REAL DRUM SAMPLES

Thank you - I have now cast my vote

I use Soundfonts. which are based on sample I guess, to render midi to wav. But recent experience with live drumming makes me wish I had a band!

I use Soundfonts. which are based on sample I guess, to render midi to wav.

To be fair, so do I.  Many synthesis techniques rely on sampling to sone extent or another, but that sort of sampling is not really what the original question was about (at least, that's not the way I read it).  

But recent experience with live drumming makes me wish I had a band!

 

FWIW, my idea of drum samples are.. "one off's" (single drum hits) that get pasted together to build patterns.  I don't work in that manner at all.  In the event that I decide to "put together" a drum track, I actually go back through previously recorded sessions and grab.... say, a verse part here, a chorus pattern there, etc.  Funnily enough, I have a decent drum machine (an Alesis SR-16) that I loathe and despise.  I remember being so excited about buying it and after bang my head against the wall for hours trying to come up with something that sounded "real".  I realized that the only thing that sounds real (to me) is a real drummer.  I have heard drum tracks built with machines that were nice, but they (IMO) are all still lacking that one thing... the human element.

 

I used to have an Alesis SR-16 and sold it. My viewpoint now is that if I use a drummachine I want it to sound like one (and the SR-16 tries to hard to sound like a real drummer) And if I don't want a drummachinesound I should somehow record real drums.
I use Sonic Foundry's Acid as my drummachine with oneshotsamples of vintage drummachines that are available on the internet in abundance.
In my band my girlfriend plays drums  

I use Sonic Implants drum soundfonts, which are really nice sounding, and lately I've been using more drum loops (Beta Monkey, in particular). I would use single samples for certain things, like to create my own soundfont kit (especially if there are multiple velocity and attack samples of each instrument) and to use with a program like Fruity Loops.