Rating - 5 / 5
Damage Drum Kit comes rolling in like a freight train, and wow: was I surprised. A hard-hitting, bold, rock-influenced kit was what I was hoping for in a future release, but I wasn't expecting a Damage drum library this year. However, Heavyocity managed to give us an impressive summer gift. There is just something about the Damage engine that excels beyond so many other drum and percussion libraries.
If you are not familiar with the Damage engine, I will go over it. Damage Drum Kit is set up the same way as Damage 2. When you load Damage Drum Kit, you will see three NKI’s named Drum Ensemble Designer, Kit Designer, and Loop Designer. Within the Drum Ensemble Designer, you will find 15 preset categories labelled Ambient Ghosts, Buddha Kit, Cinematic Stealth, Crunchy Cinematic, Cymbal Reverses, Drumming Circle, Epic Trailer Drum Kit 1 (Hyped), Epic Trailer Drum Kit 1, Epic Trailer Drum Kit 2 (Hyped), Epic Trailer Drum Kit 2, Fill R Up- Toms (Hyped), Fill R Up-Toms, Hi-Hats and Cymbals, Snare Performance Combos, and Sticks Clacks and Whacks. At the bottom of the GUI, you will see four pages in total that include Stage, Source, Settings, and Master FX. In the Stage section, you can arrange custom locations of the drums, create custom mixes, and includes five mic positions. On the Source page, you can drag any drum from any category to the keys found on the right side of the interface where it says Drop Sample Here to assign a signature drum ensemble.
The settings page is where you select a variety of performances like Crescendo, Swell, Flam, Roll and Repeater, and assign them to a variety of sources and keys. The final page is MASTER-FX, where the global effects are found, including Heavyocity’s proprietary Punish Knob that comes with three fx presets, Nightmare, Hurt Me Plenty, and Gently Now.
The Kit Designer is where you can adjust the mix and assign any drum source beginning on C1 to D2#. Midi mapping to any Pad Controller is quick and easy. The Kit Designer contains four divisions, including Mix, Source, Settings, and Master-FX. The Kit Designer includes ten Damage presets and fifteen Organic kit presets.
The Loop Designer has four sections Loop, Source, Send-FX, and Master-FX. There are two categories of Loops featuring Straight/Triplet and ten loops in each category. These are great starters that give you some instant inspiration with 288 Loops (72 loops with 4 stems each), 144 Straight (36 with 4 stems), and 144 Triplet (36 with 4 stems).
Damage Drum Kit contains 23,840 Samples and includes; 24 GB uncompressed (11.08 GB on Disk with NI lossless compression). There are 120 different drum articulations and 60 Custom-Designed Presets. It's Free Kontakt player compatible and is a standalone instrument. Damage Drum Kit is an affordable way to experience the Damage engine if you haven't been able to before.
Heavyocity Damage Drum Kit is a savage compelling new extension to the Damage drum line, and they didn't hold anything back. It's a versatile drum library for hard rock, metal, industrial, cyberpunk, and fierce trailer scoring. The play-ability and usefulness right out of the box are perfect and authentic to Heavyocity's signature sound of pure excellence. Damage Drum Kit just Rocks!
Original Source: Sample Sound Review.com
