Addictive Drums 2 Major Update

Tutorial | Oct 22, 2024

In this video, I discuss the new free update for XLN Audio's Addictive Drums 2, which I've used for nearly two decades. The update improves the plugin's layout with modern visuals, UI rescaling for better visibility on 4K screens, and some new features like a multi-band compressor and trigger gate. I'm thrilled with these subtle but impactful changes, making it a pleasure to use moving forward.

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Summary #

Maybe you don't watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

In this video, I excitedly share that XLN Audio has released a major update for their Addictive Drums 2 plugin, which I've been using for what feels like 20 years. Interestingly, this update is completely free, and all you need to do is open the XLN Audio updater to download the latest version. I appreciate that they've kept the familiar layout while making some subtle yet meaningful enhancements.

Visually, the plugin now has a more modern look, particularly in the header design, which aligns nicely with the XO drum sequencer. A major highlight for me is the new rescaling feature that allows for UI scaling adjustments, making it much easier to view and use on high-resolution screens, such as 4K monitors.

The core structure remains the same, with an explore page, kit settings, an edit section for individual percussion elements, and an insert FX chain, among other features. The updates are minor but enhance usability, such as being able to adjust the kit settings with better visibility and interaction.

One of the standout improvements is in the compressor section. Notably, there's a multi-band mode, labeled somewhat cryptically as "compressor boost," which can be applied at the master level and compared to a single-band compression effect. The EQ usability has also improved with the larger interface, enabling easier manipulation of frequencies.

Additionally, there's a trigger gate feature, probably designed for use with kicks, snares, and toms, that helps achieve that classic 80s gated drum sound. The beat section is also noteworthy; while not new, it allows for transforming MIDI patterns with options for adjusting velocity and accents. You can tweak these settings and then drag the adjusted pattern out for use.

Moreover, there's MIDI recording functionality for direct input from a MIDI keyboard or drum set. Overall, the series of small changes collectively enhance the Addictive Drums 2 experience, making it more user-friendly and visually appealing. I'm thrilled with these updates, particularly since they're free, and anticipate continuing to use this plugin for many more years. Thank you for tuning in, and don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed the video.

