drum software
i think the best thing i've found is acid music with RADS construction kit...real stereo drums, broken out by kick-snare patterns and hi-hat patterns which are separate so you can put them together as you wish. they also have some (not a ton) fills...and individual drum samples, that are good, sound natural, and most important, work great with the loops.
the kick/snare patterns are solid, and the hi-hat patterns sound like someone playing the drums, not just the same sample repeated. there's probably 1500 samples on the RADS cd, and with the way that you can break them out, there's got to be millions of combinations.
the RADS volume 1 cd was $39.99 from pocketfuel.com...acid music $69.99 from compusa. i also have fruity loops which i paid another $70 for, but even with acid and rads, you're talking $110, for really great drum sounds (not midi compatible, but i just feed them into
my vs 840 and move them to the right time), and acid is so much easier to work with than just about anything else i've worked with.
one warning about rads: the volume 1 cd loops are NOT acidized, so some of the results can be wierd until you change the acid properties...i found a program called acidhead, that will do this on multiple files, so it hasn't been a problem. but i was bummed when i first realized this.