A virtual drummer that covers 123 styles to inspire your compositions.

Steinberg Groove Agent 3 is the third incarnation of the phenomenally successful Groove Agent virtual drummer VST instrument—and it's a major step up from previous versions.

Groove Agent 3 combines a huge library of virtual drum and percussion sounds with a range of player technologies that give you dynamic, ready-to-go drums, beats, rhythms, and percussion in only a few mouse clicks.

Top-quality digital drum samples and live recorded drum performances in a massive number of variations cover 123 different styles from over 50 years of music history, automatically synced to the song tempo.

Steinberg Groove Agent 3 also offers more kits and sounds, including 3 new-to-the-series, top-rate acoustic drum kits, as well as the ability to import user music samples in WAV and AIFF format for even more flexibility.

Groove Agent 3 adds 2 new agents to the Classic Agent seen in previous versions: Special Agent and Percussion Agent. While the top-notch Special Agent adds an astoundingly realistic digital studio drummer complete with new acoustic drum kits to Groove Agent 3's arsenal, the Percussion Agent is specialized in red-hot percussive grooves and beats.

The new Dual Mode puts any 2 of the 3 agents together in the recording studio for scorching virtual drum and percussion sessions—all within a single VST instrument. While Groove Agent 3 breathes new life into any production with its inspiring and inventive drum performances, it's also an ideal sparring partner for practice or jam sessions.

How does Groove Agent 3 work?
The classic Groove Agent concept (called Classic Agent in Groove Agent 3) is based on 1000s of MIDI sequences, which were played by top studio drummers especially for Groove Agent 3. With an extremely easy-to-use slider, you select a music genre, and another slider sets the complexity of the groove being played. Each complexity level has its own drum fill, half-tempo and sidestick variations. The Edit area lets you change sounds or swap instruments around.

The Styles
Groove Agent 3 features 123 dynamic and ready-to-go drum styles from the past 50 years, with 42 new in this version. Each includes up to 25 variations and has its own drum kit assigned to it. Up to 25 complexity levels serve to select different variations of the given style. In addition to variations on the basic rhythmic pattern, fills and halftime grooves suitable for each style are also available. Random and auto-fill functions liven up the proceedings, while the Shuffle and Humanize knobs add a dash of swing and natural feel to the rhythm recipe.

Groove Agent 3 suits almost any musical style from classical to contemporary, capturing the full sonic palette of several high-quality drum kits and digital drum machines. This makes it a rich and versatile instrument and style library, one that sounds just as powerful and emotive in the context of a heavy-rock song as it does in a dance music production.

The Sounds
The sound library of Groove Agent 3 was created to cover as many musical bases as possible. Authenticity was also a key issue: the idea was to tailor drum kits and percussion instruments to a perfect fit for each musical style, as well as to capture natural room ambience for every sound. What's more, special stylistic devices were employed during the recording of drum sounds to invoke the spirit of the given era and lend these sounds authenticity. Case in point: '50s-style kits were played with brushes and mallets, while '80s-style kits featuring additional piccolo snare drums were played with rods.

Rather than recycling a sample library for the contents of Groove Agent, every drum sound was recorded in a pro studio in Sweden using high-quality analog equipment. All sounds were recorded with multiple microphones to capture the room's natural sound, which can be added to the VST instrument using the Ambience control. Contemporary electronic sounds feature standard studio effects such as reverb and echo.

Percussion
Groove Agent 3 offers a wealth of various percussion instruments in its sound library's treasure-trove. Alongside standard GM sounds, a battery of intriguing instruments, including African drums, rain stick, tambourine, cascabeles, and many more are included. Steinberg included lots more percussion sounds in Groove Agent 3 which play hand in hand with the all new Percussion Agent. Vintage drum machine kits
Some of these beauties included are over thirty years old. Steinberg worked hard to capture and repackage the better part of the magic of the drum machines of yesteryear. These vintage drum machines get their ambience from a vintage plate reverb unit. In Groove Agent 3 they've also spiced up the sonic palette with some very well known digital drum machines from the eighties.

Real Ambience Technology
The Real Ambience feature offers true recorded ambience that can be perfectly blended into any mix or production. During production of the Groove Agent 3 library, the natural ambience of different recording spaces was captured using special microphone techniques. Using no artificial reverb, Real Ambience builds an extraordinarily convincing drum room environment with fully adjustable wet/dry balance for each individual drum kit piece.

Steinberg Groove Agent 3 Software Features:

• Add inspiring live drum patterns and percussion performances in real time to your song and quickly record the result
• Covers almost any style: 123 styles total — 108 Groove Agent, 15 Special Agent drum styles, plus hundreds of percussion performances played by professional studio drummers — automatically synced up to song tempo
• Variations with 25 complexity levels in each style, including fills, intros, endings, and half-tempo feel variations
• Huge audio library: 10 richly detailed acoustic kits, 9 drum machines, and a vast array of acoustic and electric percussion sounds
• Classic Groove Agent module offers fully editable drum styles with corresponding kits and FX
• RealAmbience technology offers true recorded ambience for drum kits to perfectly blend into any mix
• Record Groove Agent beats to a MIDI track with Cubase and Nuendo or export Groove combinations to a MIDI file for further editing in any host
• Supports all major formats: VST, DXi, AU + Rewire for easy Pro Tools integration
• Standalone version with multiple-output support included
  
  New in Groove Agent 3
• Special Agent module features 15 complete live drumming styles, each containing 75 different performances
• Percussion Agent module with 8 groups of red-hot recorded percussion grooves with hundreds of percussion performances
• Dual Mode combines the breathtaking creative power of two Agents playing side by side within the same VSTi
• Flexible User Import Sample feature (WAV/AIFF) lets you create your own kits
• Realistic rolls and paradiddles thanks to Alternating hits for each drum on every note eliminate machine-gun effect
• Auto Fill functionality and useful Speed control for jamming and practicing
• 9-band EQ and compressor for each of the 12 stereo outputs with useful presets included

Turn the beat around with Groove Agent 3. Order today!

Steinberg Groove Agent 3 Software Specifications:

• Mac
• Mac OS X version 10.4
• Power Mac G5 2GHz or Intel Core Solo 1.5 minimum (dual core processor recommended)
• 1GB RAM (2GB recommended)
• 4GB free HD space DVD drive required for installation
• CoreAudio compatible audio hardware is required
• USB-eLicenser/Steinberg Key (copy protection device) and USB port required*
• Internet connection required for license activation
• For using as plug-in, a VST (VST 2.3 or higher) or AU compatible host is required (AU hosting is compatible with Logic 7.7.3). For using as ReWire slave device, a ReWire compatible host is required.
  
  PC
• Windows XP Home, XP Professional or Vista 32-bit
• Intel/AMD processor 2 GHz minimum (dual core processor recommended)
• 1GB RAM (2GB recommended)
• 4GB free HD space
• DVD drive required for installation
• Windows MME compatible audio hardware is required (ASIO compatible audio hardware required for low-latency operation)
• USB-eLicenser/Steinberg Key (copy protection device) and USB port required*
• Internet connection required for license activation
• For using as plug-in, a VST (VST 2.3 or higher) or DXi2 compatible host is required. For using as ReWire slave device, a ReWire compatible host is required.
  
  *The USB-eLicenser/Steinberg Key (copy protection device) required to run this product is not included. Customers who do not own a USB-eLicenser/Steinberg Key must purchase one separately. The same USB-eLicenser/Steinberg Key copy protection device is then used for all Steinberg products that require it.