After hearing that Jem Godfrey of Frost* used Superior Drummer and the Hitmaker SDX on “Life in the Wires,” I decided I should look into it. I’ve looked at Superior Drummer before, but I’m a big fan of the AI Drummer in Logic Pro. The issue with Logic Pro’s Drummer is that, while it comes with some nice drum sets, you can’t buy more. Damn.
Years ago I bought Steven Slate Drums. The interface was slow and clunky but it did sound great. And then a Mac OS broke it. That put me back in the land of “To use this software, pay us money for each new Mac OS.” Some companies aren’t like that. Soothe 2 is a good example – it hasn’t broken on me yet (with a new Mac OS update.)
Another company that requires you to rebuy their stuff with almost every Mac OS update is Waves. And they’ll never, ever see another penny of my money. Upgrades should be optional. I bought Arturia V Collection 9 and it hasn’t broken with a Mac OS update. Maybe some day it will, but SOME companies seem to constantly require you to spend money with each OS udpate.
So I’m not a fan of Steven Slate and I’m not a fan of Waves, because I don’t want to have to rebuy my software. And that brings us to Superior Drummer. At $399, it’s twice the price of Logic Pro, and all it does is drums. Yes, it comes with several kits – so does Logic Pro. But I have the sneaking suspicion that buying Superior Drummer means that some future Mac OS update will break it, and then what? Do you have to rebuy it? Is there an “upgrade” path to the new version? How long will Superior Drummer 3 support the latest Mac OS? I’ve been reading up online and this info seems to be hard to find.
The Hitmaker SDX is like $180. So it’d be $580 for those drum samples. They sound good, but that’s real money to me. So I guess I’ll stick with Logic Pro’s Drummer. C’mon, Apple – give us more kits!