by garrettendi » Tue Feb 12, 2019 2:54 pm
This is something I can give some help on for once!
Free-wise, you have MT Power Drumkit 2, MDrummer Small, Spitfire Labs Drums, IK Sampletank Free and Kontakt Player 6 to name the ones I've used before.
Kontakt/Sampletank obviously comes with standalone apps, and while Kontakt Player is good, Sampletank has a huge bug where short MIDI notes (such as those from my e-kit) fail to register. So in all good conscience, I really cannot recommend Sampletank.
The other three are VSTis only, but you can do what I do, and run them through Savihost which is a VST host that only hosts the one plugin. It's not licenced for commercial usage, so be warned - I only use that route for rehearsals/practice. MDrummer Small I think might actually come with a standalone app, I can't recall.
Of those three, the best is MTPDK2. Pretty realistic, and a good round robin algorithm. Spitfire Labs is good as well, but I can't stand the harshness of the ride cymbol. If those concerned are happy with that, then it's good.
MDrummer Small is only available in Melda's obsolete section, version 7. It's not very realistic, but comes with a selection of (as a guess) about 20 kits. There's no round robin, and it's mainly a drum machine with a drum pad mode for e-kits.
I'm a huge fan of MDrummer and I'm in the process of saving up for MDrummer Large which is MUCH better and has round robins in it. It's €249 which is far from free, but if you get it in a 50% sale, and sign up for the newsletter for a €20 discount, that'll really help bring it down.
However I like that machine-y sound. You might want more realism, in which case I most recommend MTPDK2. Simple, easy to use, and the most realistic of the free options.
As for cheap, there are a couple of options I know of that are equivalent in price to MDrummer Large. EZDrummer, Superior Drummer, GGD. Steven Slate, but all of these are probably out of the price range unless you get lucky in a sale.
TL:DR: Get Mt Power Drumkit 2
"I mean, Led Zeppelin didn't write tunes that everyone liked. They left that to the Bee Gees" - Wayne Campbell (Wayne's World)