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What are the advantages of using drum plugins as opposed to old fashioned drum hits for making beats? I asked myself this as I started using Nepheton, D16's 808 emulation. What is the point of using it's sequencer when my DAW, FL Studio, has a much better one? Not only that: what if I want one short bass drum and one long one? Nepheton only has the one bass drum module. What are you all's thoughts on this and other drum machine/synths as opposed to samples?

Just more control over each hit. Envelopes, filters, pitching... You can do this with samples yes, but if a sample is too short you'll have a hard time stretching the decay out, and pitching can introduce degradation depending on the sample. I have a couple of emulators, and several hardware drum machines but I still prefer samples myself. I've even sampled the machines for ease. The sound is a bit different as well with emulations/clones.

Yeah, I get the whole more control thing. I actually like to use ESK 9 kick drum VSti and Subatomic quite a bit. Low CPU and I can load multiples if need be

You don't really have to choose. Get the best from both worlds.

I know that you don't have to choose. I'm just saying that why does stuff like Nepheton exist when it's ultimately inefficient

Just from observation, most producers use samples for their main drums. Most of their most proficient mastering goes onto these drums, and the rest is drum machines that they use for variation for the drums throughout the tunes. Drums rolls, extra hats, grooves, etc.