LA Drum Sessions 2 | MIX

Most products are difficult to review in 250 words. Not this one. The success of LA Drum Sessions encouraged Big Fish Audio to head into the studio for round two. The result is a no-frills set of grooves that is a must-have for many loop-based producers.

Being a Stylus RMX user, I used that app's SAGE converter to strip the REX file loops off the DVD. As usual, the content is also offered in AIFF, WAV and Apple Loops form. Whatever form you choose, you'll need just more than 3 GB of hard drive space for this collection of loops and hits. If your're short on space, then your can choose not to import all of the files. Big Fish has included dry, wet and room versions, and while it's true that there's no substitute for a set of room mics, in this age of affordable reverbs, you can easily go with the dry samples only and tailor them for your productions at a later time.

Loops were sampled at 15 different tempos, and all of the grooves in a particular tempo folder can be easily mixed and matched. LA Drum Sessions 2 offers high-caliber performances, and the fills in particular are a great bonus, especially if you use them as starting points and dissect them in an editor.