter). But for the day in and day out, down and dirty quick needs of production music, there's nothing like these new drum software instruments. Again, if you know what you're doing putting the MIDI files together and during the mix, you can get really incredible drum tracks that will totally work musically. Listening and studying (and playing with) great drummers certainly helps when putting the MIDI grooves together. None of these things will replace musicianship chops, but if you have good ears and skills, it's completely do-able.Hurray for technology,Mazz

[southpaw]

^l l -- What he said.

[slideboardouts]

I went ahead and ordered Addictive from musicians friend. I've been putting off getting better drum sounds for a while and with AD getting rave reviews from everyone and costing under $100...I just couldn't help myself -Steve

[mojobone]

Just want to note that all the AD samples are 24-bit, not just the cymbals-it's a personal pet peeve of mine that I simply can't put up with 16-bit cymbals; snares kicks, toms, okay, but....

[partyofone]

hey guys,Mazz great points and helpful as usual so thanks! Yeah I truly feel lucky to have these tools around. One thing is that although I've studied mixing awhile I have yet to feel good at it... so I appreciate these instruments that require minimal tweaking. And I'm probably splitting hairs on this whole thing tbh...B Flat that's some nice feedback from someone who plays v-drums. I like that they're less raw sounding as it makes it easier for lazy guys like me! Matt thanks for another AD vote.Dan.. oh yeah I remember your tune.. cool stuff and the drums DO sound very NICE! It's been very helpful getting everyone's feedback that have actually used them. I don't think Slate stuff is as widely used yet but over on gearslutz.com those guys go bananas over it.

[Mark Kaufman]

Apr 12, 2009, 12:01pm, slideboardouts wrote:I went ahead and ordered Addictive from musicians friend. I've been putting off getting better drum sounds for a while and with AD getting rave reviews from everyone and costing under $100...I just couldn't help myself -SteveThat's what happened with me and the Behringer V-Verb, being blown out for $79 at Musician's Friend. I've come to ignore the very word "Behringer", but started reading about this unit with the same raves from some reliable voices at gearslutz comparing it to excellent Lexicon units...bang, pulled the trigger.But had I known about this...I could pull the trigger again, but it would be on credit...and isn't that how this global financial meltdown happened?

[partyofone]

Ha ha Mark I guess SO! Bummer though.Don't tell any gear slutz but I bought a Behringer monitor switcher for like $40 and one of the most useful pieces of gear I've bought. Allows me to switch between 3 monitors and also listen to mixes in mono. Oh yeah also has a talk back mic. Only downside is it's plastic and constantly shifts around.Keith I'll report my findings for sure... as everyone has said I'm sure all 3 options will be great and it'll be minor differences. I may just get Steven Slate for the simple fact that no one here has it and I can report my findings.

[mojobone]

Apr 13, 2009, 7:53am, partyofone wrote:Hey Mojo the site is slightly confusing because I thought I'd have to have an external player too but after some additional digging I think only previous versions had to have BFD, Drumagog, or Kontakt but as of version 3.0 they have a custom Kontakt player.http://stevenslatedrums.com/index.php?o ... mid=61Yeah, didn't mean to confuse anyone, the current version works as a standalone or VST, it's just there are already a couple of BFD libraries I'm already interested in, as well, and I'd like to avoid learning yet another sampler.