Beatmaker 3 vs CedarGrooveNET

Beatmaker 3 is a virtual drum machine for building beats from ready-made kits, rhythmic phrases, and built-in effects. It brings the Beatmaker titles a user owns into one plugin with unified controls. Its browser can search by mood, genre, or BPM and preview kits and loops from titles the user does not own. Each title includes 10 genre-specific drum kits and rhythmic phrases that can be triggered in real time. The mixer offers per-track volume, pan, filter, ambience, saturation, and individual output routing. MIDI can be dragged into a DAW for editing or layering with other instruments. Beatmaker 3 supports 64-bit VST 2, VST 3, AU 2, and AAX; AU 2 requires Logic Pro X or newer, and AAX does not have native Apple Silicon support. It is listed for iOS, macOS, and Windows, with Windows 10–11 and macOS Big Sur 11 through macOS Tahoe 26 listed as requirements. Individual titles cost $49 as a one-time purchase, while the 17-instrument bundle costs $99.50, paid once. A free 7-day trial is available; there is no free plan.

CedarGrooveNET converts drum audio into MIDI and generates continuations of drum patterns. It accepts WAV, MP3, AIFF, FLAC and standard MIDI files. DrumTranscriber v2 maps drum events onto an editable 16th-note grid covering 11 drum classes, while an encoder-decoder LSTM creates continuations with controls for temperature, density, velocity and humanize. The maker lists Drum & Bass, House and Rock, with 10 sub-style presets for each. Editing includes drawing hits, undo and redo, row locking, pattern slots and synthesized browser previews. Exports are Type 0 Standard MIDI files using the General MIDI drum map on channel 10; compatible DAWs listed include Logic Pro, Ableton Live, FL Studio, Pro Tools, Cubase and Reaper. CedarGrooveNET is free, with browser and macOS versions, and MIDI exports are unlocked through an email link. The macOS app runs locally and offline without cloud services or an account on macOS 13 or later for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Browser audio remains in memory and is not written to disk. Clips over six minutes are rejected, and transcription analyzes up to the first 16 bars.