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back and today out of nowhere XLN Audio dropped a new update for Addictive
[00:00:06] Drums 2 and I'm using this plugin for what feels like the last 20 years or so and I never
[00:00:12] did a real big update.
[00:00:14] Some small changes here and there but never this big, okay?
[00:00:17] And this update is completely free.
[00:00:20] All you need to do is to open up your XLN Audio updater and just download the newest
[00:00:25] update and you have it.
[00:00:27] It's completely free.
[00:00:28] And in my opinion, they did the right thing.
[00:00:31] They didn't change too much.
[00:00:32] They kept the layout and only changed some graphics and added some small little features.
[00:00:37] So this is how it looks like here.
[00:00:39] It has a more modern look and you can see at the top in this with this header, it's more
[00:00:44] in line with the XO drum sequencer.
[00:00:47] We can open this up here for a moment.
[00:00:50] So it's kind of the same idea.
[00:00:55] Here you can see at the top we have also here play sync, right?
[00:01:02] We can lock here the BPM to the project tempo and so on.
[00:01:05] And the biggest feature for me is the rescaling now.
[00:01:10] So we can rescale this.
[00:01:11] We can click here on the right top corner, say UI scaling settings and can go to 150%.
[00:01:17] And finally, we can see something, right?
[00:01:20] If you had a 4K screen before, it was so tiny on the screen, but now we can rescale it finally.
[00:01:28] So the explore page here, like I said, it's the same layout.
[00:01:32] We have explore.
[00:01:33] We have the kit settings here.
[00:01:35] We have edit with the individual percussion element settings here and also an insert FX chain down below.
[00:01:45] FX for the center FX.
[00:01:48] And then here, the beat explorer, where you can explore some MIDI patterns.
[00:01:53] So it's all the same thing, right?
[00:01:55] It's just minor adjustments, but all the right adjustments in my opinion.
[00:02:00] So it's a very great update.
[00:02:01] I'm very happy with this.
[00:02:03] So explore here.
[00:02:05] Let's go to funks.
[00:02:07] We can select your preset, round and juicy.
[00:02:10] Let's go for this one here.
[00:02:36] Okay, so this is just the explore page for the kits.
[00:02:39] Inside of this kit setting here, we have all the individual elements, like we had this before.
[00:02:46] It's just a bit bigger, right, in size.
[00:02:49] Then we can go here to edit, or we can click into these faders here.
[00:02:56] Let's say we only want to change the kick drum, right?
[00:02:58] We have then here all the settings like we had before.
[00:03:02] Don't want to go into there, but this one here looks a bit better, in my opinion.
[00:03:05] You can see now we can fade between this microphone and this microphone.
[00:03:16] We also have here the compressor, and the compressor has now a multi-band mode here, like just press the small little rocket button.
[00:03:27] This is only on the kick, but we want to go here on the master, but we want to go here on the master.
[00:03:30] I think it's better on the master.
[00:03:32] So the master also has here this compressor, and we can enable this.
[00:03:39] Threshold down, ratio up.
[00:03:41] So this is single band.
[00:04:02] You can clearly hear the difference between multi-band and single band.
[00:04:06] I was a bit overdoing this, right?
[00:04:08] It's just so you can hear what's happening.
[00:04:10] So this is now a multi-band mode, in my opinion.
[00:04:13] It's called compressor boost for some reason, but it looks and it feels like a multi-band compressor.
[00:04:19] Also, because we have now this bigger GUI scaling, we can also use the EQ much, much better than before.
[00:04:26] Before it was like this tiny, tiny little window, right, with these small dots, and I never really liked to use it.
[00:04:33] But now it's much better here.
[00:04:35] We have a clean low cut.
[00:04:37] We have a clean high cut and some notes we can tweak here also with the mouse wheel.
[00:04:42] It works perfectly, right?
[00:04:45] Okay, let's bring in here the room mic for another test.
[00:05:05] Maybe a bit of free work.
[00:05:11] We need to send.
[00:05:22] And now we have you on the master.
[00:05:31] And not only in the master, also your sendFX.
[00:05:33] You can see this here, trigger gate.
[00:05:35] I think also on, not on the individual elements here.
[00:05:40] We have it only on the busses and sendFX and the master.
[00:05:45] So we have this trigger gate here.
[00:05:48] And this trigger gate is just a normal gate for kicks, snare, and toms.
[00:05:52] And this is controlled by the notes or the midi data.
[00:05:58] So it's not an audio follower or anything like that, right?
[00:06:01] So you can use this here and just cut off the reverb.
[00:06:10] So you can use it.
[00:06:31] I'm not sure if this was in before, but now we have it here.
[00:06:35] And it's nice for 80s sounds, right?
[00:06:37] Where you have all these gated drums with lots of reverb.
[00:06:41] Then you just cut off the reverb for your Phil Collins fix.
[00:06:46] So this is also in there.
[00:06:49] Then they have here the beat section.
[00:06:51] I'm not sure if the beat transformer was in before.
[00:06:54] I guess it was in before, but I never really noticed it or something like this.
[00:07:00] But now we can choose here some, some grooves.
[00:07:06] So this was in before.
[00:07:07] I used this a lot back then.
[00:07:09] Right?
[00:07:16] So we have here a midi pattern we can choose.
[00:07:18] We have also here some variants.
[00:07:29] Right?
[00:07:30] And there is some kind of right or symbol in there.
[00:07:33] We can now go in here and can say we want to tone down the right.
[00:07:37] So this is not the volume.
[00:07:38] This is the velocity, right?
[00:07:48] Or we can tweak the range, the velocity range here of all the drums.
[00:07:51] We want to keep everything pretty high in velocity.
[00:07:55] So this is very loud.
[00:07:56] So it's more like compressing the sound.
[00:08:00] But instead of using audio, we just use velocity.
[00:08:02] Or very soft.
[00:08:12] We can also change here the accent.
[00:08:20] So we can accentuate basically here the fourth or the eighth notes.
[00:08:26] So we can turn and twist these midi patterns here inside of the speed transformer.
[00:08:32] And then when you are happy, you can just drag it out.
[00:08:35] There's here some kind of symbol.
[00:08:38] You can just drag it, right?
[00:08:42] We can also change here some settings.
[00:08:44] Then drag it out, right?
[00:08:48] So this is how it works.
[00:08:50] There's also midi recording here.
[00:08:52] We can input from your midi keyboard or your midi drum set and then record straight into addictive drums.
[00:09:01] So yeah, a lot of nice little small changes.
[00:09:07] I really like the update.
[00:09:08] And I also like that it's completely free.
[00:09:10] And I'm really happy to use this in the future because I never liked this old, you know, small little GUI I had for 20 or 30 years.
[00:09:20] But now it's really nice to use.
[00:09:23] So that's that.
[00:09:25] I want to keep you updated basically because I really love this plugin.
[00:09:28] I use it for so long now and I'll probably also use it in the next 20 years.
[00:09:34] So that's it.
[00:09:36] Thanks for watching.
[00:09:37] Leave a like if you like the video.
[00:09:38] Subscribe to the channel.
[00:09:39] Thanks for watching.
[00:09:40] And I'll see you in the next video.
[00:09:42] Bye.