MOTUnation.com

Actually, 7Zip is the most advanced, reliable, and safe ZIP program out there. I erased WinZip due to too many problems. But I don't know if 7Zip is available for the Mac as I only use it on Windows. I couldn't live without it. It treats ZIP files like the regular file system and doesn't hide anything from you. I stay away from its proprietary format though, for compatibility.

I didn't know about Purrrfect Brushes, but maybe that's due to the Windows-only thing. I have some of their stuff for Drumagog and it's my favorite add-ons for drum replacement. Sticks only, in that case. But now that I think about it, using drum replacement software to swap brushes for original sticks might be interesting!

UPDATE - Jim at StudioCat (home of "Purr-fect" Brushes Kit) kindly sent me a Mac-zipped
file of the product, which opened without issues. The product sounds excellent, is very comprehensive and easy to use. It actually dates all the way back to Kontakt 2, so it's been around awhile, but I wasn't aware of it until reading the replies on this thread.

At $19, it's an incredible bargain.

Gosh, sorry this was a problem, David. I didn't encounter it when I downloaded and didn't give it a second thought. Glad it worked out OK.

+1 Straight Ahead Jazz Brushes library

Has anyone figured out how to get Straight Ahead products to operate in single hit mode? The last time I tried my products from them, they all seemed to want to work as loop libraries, which I rarely ever use.

I've been able to get much better results from BFD since spending a couple of weekends fine-tuning my own presets a few months back, as I now have created about eight different brush kits.

Not as detailed for snare work as Vienna's jazz set, but easier to work with overall, and the rest of the Vienna set gets lost in the mix even with sticks.

BTW Project Sam just released a second volume (or is it a V2 update?) of their swing library this week, but it seems to be more loop-oriented than single hits.

I have a few brush kits from Toontrack as well, but haven't had a chance to really give them a run on a project yet. But now that I have some excellent add-ons for BFD from Chocolate Audio and Drum Drops, I am feeling less of a need to augment BFD with other products.

mhschmieder wrote: To be quite frank though, my favorite jazz brush kit at this point is the freebie from Sennheiser (if still available), called "DrumMic'a!" (Kontakt). Very dynamic and full of articulations. Even better, it's a Kontakt Player Library, so you don't need a full Kontakt license to use it!

Hey, I downloaded DrumMic'a and it's pretty dang great. Holds up well compared to BFD etc. and it's free! However, I don't see any brush articulations. Are you sure it was DrumMic'a you were thinking of? Am I not seeing something? Is there an expander m'be?

That's an extremely old post, so I can't remember the basis of what I wrote. I was likely confused, as the Sennheiser library has pre-mixes by genre, which are quite useful. No brush kit though.

I often use that library as a first-pass sanity check, but it's effectively a Vista-Lite kit and I rarely want that on final production, even though it mixes well and balances quite easily. Just not enough depth in the sound overall; I like wood. But plastic was big in the 70's (including Billy Cobham).