![]() ![]() In Classic mode, the panel houses a small but useful set of buttons and knobs. Steinberg recommends 2 GB for GA3 users, and so do I. GA3 also needs lots of memory I encountered a few log-jams when it needed to pause and load more samples during playback. The latency was still acceptable at the higher setting, but this is the first time I’ve run into the problem. My rapidly aging but still capable 3GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM meets minimum system requirements, but I had to increase the latency on my Yamaha mLAN ASIO output to avoid buffer under-runs. There was no way to set up my own velocity cross-switching, but each slot can load dry and ambient samples, plus volume, pan and dry/ambient balance knobs. This provides 27 slots, which are pre-assigned to the channels. I had no trouble loading a few of my own samples into GA3’s user setup. Any drum channel can be sent to any output, so you can pan and process them in the host sequencer. There’s no panning or filtering for the drums, but GA3 has 12 stereo outputs, each with its own compressor and graphic EQ. Each channel has velocity, tuning, decay, ambience and volume knobs, so it’s not possible to adjust the tuning of one tom independently or change the ambience of the sidestick without affecting the ambience of the snare. As I like to put the sidestick and snare on separate channels to give each its own reverb, this design is not ideal for me. ![]() The kit has an 8-channel mixer, with each channel handling several drums all of the toms are on one channel, for example. Most of the drums are multisampled with velocity cross-switching, and an ambience knob can be used to crossfade between separate dry and room samples. Each style comes with a predefined kit of sampled drums, but you can unlink them if you want to play, for instance, a country train beat-style with an electronic kit. I already have a Syncrosoft USB dongle (required, but not included), so before long I was checking out the styles and patterns. In Dual Mode, Groove Agent can don disguises as Special Agent (top) or Percussion Agent (bottom). ![]() It delivered the cooking samba feel that I needed, but as I got deeper into the software I ran into some design issues that left me feeling frustrated. I’ve been producing a lot of backing tracks lately, so I immediately pressed GA3 into service in a Latin-flavored arrangement. The style palette includes more than 100 choices, from bop and slow blues to hip-hop and trance, and each style has more than two-dozen patterns and two-dozen fills. Version 3, developed for Steinberg by Bornemark Software, has some important new features, including the ability to use your own samples within a Groove Agent kit. For producers, songwriters and musicans who need to create bed tracks for a variety of uses, Groove Agent 3 (GA3) has a lot to offer: a wide variety of pop drum grooves and fills in familiar styles, stylistically appropriate kits with some basic sound parameters and the ability to edit the drum parts as MIDI tracks. ![]()
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