Anybody here use JamStix? What are decent VST drums?

[culturejam]

I want to do some recording (since I'm spending a lot more time at home lately), and I need some percussion. No time / space / money / possibility of using an actual kit and mics, so VST drummer is the ticket.

I tried Eazy Drummer, and I couldn't get it to work on my Mac. Now I'm recording with Reaper on a Windows laptop, so compatibility should not be an issue.

So is JamStix worth a damn? It's pretty cheap, and I doubt I'd need anything beyond the basic package.

What else would you recommend that you have used to program percussion for recording?

Thanks guys! Imma get my post-rock on as soon as I get my drums figured out. 

[kothoma]

This is a vast topic. I can't even scratch the surface.

You could download the demo version of Jamstix. The number of kit pieces and velocity layers is heavily reduced but you can see if you like the workflow. It has its own logic of combining music styles and player styles with quite a number of parameters to generate pattern. These are not really documented so playing with the parameters is mostly trial&error. But usually you get some usable drum track in no time.

All other drum modules (and I have quite some of them, from Toontrack, Native Instruments, and fxpansion) only provide canned patterns. Sometimes you can arrange them in the VST, but all allow to just drag&drop them into a DAW sequencer. Of those I have only BFD2 has a built-in pattern editor.

Anyway. Most provided patterns are often too busy and you need some time to simplify them manually in the DAW. Provided fills are often too long and need shortening. Of course, you always can program your own pattern in a DAW piano roll or drum editor, but it's not easy to create a human touch.

Edit.

There are several good vendors of MIDI drum material. Some of my favorites: OddGrooves, Groove Monkee, and Platinum Samples.

Or was your question more about the drum samples? A good multi-sampled drum kit can certainly be used for many styles, esp. with the help of eqs and compressors. But many styles expect certain kits. The stock JamStix kit is very solid, but if you need something for heavy metal, or funk, or jazz, or ..., you will need one of the add-on packs. The stock library of BFD is very diverse. But I prefer the specific packages of Toontrack. The NI kits (Studio Drummer and the Abbey Road series) are quite nice but I'm not convinced of the Kontakt implementation (btw very resource hungry) of the latter.

Edit2. Best wait for a sale. I think I got most of this stuff with 30% or more off.

Edit3. On a laptop better stick ( ) with the lean stuff. I'd recommend EZDrummer. The heavy ones need loads of RAM and fast HDs (better SSDs).

[Jean-Rock]

Addictive drum all the way. Really easy to use and everything is editable. Lot of kits and sound great!

[lincolnic]

Superior Drummer has the best fake drums I've heard yet.

[peAk]

+for addictive drums.

Although BFD has had it's bugs, it's got some great kits.

Have not used Jamstix but I remember there being lots of guys on the KVR forum that loved it.

Personally, I like programming my own drums cause usually midi files can be a little weak. Sometimes I like to extract a groove from an audio file and have it converted to midi. Cubase makes this really easy. Not sure about Reaper.

I also like the Native Instruments 50's , 60's , 70' Drummer.

[culturejam]

Thanks guys!

I also looked at Addictive Drums. I'll check it out closer based on the multiple recommendations here.

Not sure what BFD is. Where I grew up, BFD = Big Fuckin' Deal   

[culturejam]

And now I remember why I hate this stuff. 

Downloaded the Addictive Drums 2 Standalone demo. I set up the sound devices and I can hear the test tone. But I can't get the software to output any drum sounds. I can see the beat player scrolling through the pattern, but no sound.

I opened Reaper and created a new virtual instrument with AD2. No sound whatsoever.

Guess I'll watch some youtube videos.

[slimtriggers]

I have EZ Drummer, BFD Eco and I had one of the Steven Slate offerings.  The Steven Slate was my favorite, but I lost it to a dead hard drive 

EZ Drummer just had a new version that I haven't tried yet.  Seems really tweakable and user friendly, though. 

If you can wait until Black Friday or Cyber Monday, you can usually get these heavily discounted. 

[kothoma]

Not sure what BFD is. Where I grew up, BFD = Big Fuckin' Deal   

Initially that was Bloody Fucking Drums, afaik. Nowadays they (fxpansion) prefer to call it just BFD. The newest incarnation is BFD3. But I didn't upgrade because I really prefer Superior Drummer (with the two Roots and Custom&Vintage packages).

Forgot to mention: at the moment you can get Steven Slate Drums SSD4 Platinum for cheap (saw it for €79 at Thomann, boxed version with DVD). Probably coming out a new version soon.

[culturejam]

Appreciate all the suggestions, gents.

But I can't even get the drum plugins to make sound in Reaper, so I've got a long way to go and the choice of product is a bit moot at this point.

[culturejam]

Think I might have made a breakthrough. 

[kothoma]

??

[Willybomb]

I use Jamstix in Reaper, with SSDex drums... if you can't get it to work, both the rayzoon and cockos forums have fairly extensive threads on it.