uhh looks like this thread made spill some ink while i was playing around with the HB vst

anyways, im back to add a few more cents to it: i have conclulded the HeartBeat sounded like no other current vst drum or sampled kontakt libs i have citated above and i have decided to purchase it, so now im a proud owner of the heartbeat.

HB, definitely, is sounding unique, producing some true meaty and heavyweighting drum sounds, and when those are processed further in separate audio channels with UAD plugs.. oh man, even an purist analog mastering studio buddy dude of mine validated the sound and said 'yo dats sometin i can definitely work with' (and that does mean a lot from a pro mastering engineer)

i don't regret the missing builtin seq everyone is asking about , i do my beats the olsdskool way on the time line.. (it does take time but meh.. )

i wish it could use their dyna-mite and other filters individually on each instrument, hopefully thatll improve in v2.0 (if there is one?)

 

lol if you 'encourage' ppl to do so, i presume they must be friends of yours or something? ;)

well, i just took a look at this, its a kontakt lib (means sampled -meh..), no synthesis/generated sounds, Transistor Revolution does already a great at this -and its cheaper, furthermore, i'm trying to move away from Kontakt and its outdated 2003-era annoying GUI garbage for trash and of course, its steep price of £149.95 seems to be a joke for what it is, so no thanks.

 

Thanks! I'm sure that nobody here wanted to offend you by suggesting to you what I truly believe would be the best solution to your problem. Maybe a little politeness would be in order even if we have the audacity not to answer to you as you please.
I encourage you because there is a try before buy version out there so no harm done m8 plus wave alchemy put out the best sampled drum libraries out there imho.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 16, 2017

Easy there you guys.
Heartbeat is awesome, for sure. @fraifikmushi has a clear point about the Kontakt libraries. If you ever feel that Kontakt is lacking in the synthesis department, click the wrench icon and go to Instrument Edit mode. You can go deep into re-designing the samples and mangle them to your liking. All these controls can also be modulated or automated. The main controls you get on the front-end of Kontakt are just carefully constructed macros of these individual controls.
Drag one of Kontakt's 511 Automation HOST Parameter IDs to the control you want and you can modulate/automate from your DAW.
If you want to create macros for these controls you will need a little scripting but, using Ableton as an example, you can group the device and create a macro for already configured parameters which requires no scripting and has the same exact effect.

Under the Automation section you also have an automation range control:

You can invert this by turning the From% to 100 and To% to 0 or use anything in between. Your DAW will also have this function and using them in conjunction can be very meta. Especially with the macros. Even more so when you Group a Group which is already Grouped to a Group, ie. Macro a Macro which is already a Macro for a Macro.

If Heartbeat (which is super awesome) ever feels lacking, think of Kontakt as Heartbeat V5.6, go with it and things start to fall into place.

 

Last edited: Feb 16, 2017

Heartbeat is astounding in my opinion but, and it's a huge BUT, it's a motherfucker on the resources and will eat up your CPU! One of the better tools for 808s and 909s if your CPU can hack it though (and that's from someone with a 6 (12) core Core i7 4960X clocked at 4.6GHz and with 64GB RAM!

 

What would you suggest as a "next best thing" that isn't a motherfucker on the resources?

 

Not sure. You can get a good sound from most things out there if you the effort in. D16 is where i'd probably start though, PunchBox if it's just the kick you want, or Nepheton for an 808 and Drumazon for a 909. Alternatively, there are some other decent and not heavy on resource plugins like Kick 2, Punch/PunchBD etc. Could list tons, but I'd start off by trying out D16's stuff. Pretty much same league as Softube's drums I'd say, just way lighter on CPU.

 

May be cheating but drum-machine samples + Ableton Live Drum Rack = least CPU/most flexible.
I don't know if it's just me but I use drum VSTs depending on my mood. Sometimes it's Nerve, sometimes Axon, Battery or Geist. I'l even pull out ReDrum/Kong once in a while. Maybe it's just me but despite basically doing the same thing they all work a little different and finding a groove in that process influences the sound pretty drastically sometimes. I know these aren't direct 909 emulations. I'm just saying.

I remember the first time I used Drumazon. I loaded up Phoscyon on a second track and recreated that Pump Panel Reconstruction Mix of Confusion by New Order. Those plugins are insanely accurate emulations and then some.

 

Oh yes ! The same way I do Pinkman. For the most beats I use NI Maschine. Has anybody mentioned it here? But often I use different plugins. The important thing for me is that they can be mapped to my Maschine controller. I bought Heartbeat this night, too. Really cool sound. You can map all sounds to the Maschine pads, like in this video here:

It's a litte bit tricky to find the right settings an the beginning, but if you have it finished you can save it as a preset.
Yes, all the D16 Group stuff is really good. I love all the stuff by them.

 

The question of this thread was if Heartbeat is worth buying. I would say yes, because a sound like this I never heard before in a drum plugin and with 77.19$ it's a nice deal, too. It is pretty much analog sounding which reminds me sometimes of an Elektron Analog Rytm. Ok, it has some cons (no sequencer for example) but which plugin is the all in one device already?! Still on my wishlist is Synapse Audio - The Legend which could be a cool companion to Heartbeat. Both are awesome analog sounding tools!

 

Yes. It's just an afterthought. Some people just prefer the internal X0X sequencer for some reason. Piano roll is sooo much easier to edit and so much more flexible. Generally what bothers me with Heartbeat the most is lack of more sound control, weirdly constructed modules [but otoh you can get some really great sounding results anyway], and the unnecessarily huge and badly designed GUI. I mean look at Nepheton or Drumazon... I feel so at home with these "guys". [also because I owned and worked with the real things?]

 

@SineWave I hear you, brother. I had one of my greatest epiphanies using an 808 when I realized just how important limitations can be. There was a certain confinement working within it's set of rules and they made complete and total sense but they also bred an idea of breaking outside it's box to be able to do (hopefully without sounding pretentious) even grander things.
We have all these programs with endless configurability and it's awesome for the most part. But make your own path under non-restriction and most of those paths end up leading to the same place. When limitations are set in anything, hardware, software or life in general , revolution is a fundamental requirement.

If any of you happen to be one of those that can see the forest while looking at one tree, the above statement doesn't apply and you are ultimately integral to this human race.

 

Speaking of limitations, me and my bandmate had lots of troubles synchronising all the analogue synths, 808, 303, 101, JP-4 etc. to Cubase on Atari [in mid 90s], but that's also a limitation that produced interesting results, and a bit of a headache, but I completely agree with you Pinkman. When there's no limitations you should sometimes create them yourself to get more productive, or make something different, or just produce more interesting results. Like for example, off the top of my head, creating a track with some 303 clone and 909 perhaps. But that's been done and overdone. LOL