#GROOVE AGENT SE VS FULL FREE#

Therefore, in most circumstances, you can use the same MIDI port and channel for triggering both instruments and patterns.

#GROOVE AGENT SE VS FULL FREE#

In most circumstances this isn’t a problem because it would be unusual to be working with so many instruments and patterns that you run out of MIDI notes to assign the pads to.Īlso, instruments tend to be assigned to notes starting at C1 and rarely need to extend much beyond C5, leaving plenty of notes free for use by pattern pads. As mentioned, pads are associated with MIDI notes but there are only 128 of these to share out among potentially 256 trigger pads. Groove Agent SE organises its 16 trigger pads into banks – eight each for both Instrument and Pattern pad modes, for a total of 128 drum trigger pads and 128 pattern trigger pads. Groove Agent SE comes with a moderate collection of styles, and while it doesn’t provide the tools for creating and packaging your own Style files, Steinberg does sell a wide range of reasonably priced Groove Agent Style packages. Styles package together multiple variations of a pattern, and are controlled via an interface that allows you to select which variation to use, and adjust the intensity and complexity of the resulting pattern. Groove Agent SE’s MIDI player allows you to apply a bit of drum-machine-style timing modification to the pattern too, such as applying varying strengths of swing and quantising to a pattern. Many are bundled with Cubase and you can easily drag in patterns from the timeline, and you can store MIDI patterns in Groove Agent SE’s user folder so that they are available in all of your sessions. MIDI patterns are the most straightforward. When in Pattern mode, each pad can have either a MIDI pattern or a Style assigned to it. Many but not all of the bundled kits have patterns associated with them that can be loaded along with the kit but you can also load kits and patterns as separate entities. PatternsĪs well as being a drum sampler, Groove Agent SE also packs pattern-playback capabilities, accessible by switching the trigger pads into Pattern mode. All of this serves to create a very realistic and believable acoustic drum-kit emulation but it also limits how deeply you can dive into editing and personalising an Acoustic Agent kit.

Here, each drum instrument (kick, snare, etc) has multiple velocity switches, and each velocity layer has multiple articulations (that is, alternative samples that are played in turn so that no two consecutive hits sound identical).Įach close-mic’d drum hit sample is accompanied by samples recorded through overhead mics and room ambience mics, and you can even simulate the kick drum sound bleeding into the snare mics. The second engine, Acoustic Agent, approaches things in much the same way as virtual drum-kit instruments such as Superior Drummer and BFD do. Each pad can hold multiple velocity-switched samples, and sample start, end and loop points can all be modified from within Groove Agent SE. Samples are assigned to the trigger pads – which are themselves associated with a MIDI note, of course – and are passed through a conventional sample-and-synthesis signal path featuring envelopes, filters, etc. Beat Agent is the more conventional of the two, and is most like a traditional MPC-style hardware drum sampler, to the extent that it can actually import some MPC file types. Groove Agent SE can host two different drum engines, referred to as agents. It integrates exceptionally well with Cubase (and Nuendo), complementing the DAW with a surprisingly versatile drum toolset. Groove Agent SE is, in fact, a veritable drum and rhythm powerhouse. But, as is often the case with free plug-ins, appearances can be deceiving. It’s a set of trigger pads and an editing area. Nowhere is this more true than with Groove Agent SE, included in Cubase Elements, Artist and Pro.Īt first blush, Groove Agent SE looks fairly straightforward. In Cubase’s case, however, the majority of the bundled plug-ins are actually rather impressive. They’re tools that will be useful in a wide range of recording scenarios but are relatively primitive examples of their ilk. Many of these, it’s fair to say, are of the bread-and-butter variety.

Most DAWs come bundled with an endless assortment of effects and instruments.

Groove agent se vs full