Digidesign Strike RTAS Virtual Drummer

I've been in Pro Audio industry for 18 years and have used Pro Tools and Logic for nearly since Sound Tools, dating way back. Although, I don't think the amount of time in years equals level of skill. It can help but it depends on the person. I done sound work and music compositions for games, promos, TV spots including sound for Rockband and Guitar Hero 1 & 2 for a company in the Bay Area.

I've used Strike since it's release, on LE, HD and M-Powered with great success. I also use BFD2 heavily (own all the plan. sample kit add-ons), I've used Addictive Drums (free demo), and EzDrummer.

I've tested Strike on PC and Mac, Pro Tools 7 and 8. Currently use it daily on a Mac Pro 2.93ghz Quad Core Nehalem.

To the previous poster that said the interface was too frustrating?
He must be new to Drum VIs or is retarded or very stupid, as he admitted he might be.

The Interface is WAY more clean and simple than BFD2 by leaps and bounds. BFD2 is great, but so much more resource intensive, can be buggy as RTAS, and is geared more for actual drummers in my opinion. A non drummer wouldnt even know what to do with all the little articulations and choices in BFD.

While Strike is mapped automatically across your keyboard when you load a preset. The white keys are intro, verse, pre chorus, chorus, outro, while the black keys are fills to whatever you were playing.

Strike is written by AIR under Digidesign so yes, this plug-in will work great and be more stable than any other 3rd party plug-in in Pro Tools. You can export midi but it's a bit funky at first, but explained online such as at the AIR USER Blog - Lots of free videos here explaining Strike: http://airvirtualinstruments.blogspot.com/search/label/strike

You should at least demo this plug-in or watch the videos to make your decision.

There isnt a more straight forward drum instrument for Pro Tools that I know of.

Sounds is very good. I would use it in a professional environment any day. But like any sound, you need to eq and edit the sound to your taste and mix. Luckily, there is a built in mixer on Strike with built in effects that are pretty good, so you can get a good mix right inside the plug-in window. Balancing room mics, overheads or even muting certain instruments. There are also direct outputs of each channel so you can split out the kit pieces to individual audio tracks for recording as multi track drums.

The main difference is that BFD is made by a company that does only 1 thing, so they do it well. I think the sound-quality is a bit lower lover than BFD2, but its a trade off. I much rather pull open Strike, because its resource friendly and I can play guitar to real drums instead of a boring click track. Rather than open BFD, wait for samples to load, hope it does make Pro Tools run out of memory or crash and you can quickly get lost with all the little options in it.

Also there arent ANY good tutorial videos on BFD2 that I have found and I own all their stuff. But Strike has a boat load.

Love the plug-in, think its under rated, the expansion pack is definitely worth it so dont miss out on that.

and Digi has stated that all their AIR instruments are soon to be expanded and upgraded, so we'll see if that brings new features or more sounds!

Definitely don't miss out on at least trying this one, Its in my top 5!

Ive been running Pro Tools DIGI002 Rack for about three years. Ive had Strike for about a year. I make rock and hip hop mostly. I play the guitar and keyboards. I use this on a 2007 macbook intel on OSX, and monitor through some wharfdale active monitors. I needed a more reliable drummer as the one I know doesn't show up half the time, so I bought strike as I thought it would be good(wrong). Every time I go to my plug-ins and scroll through my instruments and I see strike it pisses me off, three hundred dollars wasted.

I never even bother to try and use this anymore. It requires an ilok which is annoying and makes it more difficult to sell, like anyone would buy it anyway.
It took me a week to figure out to use it.I tried and tried to get a good performance with this program. But it was always off. I would have to edit the drums to get them right.
It takes hours to get a decent drum sound as the drums sound totally fake and weak even to a casual music fans ear.

The interface is frustrating and using this program leaves me angry and depressed. Maybe I'm just stupid, but I have an associates degree in audio production and a bachelors degree in business administration. And use Pro Tools,Reason,Bias,and a absurd amount of other plug ins with no problems. Don't know what was I thinking when I bought this. It has wasted hours of my life. I gave up on it months ago. Maybe I'll give it another shot this weekend.

The drum samples sound weak, thin and fake to me.Reason drum kits 2.0 sound way better than strike. the stock drum performances are have way decent. But good luck getting them recorded right. And who wants to use some dudes stock drum beat on a crappy sounding drum set anyway.

I wish I would of bought BFD. Don't waste your money or time.

I'm a multi-instrumentalist, producer and vocalist using Pro-Tools in a Mac Mini, monitoring with KEF reference monitors and Sony 7506 'phones. I produce jingles and backing track for TV and radio.

I can honestly say I have not used this yet, but I have heard it at the Digi website

All I heard was the raw drums - no other instruments. And truthfully I was not blown away by any of the demo sounds.

The price seems fair enough. I use EZ drummer ($160) which is somewhat limited by the number of available sounds (unless you buy the add-ons), but they are a bit more snappy that Strike's

Making music 40 years, mostly keys and gtr but also bass and drums. I am running PT 7.4 on a MacBook Pro and monitoring through Yamaha NS-10s.

Easy to install, easy to use (but very deep if you want to go there). Great automation and midi support. The manual is PDF. NOBODY likes this. EVER. Why can't manufacturers figure this out?

Stereo mix, but the controls within the program make it a full drum mix with all the flexibility of a big studio rig.

Well woth the price - I looked at BFD, EZ Drums, Addictive and Stylus RMX. Since I was using PT I thought I'd give it a shot. I am very happy with this descision.