Any one noticed how much problems Slate has with the Tom drums?
When i say problems i mean,tom drums in any Slate drums version platinum,SSD4,blackbird studio drums add on...they just sound so lifeless,undynamic,like card boxes.
He uses the best drums,mics,studio gear,rooms...yet,still the Achilles` heel of his products.
Any one shares the same opinion?

 

yea man couldnt said it better myself \m/ its like every sample lib. he has was mixed with the original samples of his ;) sounds dead like a box as you said... ive never used anything but his snare and a few kick samples in any production ive done... maybe its the shitty sampler aswell haha. Toontrack should do David Bendeth ,Terry Date, an the likes to bring it to the front ... jus my 2 cents of thought

 

Last edited: Sep 3, 2016

Totally agree bro.
Snare and kick sometimes sound really good an are usable,but thats about it,even cymbals are mostly just ok.
Its interesting because his plugins are usually good,he knows stuff,but his tom sounds just dont improve with new releases.
Was really disappointed with the blackbird studio drums,especially the toms.

 

I agree with you. However, I have a different take on drum sounds, and I guess for my use SSD fits better than Toontrack. I tend to complement the drum sounds I record or completely replace close mics. I keep the overheads and room mics if any. For that matter, the dead-ish sounds tend to allow me further tweaking to match my recorded drums. Anyhow, the SSD4 plugin does allow to change the character of the sounds. In any case, they have never sounded "final" to me, and that's what I like. I can't say I'm dissatisfied.

 

I've noticed this too, they don't hold any weight in an actual mix, no matter how much you increase the velocity or how you process them. The ride is also pretty terrible. To be honest, I don't think Slate drums can actually carry an entire mix as the primary drums, I usually only blend them with real drummer tracks.

Then again, I've noticed that tom samples in particular just don't have the same weight as when played by a drummer, they almost always sound dead and mechanic.

 

@PopstarKiller
Exactly its about weight,space and punch,maybe call it the lack of low end.
The body of the drum is badly captured or represented in a sense that maybe he processes it too much.

@mercurysoto
Yes,they can be used as a paralel sound to fill in the other drum sound and make it fuller.
Toontractk,SD has a lot better sounding toms.

 

not familiar with the software, but one of the tradeoffs of having this pre-mixed kits is that it already has been processed according to the author's vision.

 

Von_Steyr, yeah, maybe I should give Toontrack a fairer try. Anyway, I feel you on this. Somehow, Slate Digital causes a big wow factor boost initially, but it wears off rather quickly, like a drug trip.

 

Me too bro i bought alot of his drum samples in the past and even the Blackbird, but like you i think the Toms to me sound choked off? doesnt make sence that the Toms from every Lib have the same kind of dead stuffed kind of tone as the next from Dif producers at Dif recording facilities ;) somthin is a miss lol ... i do like some of his samples but mainly for blending snare an kick \m/ bout it for me

 

Steve have a great marketing... But sometimes his product arent the best.
i love their kicks and snare... And stops there.
Anything can sounds good with lots do tweaks... But it take time.
For me is simple
Rolis BFD3 for the supreme flexibility
ezdrum and addictive for fast and objective work.
Cheers

 

I'm now intrigued to try out SSD, just to hear toms that everyone says are crap. I swear, sometimes I think there is something very wrong with me.

 

If you need punch and weight,try Oceanway drums,kick and snare sound fat and tight,really cuts trough the mix like it should.
Great for hard rock and metal,(AC/DC,Billy Idol,Killswtich Engage) type of drums.
Skip to 4:10

 

Ok,i have found a better video.
Skip to 2:05,tight as fuck,lots of body,impact and weight.

 

Ocean way Drums \m/ i got em from our sister years ago ;) they are over looked alot because its such a huge old Lib but ive used em alot and still do haha.... ;) if you spend some time withem and tweek em to death like i tend to do they sound as good as anything ive ever herd even todays new Lib ;) REAL TALK

 

Its a hidden gem.A big library but so worth it,really elevates your production to a lot higher level.

 

I don't know if it's because of the kontakt engine, if I'm biased or smth else but here I can clearly say the Kick 10/Snare 12 I've been using a lot lacks a lot of power in SSD4 compared to what it was on 3.5 platinum on kontakt, maybe I'm biased because I'm used to the old ones but they sounded a lot more relevant to me.

That being said, even if I used them a lot, They're not my favourites now, I think GGD Halpern Drums and Toontrack Progressive EZX/Foundry really killed the game with how realistic & dry they are to begin with while being so well captured it's a pleasure to make them as big as you would with slate ones, and I've never used SSD alone, explanations below :

Slate in my area of work which is metal music, mixing etc... is a rather niche product you use when you want your drums to sound like on most of joey sturgis early production work & if you you're not into this kind of obviously overproduced drums albums like This is Exile by whitechapel,, Ignorance Never Dies by Your Demise, Grow by Chon & The last two Suicide Silence albums are - while I'm not sure whether SSD was actually used or not on these records - a good example of drum tones you can achieve with only the SSD shells being used either layered on the real natural drum sound or just replacing the shells.

