Messing with it, some of the changes are just awesome.
First, 18 slots. Old one was 12.
6 cymbal slots
4 Tom slots
2 Ride slots
Kick slot
Snare slot
Hihat slot
3 flexible slots
The three flexible slots can LITERALLY be anything. Including sine waves, signal generators, electronic noises, bells, you name it. Or any normal kit element. The kick and snare slots each have a linking option where you can link to any other kit element so that each hit triggers the second element as well. Use a flex slot as another kick, link, and you've got two dual kicks triggered at the same time.
They've added snare buzz into the settings too. So anytime you hit a tom or kick it triggers the buzz of the snare just like on a real kit. This is an adjustable parameter so you can crank it down to off or up to ridiculous levels if you want.
Adjustable beater/front mics on the kick. Adjustable top/bottom mics on the snare. Adjustable room mics up to 50ms after the initial trigger event, level and time adjustable. Transient editor. Tone editor on kick and snare where you can literally adjust out or enhance individual elements of the tone of the drum. Don't like a certain part of the ring-out on the snare? Slide it down. It's not quite the same as EQ, but sorta has a similar effect.
I'm about halfway through the manual and have already discovered some wild things you can do. My favorite is this silly linking deal. I linked the snare up with a sine zap tone and it's like the perfect little techy sounding sci-fi type snare sound. Kick linked to a sine wave set to 55hz and it gets a long ring-out on the tail. Lots of crazy stuff you can do here.
There's quite a bit I have to learn about it before I can toss together a new mix with it, but it's a WHOLE LOT more flexible than the previous version. Definitely worth the upgrade price ($79).
, especially the slotting/layering thing.
