Why I Choose Addictive Drums 2

I bet many people have started composing on their computers as an at-home hobby during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, I would like to show you one of the software instruments that I use a lot.

〇About Addictive Drums 2

The drum software Addictive Drums 2 (AD2) is from the Swedish music software company XLN Audio and is a popular sound source software that includes easy-to-use rhythm patterns with excellent sound quality. Also, one attractive point is that you can purchase from the rich lineup of extended sound sources to expand your library to your liking if you have the software that can be the body for the AD2.
I’m still learning computer music but I currently use this software myself. I’m going to talk about the reasons why I chose this software out of numerous drum sound sources.

Point 1. Operation is light

Some people may wonder why I am listing this first. However, this is very important for me.

When I compose, I usually only take my MacBook Pro to the living room and I lay back on the sofa to work on it. I often feel stressed by the burdensome load time of large-capacity software.
The Addictive Drums 2 is very useful because it is relatively light in operation among major drum software products, and can be read and edited stress-free.

Point 2. Anyhow, the presets are easy to use

The Addictive Drums 2 has tone and rhythm samples, and you can select the preset you want to use as you’re composing. If you purchase the extended sound sources according to the software you already have, you can cover a wide variety of genres such as metal, jazz, R&B, and electronic.

If you feel the preset rhythm pattern you selected is not enough, you can control the accent and velocity range. The function I often use is “RANDOM” in the red square in the image, which literally adds random changes to the timing and velocity to create more human-like sounds and phrases.

※The image shows the edit screen of the Cubase Pro 11. You can output the pattern you made on the AD2 to some extent as MIDI data, and you can adjust the details in MIDI.

Point 3. Easy to adjust the sound of each instrument

You can also fine-tune the sound of each drum instrument such as kick, tom, and cymbal. Pitch and EQ/compression are also adjustable. Also, one of the features is that you can adjust the mixing level of OH and ROOM for each instrument. I often adjust the equalizer and compressor with another plug-in, but each parameter on the Addictive Drums 2 can be also turned off.

Point 4. Easy para-out setting

Para out is required in arrangement and mixing, but the Addictive Drums 2 allows you to set the para out from the “↓” next to the slider for each instrument.

When you actually enable output on the Cubase, you will see a screen like this↑. This allows for finer adjustments for each track.

This time, I showed all of you Addictive Drums 2, one of the software instruments that I personally recommend. It is also available at Sound House. Please check it out.

・XLN AUDIO / Addictive Drums 2 Custom

If I have a chance, I would like to talk about Addictive Drums 2 in further detail as well as talk about other plug-in software. See you next time!