Over the years I have become familiar with may different software drum sample packs. I think the idea of having a versatile drummer in your hardrive ready to rock at a moments notice is very compelling.

The latest one I have come across is Addictive Drums by XLN Audio. This is what they say about the software on the XLN website.

"3 Drum Kits - Sonor Designer / DW Collectors / Tama Starclassic Insert & Send Effects, Compressor / EQ / Distortion / Tape Saturation / Filter / Limiter / Reverb 100+ Presets, Clean / Distorted / Electronica / LoFi / PopRock / Rock / Soft / Vintage / Xperimental 3000+ MIDI Files, 4/4 Straight & Swing / 3/4 Straight & Swing / 6/8 Straight & Swing / Bundles (Blues, Jazz, Funk, etc) / Songs (Rock, Disco, Reggae, etc) Addictive Drums is a Complete Drum Production Studio. In Addictive Drums you will find everything you need to make a professional drumtrack production. It's flexible, yet very quick to learn and use."

To be fair I have to say that almost all the software drum emulators sound pretty good nowadays, but the one feature I really like about addictive drums was the user interface. This is easy software to learn! You listen to the beats, than simply drag and drop the ones you like into your DAW. Its that easy, and the patches sound great. One thing I would note is that it seems like this is XLN's only product (or banner software) and it show's in the amount of thought put into it. It has a mixer where you can adjust the volumes of each piece easily and also adjust overhead and room mics. effects are easily adjusted and they even have a great electronic sounding patches. I like this software, its running around 250usd which might be on the high side of the competition and you can get a real decent acoustic drum set for around 500 dollars, but if you don't want to bother learning to play the drums or don't have the room or recording equipment to do it yourself, than addictive drums in my opinion would be a great buy.

This review was done by Cory Broersma, owner of the loop house and all around nice guy.