One thing that I found interesting, is that while there are only 16 stereo outs, each of the 32 pads can be assigned to one of the 16 outs. That means, you can effectively group pads and route each group to its own separate out. For example, let's say you have several articulations of a single drum that you would like to put the same effects on. You just assign each pad of that drum to the same stereo out and then load up your effects onto that track! Do you have a drum kit that uses more than 32 pads? Open another instance and continue!
Supposedly, according to the developer, the app supports round-robins as well (although I don't see exactly how it's set up, and the documentation is not available). Perhaps they are using a pseudo form of round-robin--doing a sort of round robin with each of the velocity layer samples, rather than using true individual groups of round-robin samples per layer for the kit. I'd like to get clarification on that.
One thing that I think is a drawback, is that there are only 8 sample layers. Let's say I wanted to use some of my deeply sampled multi-velocity purchased drum kits, containing 20 or more velocity sample layers... It seems that 8 layers is too little. Perhaps there is something I don't understand or I am not quite clear on. I purchase a lot of multi-velocity kits from places like Drum Drops. These have way more than just 8 layers, and there are two or more round robin samples per layer in those kits--their total number of samples add up to nearly 2000 samples on those drum kits. I would want to be putting all of those drum samples into my patch and not leaving them out.
Over all though, it seems like it would be easier to use than DrumGizmo. I'd just would like clarification on those things before I would be sure I would want to buy it. It's got to be head-n-shoulders better than the Open Source DrumGizmo for an "at cost" drum sampler.
Edit: I just found the docs! Maybe I'll be able to answer my own questions!
I'm off to read the manual!
Edit 2: The manual contained the answers to my questions. This Drum sampler appears to be positioned as more of a "Poise" (One Small Clue) replacement, than a tool for deeply-sampled multi-velocity acoustic drum kits. That's not a bad thing at all. I just like to understand the limitations. Interestingly enough, it can even import Poise kits if you have them:
"Import - Poise kit - will partially import Poise (by One Small Clue) drumkit, some of noncompatible parameters will be skipped"
Also, each of the 8 layers are single samples that can be triggered in various ways. However, the total number of samples in a single pad is currently only 8 samples:
"Speedrum has 32 Drum Pads. Each Pad can have up to 8 layers, and each layer can load one
sample. Each Pad is triggered by one MIDI note."
An interesting thing is how those 8 samples can be triggered:
"Each Pad has a Layer Mode parameter. It determines which layers are played when a drum pad is
triggered.
Pad Layer Modes:
• Single - when a Pad is triggered, only the active (selected) layer will play
• Velocity - a layer is triggered according to the MIDI note velocity (layer velocity range can be
edited)
• Round Robin - the next layer will be played each time the Pad is triggered
• Random - a random layer will be played each time the Pad is triggered
• All Tight - default mode - all layers will be played, the humanization is calculated once and used
for all layers"
One other interesting thing is each pad's play mode:
"Play Mode:
The play mode option controls how a drum pad responds to MIDI note-off events.
• One Shot - pad will play all the way through, ignoring any MIDI note-off events, release knob
will be disabled in this mode
• Note On - pad will play until it receives a MIDI note- off event. If the amplitude envelope is off,
the pad will be silenced immediately, if the amplitude envelope is on it will begin the release
stage."
Essentially, this means that one could load up pads with drum hit samples that are One Shot triggered, pads that are loops, and a kit could be saved using a combination of the two.
Based on this new research (after I saw where the docs were), it appears to me that this is a very capable and well thought out drum sampler, in the nature of how One Small Clue's Poise works (probably even better), and that it is designed for small sets of samples per pad. This means that it does not (in any way) replace DrumGizmo, which is designed for huge multi-velocity realistic acoustic drum kits, with samples numbering in the thousands. I would find myself using both tools completely differently, and would find both to be essential.