Add surround-sound content, plenty of kits, masses of incredible plug-ins and a DAW to put it all together and this is one of the most comprehensive takes on any instrument-type ever recorded. The samples are recordings of six acoustic kits – from Gretsch, Ayotte, Pearl, Yamaha, Ludwig, and Premier – made at Galaxy Studios in Belgium, presided over by renowned engineer George Massenburg.

Complete with meticulously sampled drum sounds – some 230GB of 44.1kHz/24-bit samples – and a DAW of sorts, this is designed to be everything you need to perfect your acoustic (and also, to a certain extent, your electronic) beats. Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 3 is not really ‘just’ a drum instrument, it’s a drum ‘world’.

The worlds of the software instrument and huge instrument library have become so large (and slightly complicated) that it has become easier to merge anything software-based with a controllable front end into one all-singing, all-dancing Software Instrument category… and this is it! However, that results in a lot of nominees, so we’ve included a few extra Highly Commendeds, as so many deserve praise and were so close in our voting.

Superior drummer 3 library location