ARX-01 vs Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0

[madAhorn]

Drooling!

I was supposed to get this with my G originally but cancelled my order. :'-(

No dough now...

[jessej]

Thank you Dan!

I got to the point where I asked a quote from my local dealer!

And happy thanksgiving to all you north americans! The rest of the world is drooling at your delicious turkey...

- Jesse -

[Jimknopf]

It would be helpful to hear more demos from the ARX 01 showcasing different kinds of drums for different purposes. I know those which are online already.

To me it is still unclear if I only get tweaked forms of a certain basic sampled sound (for example concerning all the snares you talked about, Dan), or if the underlying samples show some clearly recognizeable variety themselves, such as the SRX 01 samples did.

The tweaking possibilities are great beyond doubt!
Anyway it wouldn't help me if I would have the feeling to get more or less variations of the same basic set with a powerful sound, while missing some "character" comparable to real acoustic sets.Once more: we are not talking about tweaking here, but about basic sample character to be tweaked then.

In the store, the basic sound seemed ok with easy control, but to me it seemed too "middle of the road" and not really inspiring, and most of the presets I checked sounded a bit like all belonging to one "sound family". I hope I'm wrong...

[Arjan]

Dan from Roland wrote:

Also, you can add in human elements like flams, rolls and ghost notes, so you essentially add the slope and mistakes of a newbie drummer

Now there's a feature I've always wanted: a crappy drummer-in-a-box. Seriously, it will be much better than a human crappy drummer who also sweats, smells and swears. I'm sure that's a great selling point!

[Anton]

There is another cool drum softwarepackage: Addictive Drums. Take a look at http://www.xlnaudio.com
Maybe a good alternative for Toontracks Superior Drums?

[jessej]

ARX-01 is still a big question mark for me too.

**Please Roland posse, make a descent demo that covers all grounds - give it a hefty 30min lenght in full HD and sell some ARX cards! Don't be shy showing what it's made of!**

I fully understand what Jimknopf means with "middle of the road", that a 'nice' sound, something you'd hear on perfectly produced album. But more often nowadays you want dirty gritty punky drums - and I don't mean to put the drums trough a distortion, I mean a rebellious drum by heart.. Can the ARX-01 deliver that? I don't know...

[Mr.XR]

http://www.rolandmusik.de/produkte/Fant ... .php?demos

[jessej]

Thanks for adding the link Mr.XR, but I don't think there's anything new to us there, just the same old brief videos (why do they have to be so tiny Roland? We all have big screens now!) and the Kresic mp3 "demos" from spring 2008 and the brief, but entertaining, stuff from Jem.

There is still nothing "in depth" that would show what's up with the ARX-01...

Here's the template for Roland:
http://www.xlnaudio.com/?page=products&p_page=video

Do the ARX demos like that. And let us download HD video versions with superb audio quality under the streaming videos, just like above.

[Jimknopf]

And give ARX-01 the richness and character of Addictive Drums together with the degree of variation (from just 3 sample sets), please

Seriously: it's exactly such a packet which I would buy anytime if available with ARX hardware for the Fantom G:
an ARX card with really expressive sounds from several sample sets plus tweaking/effects, and a 3000 midi grooves library added and availabl in a dedicated groove mode, with drag and drop for sequencing.

[pazzo]

I have all three. It would be nice to have a sampler like AD or SD.2 on board but they are huge programs. Some of my SD.2 kits are almost 2 gigs. Addictive Drums kits are smaller, around 600 or 700 megs for a full kit but it's a much simpler program than SD.2.

I think for what it was designed for the ARX board has some really good functions and Roland did a lot of things right. Having said that, I've never used it in any of my music and probably won't keep it much longer.

Still, if you work solely in the on board sequencer i think it can be a good addition if you need more acoustic sounding drums. But it just can't compete with the software samplers out there.

Hi there. First post.

[Jimknopf]

That's eaxtly what surprised me about Addictive Drums: a good compromise between quality (great sound, basic functionality) and limitation to the essential. Of course it would be hard to fit really big disk streaming content into a RAM based ARX board.

But I don't see any reason why an ARX board could not supply 2-4 Gb of sample RAM and be able to provide a package similar to Addictive drums.