Slate by their own are really meant to be sounding huge clean & loud, they excel at that but that makes them kinda insipid like it doesn't sing at all, what they're really good at is adding their own punch to more natural sounding drums.
The way you can do that in the natural realm is by combining SSD with something like Toontrack Ny Avatar Progressive or Metal Foundry, even GGD, anything that is unprocessed enough to sound like real drums
In your main drum machine you still load shells & keep them in room/oh mics, but then you mute the direct mics, or just lower them, then you load SSD on top of it & load just shells that sounds like they complement well the original drums.
Do a nice routing setup so you have both slate & main OH/Rooms on separate tracks on the DAW, separate out for Slate Shells/Main Shells if layering too, so you can still clean the natural shells a little - but don't do too much because phase and stuff -
In the case of layering while you're done with mixing the raw shells I'd advice sending them together with the slate ones to a dedicated bus for each different shell & then mixing them together from that point, not that this is a must, but it does a nice glue between the two layers of shells

About mixing slate samples themselves :
Kicks & Toms doesn't handle compression really well so you have to soft clip them or just find the right balance, only exception if you want a really really hard/peaky attack on them.

They're not especially friendly to eq's either, some kicks & toms (kick 10 especially) don't handle well at all being thin eq-ed in the early high register, makes them crispy as fuck, you should go reverse thinking here & boost a reasonable large bell in the early high-mid register & in the low/subs register so the hi-spike is smoothed out, it's absurd but works wonders with 'em.

They sound distorted the more you clean 'em, because they are in a smooth way, don't do any cleaning on them that is not needed in the context of hearing the drums in the full mix with the other instruments having their mix done as well, at this point of the mix, on the other hand, they handle very well being scooped where the rest of the mix needs air.

Kicks have lotta low-end, but it's still a lot less than the presence they have, don't be affraid to boost low-end in consequence, hi-passing them is up to taste and can be done very late in the mixing process without breaking the mix too much

Toms can lack a lot of low end but they also have that resonant bass thing that prevents you to go nuts with their low-end, which is why you should go in SSD & set their sustain lower manually

Snares sound really fine by themselves most of the time, would process these snares only when I'm that far in the mixing that the snare got overwhelmed by the bass & guitar (& synths if synths), in the context of layering I'd often not mix the slate snare, just balance it right compared to the raw one then eq the lot

The Rooms and OH tracks can be put very loud in the context of a drum replacement use as they don't make the whole mix too messy or it gotta be really clear that they're too loud

If you're forced to used slate on it's own, you should expect the final mix to sound plastic but really loudness war friendly like it can be both dynamic & loud at the same time "like the pros"
If you don't want to end up insane, don't obsess on how to get these drums to feel different than what they're to begin with, they're really the very drum samples you can't really make sound like it's not them, even worse than Drumkit from hell on that, can't hide it, so building your mix arround, using these specifics at your advantage in your mixing process is all you're left with, that's what they're good at, they sound plastic but used well, if you're not affraid to get cocky with your whole mix, they'll make it sound huge, that's what the hype about them is all about, not the sound of the samples themselves - well t'was true for 3.5, not sure about SSD4 doing it, the hype arround that kind of drum sounds in metal died about the same time it was released -

Sorry if it was long and looks pretentious, I bought Steven Slate 3.5 six years ago and worked a lot with it, had a lot of trouble, I really subscribed to this forum just so I could prevent people wasting as much time with it as I did, It will not sound natural, it's a very good "fake" sound which is very friendly to quick mixing and over the top sounding results and works wonder to enhance natural sounds, on it's own it's plastic, SSD is the Alesis D4 of the digital realm in a sense except it sounds way more realistic than an old D4.

 

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the extensive post
I mostly agree with you,a plastic sounding kit,usable,also good for layering,but you really have to know what you are doing and what you are aiming for,you have to have real expectations as to what you can do with it,yes,good post.

 

Not even the Slate Superior Drummer rock presets are completely usable, though I usually use his snares, which sound great. The toms (which, mind you, are just tweaked Avatar toms) actually sound like those "disco toms" or electronic toms from the early Eighties. I had SSD 3 for Kontakt and while most of the kits sounded okay, they lacked a lot of articulation.

 

I'd like to mirror what @Von_Steyr said about welcoming you to the Forum. That was a very interesting read indeed. So if you were put on the spot with regards to SSD4's fault . Does it lie with The Engine or Samples? Or maybe even both?

Just as a side thought. Trio created a song from nothing more than a Casio VL Tone, proving one of two things. Creativity knows no bounds, OR... People will buy anything!

M8, every time you recommend something, I have to go out and buy a new hard drive :P

 

Last edited: Oct 14, 2016

There is no problem dude. You forget to put 50 soundgoodizer on the toms.