14 DAY TRIAL // At first, I couldn't really believe my eyes as I have seen the huge number of downloads from softpedia.com for this tiny program: being downloaded for almost 53.000 times should make some sort of a star from this piece of code! Needless to say that I haven't waited any longer and added one more download for Drums Room and tested it to see what was going on. To my great surprise, even after having spent about one and a half hour in front of the Drums Room, I still can't see what's so appealing to it such as to make people download it for so many times... I simply can't understand what's so awesome in a software that uses your PC keyboard to play some samples of various drum components - should them be as excellent as EZDrummer's sounds...well, maybe we could have something. Which I simply see we don't!
The Looks
Even the most inexperienced software analyzer would clearly and instantly see that Drums Room is a free program by just taking a glimpse at it. I was tempted to say it looked like a software made especially for children or even like some sort of home-developed flash-thing for simple and easy fun.
Most of the Drums Room's window (one window whatsoever) is occupied with a very futile thing: a picture of a drum set; as if this picture would somehow contribute to a betterment of either software functionality or user's drum-related capabilities... In fact, there are three different pictures of drum sets available, each toggled by one of the three corresponding buttons in the right side of the window.
The first set looks rather like a Tama one, with nice Zildjian cymbals, should this be anyone's concern; the second and the third are branded, Pearl and Sonor drums. The second picture, (Pearl) is really crappy and has also been made by a poor photographer as it seems like one of the cymbal-stands is about to fall, if not even already falling :). The fourth and final button is the Information one and it will actually open a small pop-up window containing data regarding the producers of the program, the shortcuts and keys to operate Drums Room and some FAQ).
In the upper-right area of the Drums Room's interface, I could see a transparent/shaded picture of a PC keyboard with some highlighted keys; as I assume you already figured it out - these are the keys you have to press in order to "play" the drums. Believe me or not, there is nothing more to say about the GUI.
The Works
This software does so little that I really can't think how to start writing so that I can make it to a decent lower limit for the number of words... There are a total of 13 sounds which Drums Room is capable of reproducing and the nasty thing is that they can't be changed.
In order, they are 2 bass drums (of which the second sound very compressed), 3 toms (small, large and floor), 2 snares (of which the second is a techno-wannabe but fails to impress whatsoever) and three very unconvincing cymbals. Three more sounds complete the array of available samples in Drums Room: a brush-type sound, a cowbell-type one and a very high-pitched (tubular) bell.
You will play them pressing the corresponding keys from 1 to 0 and I, O or P. Don't ask me whether it's hard to make some rhythm pattern...because it really is; I think that I have been playing guitars and piano for some years now and I found playing Drums Room very silly - I can hardly wait to see people who are not acquainted to rhythm-making using this program... :).
The only use I have found for Drums Room is to play a sound and then record it such as to obtain a drum sample in WAV (or similar) format. But I also think that there are so many free softwares supporting the VST technology and there also are tons of free drum-related VST plugins. One could easily build-up a huge orchestra made of VST drummers and percussionists and make it free, automated and sounding far better than Drums Room. Now, maybe I am being too harsh on this altogether nice (even though dead-simple) software...but I still see no point in having it on your PC!
The Good
If Drums Room is a child's work or if it has been developed out of sheer boredom, or even better - just to check whether such thing can be done or not, it's perfect!
The Bad
Nothing truly bad, but again... for what use?
The Truth
If you just happen to need to hear some drum sounds while pressing 1-0 and I, O or P sometimes, then Drums Room is definitely the program for you!
Drum-screenshots - below:
