Virtual Drummer SOLID 2

Name: Virtual Drummer SOLID 2
Price: 119 USD
Author: UJAM

by UJAM · Drum Instrument · Pop and rock drum instrument

Not rated yet

A contemporary pop drum instrument with five kits, 30 styles and 650 grooves.

Slam, character presets and feel controls shape the groove; it lists at $119 and was $9.52 on sale.

Best for: Drums. Genres: Pop, Rock & Indie.

Keywords: acoustic drums, heavy, modern, organic, preset-driven, punchy, retro, smooth.

What it does

Virtual Drummer SOLID 2 is UJAM's pop and rock session drummer, pitched as "your personal gold-standard session drummer". You trigger styles and phrases from the keyboard and get played acoustic drum parts without programming them hit by hit.

Kits: five acoustic drum kits recorded for contemporary pop tracks, with an instrument channel for mixing and matching drums across up to four types.
Grooves: 30 styles, 650 grooves and 100 presets, all royalty-free for commercial use.
Slam and Character: Slam adds extra punch, and six character presets morph the tone from smooth and retro to heavily smashed.
Mix section: volume per drum, separate overhead and room mic levels, reverb, and six mix presets made by sound designers.
Feel controls: Humanize and Swing, plus pushing or pulling the beat against the grid.
Multi-outs: route each drum element to its own track in your DAW for full mix control.
MIDI drag and drop: drag patterns into your DAW timeline to edit the notes in detail.

A free trial is available.

Source: UJAM product page

When to use it

SOLID 2 is the middle-of-the-road drummer in UJAM's series: a natural pop-rock kit that plays finished grooves the moment you hold a key. Compared with EZdrummer 3 and Addictive Drums 2, it gives up most of the kit building, mic mixing and groove editing, but gets a usable part down faster and at a much lower sale price. Superior Drummer 3 is far deeper for mixing and editing every hit, and SOLID 2 does not try to compete with it. Against a pattern-based tool like Battery 4 or XO, it is played acoustic drumming rather than samples you sequence yourself.

Best for: pop, pop-rock and country drum tracks for songwriting, demos and quick production.
Genres: pop, rock, country and indie.
Look elsewhere if: you want to edit every hit and mic; Superior Drummer 3 or EZdrummer 3 give far more control.
Tip: use the multi-outs to treat kick, snare and rooms separately in your DAW, and drag the MIDI out when you need to fix a single fill.

What producers say

Reviewers like it for how quickly it delivers realistic, natural-sounding drums; the main limit is that it is not built for precise editing.

MusicTech called the Virtual Drummer 2 series "ridiculously easy" for great drumming and saw SOLID 2 as the drummer for mainstream country, rock and pop, but noted "you don't get precision editing".
Production Expert said the version 2 update "gets it right", adding individual outputs, MIDI drag and drop and a better mixer without losing the simplicity, with drums that "don't sound too modern".
Criticisms: no detailed editing inside the plugin by design; you drag the MIDI to your DAW for that.

Where to buy

UJAM: $119
PluginFox: $119
AudioDeluxe: $119

Tutorials and reviews

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