I like the sound of the AD drums.
Cool, I don't care for the way AD sounds personally but I have spent some time with the demo and use superior drummer 2 a lot and they are similar in the way they work so I should be able to answer your questions.
However when I make music, each time I have to pick my beats
in AD and then drag them into Cubase and struggle with grids and
time sigs.
I'm not quite sure I understand what your saying here. Midi loops should conform to the tempo and grid you have cubase set to as long as you have snap on:
. Time signature shouldn't be an issue unless your composing in something other than 4/4 in which you can change your time signature in the tempo window (command+T or Windows+T IIRC).
Also it takes hours if I want to separate each individual drum in AD
just because sometimes I like remove all the effects on the beats in the edit page
and use waves to add comp and other effects to each individual drum.
Again not quite sure what you mean by this. But the simple way to keep from having to do this over and over again would be to save a template that always opens the way you want it to (with all of your effects removed). When you go to save your cubase project save it as a template so you can start from that point whenever you want work with AD effects free.
Checking the program out, there is a button that turns off all insert effects. So turning off all the effects on the program isn't that time consuming so a little confused about what is difficult. These buttons are also on the channel strips, just un highlight them.
Is there an easy program where I can use the beats in AD to construct
a song.
You can check out Toontrack's EZ player pro, but I'm not sure if this is what you actually need or want.
It sometimes takes a long time to drag them into Cubase 5 and paste
repeats. Getting it in sync with time is rough.
What takes so long about the process? It should be really fast, and again I'm not quite sure why it's not syncing with cubase, midi files should play at the tempo the cubase project is set to.
Any tips on what you guys do?
Instead of loading AD on an instrument track load it in the VSTi rack (press F11). This makes it easier to use the multi outs of the program. Using the multi outs makes it easier to have the instrument play individual drums on thier own channel strip so you can apply effects to single instruments (like a wavs compressor on the snare mic only for instance).
Also, all the beats I drag in are MIDI on instrument tracks.
How do you comvert these beats to wave formats?
Once your done constructing your song you can bounce each track to their own wave file if you wish. The only reason for doing this is to save CPU space though and honestly I think the better course of action is to freeze the track (hit
the snowflake button on the track or next to the instrument in the VST instruments rack).
See
my ez drummer tutorial, the principals are the same:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/user-forums-brand/cubase-user-forum/ez-drummer-tutorial-you-305888/