Hit me with your rhythm stick

I love the sounds of analog synthesis, but I want to experiment with other sounds. I'm looking at demos of three programs: Tassman 4, Reaktor 4, and PhyMod 2. The former two allow the user to construct virtual synthesisers from 'componants' like oscillators, filters, resonance, noise generators, and effects. They also claim to perform realtime Physical Modelling synthesis, but it seems to be a limited version.

PhyMod is a genuine PM synthesiser - so it's not realtime and requires some mathematical knowledge and a lot of patience to use. Also, the company that make it may no longer exist, so registering the full version may not be easy.

Systems like Tassman and Reaktor - and freeware like Buzz which does the same thing with less snazzy graphics - do seem a genuine step up from Reason. To create custom analog synthesisers and effects (possibly as VST plugins) is
(a) awesome in it's potential
(b) needful of a grasp of calculus and DSP that I simply don't have, and
(c) still in the pseudoanalog realm

So, systems like these would take a great investment in time to master, and aren't where I especially want to go. Which is unfortuante, tempting as they are. The Cymatic system of PM looks promising, but just isn't on the market yet.

All this started when I wanted to make custom realistic drum sounds. I've been using Stomper to make electro drum sounds for years, and I think I'm pretty good at it. But real drums - especially the more exotic ones - are just more....exciting.