Addictive Drums Review

so I've been messing around with AD and after awhile of fiddling i thought i'll drop a little review here. first off, i'm a DFH user, not the best sounding plugin but after the whole fiddle-session it got me doubting that statement at some point. I use DFH with some triggers. basically what i'm not quite happy with is the bass kick and the snare. may be the toms as well.  anyways i got the thing started and noticed how fast it loaded. at laest thrice faster than DFH. The first thing you see is the drumset parts and the mixer below. you got tabs: main (the drumset parts); EDIT (where you edit separate parts of the drumkit); FX (the fx tab) and Beats (midi stuff goes here). I don't really remember the names of the tabs exactly but you got the hang of it.   So one disadvantage i noticed at once was the MIDI mapping. Ouch! that thing was far from the standards like 42 - closed hihat, 46 - open hi hat, and the toms and whatnot. with DFH i could import drums from various software like GP6 and other sheet music programs and it'd play the basic stuff. then i could add the crashes, spock and whatnot. with AD you gotta spend time re arranging the beats.  after that i started tweaking with the thing and started editing the separate pieces. Snare. you can do a lot of crazy stuff, add reverb, compression, distortion, etc. stuff that is not available in DFH. so after awhile i finally got the sound i wanted. the drumkit sounded nice and quite real. wasn't satisfied with the kick. no problem, changed the kick and got something tighter. Of course i could fine tune it further with an EQ. that's great! i love the ability of editing separate pieces!  it was all going fine until i decided to put it into a mix. i loaded one of my projects and started adapting the drum's midi to AD's map. hmm well not bad but something's missing. I can't tell quite what it was but it seemed like it lost some balls. One thing that totally KILLED me was the 3 or 4 cymbals. sure you can choose from the huge list but if you cant use all (or at least more than 4) at a time then what the heck? you can't have a China with a tiny crash at the same time. no wait you can! but then you'll have to say goodbye to one of your Crashes. hmm... I originally wanted a new drumset VSTi for the ability to tweak it further and create a custom Monster kit with all the rides and crashes and cymbals i wanted. This thing gives you the ability of choosing from a BIG list but limits you with 4 (iirc) toms, a snare, bass, Hi hat, ride, crash, china/crash, one additional crash and a cowbell. a COWBELL!!?? are you kidding me? i put a metal kit, i have to decide whether i want to have a Crash, a 18" china or a 20" china not being able to choose all three at the same time and you're shoving a COWBELL which can't be changed? well it could. a black beauty.... another cowbell! mrrragh!! Didn't like it. anyways finally decided on the china vs chrash thing and hit the play button only to find that it sounded extremely dull in the mix, tried a lot of EQing and tweaking with FX and compression. sounded kind a close to nice but again something was missing. Bass wasn't bad. not as thick as i have and pretty clicky, i guess Mr. "the dude from dream theater" would be satisfied. may be me as well. snare sounded pretty well too. hi hat missed something but not a big thing. now cymbals were the problem. sounded weak and... i dont know. stuttered or something while blast beating on the kick. chinas weren't strong at all! sounded weak and dark, didn't cut the the mix at all. finally after awhile i decided to turn of the cymbals and put the DFH in there to play the cymbals only! the result was nice! Cymbals!! Finally alive! chinas! 2 chinas, a spock! crashes! I'm loving it! but then interference with AD's mapping. sure i could put two tracks: one for each. and for less complexity work on one midi track and send individual notes to the other track but this way i can't hear what note im putting unless i hit the play button. nope. not my thing!  Anyways, sooon i gotta go and thus i'll sum it all up.  Conclusion:   AD is a nice drumset, sounds quite real, has all the abilities to tweak the thing as far as one can go, gives a nice versatility... however is limited in the amount of cymbals and pieces, stock cymbals sound weak, and takes ages to get a good sound/get it sitting in a mix well. it sounded nice with DFH's cymbals but dammit you're paying that much money to keep wishing for more and use it with DFH?  DFH on the other hand is less versatile, does give you the ability to tweak the piece individually outside the VSTi, is good with mapping. snare, bass and probably toms sound "not so good"  hope i didn't leave much out, sorry if my english is bad, and i got no time left, gotta run  V