Playbeat 3 vs. Triaz vs. Drum Designer

The holiday shopping season is upon us and I know you guys like comparison videos, so I thought that I would put three popular drum machines up to the test. All three sound great and each have their plusses and minuses, but there is one that stands out with quite a few more features. So if you are in the market for a drum VST, these are three great options available and they are the three I use the most, by a large margin.

FYI the current sales prices for these is below:

Triaz $75

Playbeat $69

Drum Designer $104

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0:00 Intro
0:50 Cost & Content
2:25 Sound
2:49 Playbeat Examples
3:41 Drum Designers Examples
4:43 Triaz Examples
5:34 Sequencers
6:41 Random
8:29 Music Styles
9:20 What’s Missing
10:32 Final Verdict

[gacleite]

Drum Designer is atm on sale for 29$ 🤯

Great comparasion, thx for the video, really appreciate it

[oobesan]

Another great video! I have and use extensively Playbeat 3 and XO (XLN Audio). But I just bought Triaz last night! I also have Battery 4, but essentially haven’t touched it in over a year. I wanted to tack on a few opinions, since I don’t have a channel like yours but think it could help people trying to decide between all these options.

Playbeat 3 is so incredibly easy to use and get a glitch or chillwave groove going. I’d like to point out that’s its main randomization feature is its infinity looping mode! Maybe you touched on this, but I missed it in the video. The infinity looping mode means you can set it up so that it does its smart randomization thing every 1, 2, 3, 4, etc bars so that you never stop changing up the beat, even if it’s just slightly. I think this, plus its price, is why it’s so great! Lastly, Playbeat 4 is coming this Dec or Jan, so watch for the update to drop very soon!

XO is, in my opinion, invaluable, because it is AI librarian system. What is the point in having 15, 000 drum samples if you spend hours and hours having to sort through them? Its sequencer and MIDI export have some significant limitations, but its factory content includes over 4000 samples and they sound amazing. Importing your other one-shot sample library is nearly completely automatic, and I did my entire external hard drive library in about 5 minutes. Now my XO library has over 18, 000 samples. Auditioning the samples is effortless in the main display (Space), with 0 latency. And it’s AI engine not only sorts the entire library (your can merge or sort by factory versus imported samples) by sound type, but it can also suggest a similar sound within that “family” if you want to change it up. I’ve sent XLN a long list of suggestions for their sequencer for their next update, so I hope they incorporate these changes.

As far as Triaz goes, note that it’s on sale right now for €64, or you can do what I did and get the Instruments Bundle for €99, which comes with Triaz, their Bass Synth, the Drift expansion, two Kontakt drum machines, and two sample packs. It was too incredible of a deal to pass up.

[JeffyG]

I appreciate your comparison! Well done.

[AbbieLincoln-yc]

Good review bud
Both Triaz and DD earn their keep

[ProFleer-epwq]

Great comparison. Would like to see some toms added to UVI’s Drum Designer.

[LandupSkydown]

You can drag drop your own samples in play beat 3 as well.

[GoblinGoodfella]

Playbeat 4 is out now with a new look in design with extra features!

[Spirit-Groove]

Thanks for the excellent video! I'm building up my drums VST library for my studio and reading that DD won't sync to a DAW transport? That's a major flaw!

I have Playbeat and Triaz and was ready to get Drum Designer but not if it doesn't sync to host.

[yves_auger]

I have Triaz and love it. Sounds great out of the box, and easy to tweak. But DD also sounds like a great option. As I am a Falcon user, I will have to consider that option. An update would make it easier to decide... I think that Teletone also has great options. Not as deep as far as the samples, but great sounds.

[smhhms]

Triaz has more acoustic samples than DD doesn’t it? I’m just in a demo of Triaz. I’m looking to replace NI Drum Lab, with something fast.

[randallharp]

Although XO has been my favorite, I've been seriously considering Triaz. Now if I could only trade in Drumsynth 500, Boom, and Breaktweaker for Triaz...

[CountofSt.Zunela]

is there a way that I can use portamento/glide notes on triaz?

[BenCaesar]

Drum designer needs an undo button urgently, also no user sample options. Otherwise sound is big, but missing key features

[JeffyG]

These are all single sample players. They sound good, but there’s no multi-sampled, multi-velocity layered acoustic kits like EZDrummer, Addictive Drums, Get Good Drums or Steven Slate. I also find the limits lanes of 8 to 10 kit pieces a problem. How about you?

[MattStevens]

Anything with a drag and drop. morph pad, and randomize button makes me wanna buy it. Been on the fence about Triaz but I might just bite because of the two mentioned features. I'm not just thinking of drum samples. I'm thinking of morphable dragged percussive foley, normal foley and explosions. 😳

[Garnassium]

Didn't mention the best : Battalion!

[gordowebb]

Triaz is great. Playbeat sounds/seems like a toy in comparison. I've had playbeat for a long time and have never used it on a track but I'm using Triaz on almost everything i do.

[andya]

Hey, is that a polarity switch on Triaz? When did they add it? Says nothing about it in the manual.

[Orangebritches]

Thanks for reminding me I have playbeat haha. Triaz is my fave though. I like how you can drag the pad around to morph the samples.