@LarsYouPutz And as a drummer which SDX's are using with superior drummer to get the most bang for your buck?

 

I tried SSD 3 on Kontakt and I wasn't impressed. The drum kits weren't bad-sounding. but as other posters on this thread have pointed out, there's little articulation and few pieces per kit. That may or may not have changed with SSD 4. On the other hand, while Superior Drummer has some great articulation, and the ability to play EZDrummer kits in 64-bit without needing EZD 2, I feel like the kits themselves aren't as good. The default Avatar kit is just okay, a little bland. The artists presets help a bit (including a batch made by Steven Slate!), but for the amount of hard drive real estate each Superior EX takes up, I'd expect a lot more usability. It's really tough to find one drum kit that covers all the bases; you usually have to Frankenstein something together from multiple kits. I may end up throwing out my EZX kits and getting more Superior Drummer kits, or I may end up looking at BFD.

A kit that actually impressed me a bit was Abbey Road 80s' Drums -- fairly basic kits, but containing all the necessary pieces and tons of articulations and round robins. I wouldn't mind getting the 70's, 90's and Modern versions, but even if I didn't, the 80's kits include dry and regular room versions that I can use for non-gated, non-Eighties'-style stuff.

 

I hate trying to do rock drumming w/ plugins, but I try anyway w/ SD2. This drum performance was programmed with a mouse using SD2 'the rock warehouse' (@ 00:35). I can't comment on SSD4 because I haven't tried yet.

http://picosong.com/aeBv

 

Last edited: Oct 8, 2016

I prefer BFD3

 

What did you think of "Rock Warehouse"? Worth getting?

The main problem I have with EZDrummer 1 and Superior Drummer 2 are the kit presets. In particular, EZDrummer kits are usually divided into three outputs: direct mic out, bus compression out and room mic out. The three outputs are mixed together, which I can kind of understand, since most people just plunk down an instance of EZDrummer, maybe adjust the mixer a little and bounce either as part of the mix or down to two tracks. I prefer to record each piece individually, like a real kit. To do this, I have to hard pan the snare and kick (and the hats, assuming they're not outputting in stereo, like some of the EZD kits are), record those to mono, then record the toms and overheads as stereo tracks. For a while, I didn't get that you had to switch off the compressor output and the room mic outs to get actual "direct mic" drums. Then, if you want the room mics, you have to turn the other outputs off and record just the room output as a stereo track. Note that the room mic output isn't affected by the individual pieces' mixer faders; if you hear too much hats or overheads in the room mics, you have to live with them. I don't bother with the compressed outputs, preferring to use my own drum bus and compressor. And if you're like me, and you Frankenstein a kit together (in my case, from both EZDrummer and Superior Drummer), you have to record multiple instances of EZDrummer and Superior with everything switched off but the room mics and record all that down to two tracks. Super Drummer 2 on its own is a little better, since they're using actual compressors and EQ, not just pre-recorded compressed samples. But then, you end up switching off a bunch of in-VI plugs. Granted, Superior Drummer 2 actually has a feature that allows you to lay off individual tracks in one pass, then import those audio files into your project, but that might actually be more hassle than just doing it inside your DAW.

That's why I'm a bit intrigued by BFD 3; I'd rather have dry, unprocessed drums to work from.

 

Please tell us why.

 

I've got all the SDX's except Progressive Foundry. I tend to create a base kit from either Metal Foundry, or Evil Drums, and add XDrums from the other SDX's. I'd hate to have to use just one SDX as my kit, but if I were limited to just one SDX, I'd have to go with Metal Foundry. I feel it is the most comprehensive SDX. I know it says Metal in the title, but it really can cover a lot of ground, not just metal. Sure, if you use their presets, they are mostly set up for metal, which I do play, but I've got kits I've created that work in pop, soul, funk, disco too. It has just the most kit pieces to work with.

My main kit right now is comprised of kick, snare, hats from the original Avatar, toms from Evil Drums, piccolo snare from Music City, cymbals from across all SDX's and EZX's that I own. I also use midi nodes to lay a second Music City snare on top of the Avatar snare to fatten it up. Mixing and matching is IMO the optimal way to use Superior.

 

I definitely agree with you. With any of these drum vst's, building your own kits becomes necessary to get them drums to sit well in the first place which makes mixing much easier.

One more question do the installed SDX's take up as much space on the harddrive as the ISO's?

 

Yes. There are a lot of drums in that pack that sound good.

Just turn off all of the EQ, Comps, etc... to attain a dry drum sound.

 

Made me curious, so I had a look at my ISO's & folder for SDX NY Vol 3, those 2 were the same (16GB for both the ISO's (3 of 'em), & the folder NY3 is installed in....

I've got a shit-load drum vsti's (BFD3, Ocean Way, Abbey Road Vintage, 60's, 70's, 80's & Modern Drums, Addictive 2, Drumforge, Slate, but if I had to pick just one to use, it'd be Superior. I do like a lot of other samples, & I do mix/match as mentioned, but Superior/Toontrack are always in my songs somewhere or another...



It is quite a bit of disc space, but these are the expansions I've got installed from Toontrack:

SDX: Avatar, Allaire/Hit Factory, The Rock Warehouse, Custom & Vintage, EvilDrums, HitFactory, Music City, NY Vol3, Metal Foundry

EXZ: The Blues, Funk, MetalHeads, Latin Percussion, Rock!, RockSolid, Vintage Rock, MadeOfMetal, Post-Rock, Southern Soul, Nashville

 

You have a choice to install a basic, medium, and full install of these kits. FULL install is as big as the ISOs, because they include the mic bleed, all velocities, and all articulations. Very flexible install options for all SDX packs.

 

That's another feature I actually like about SD: you can create your own kits using EZX's and Superior Drummer kits. Also, I think that, even though a kit is intended for one genre of music, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to use it for just that genre. Right now, my go-to kit is the "Metal Kit" on the DFH EZX, but I use a Superior Drummer Slate rock snare preset for the snare (and I may use a different hat, since Metal Kit's hat is stereo mic'd for some reason and sounds terrible).

 

Yes it uses as much space as the ISO for a full install. In fact, once you have the engine loaded, all you really have to do to install the SDX packs is copy/paste the folders into your Toontrack Folder in explorer. All the installer really does is give you the option of basic, medium, and full, and does the copy/paste for you.

As far as I'm concerned, the only install I will do is full. For live drumming, I take the Freddy Mercury approach...I want it all, and I want it now. I want it to sound as real as is humanly possible. I just did a check of my Toontrack samples folder. In total between the SDX's and EZX's, they occupy 247GB of my 1TB SSD with the SDX's being 210gb of that 247gb. Not a problem, as the rest of my VST's (I play guitar, bass, and keys as well), aren't nearly as large. I built this PC exclusively for this reason, so no other non-DAW programs are on there. When I create presets, I unload all unnecessary instruments and articulations, such as flams, rolls, etc, as I'll be playing those myself. I enable all bleeds. I set it to unlimited layer limits. I try to keep my kits between 1.5 and 2gb. Sometimes they creep up to around 3gb. I save each kit in both mono and stereo. When playing through the PA, I use the mono kit, when recording, I use the stereo mix with individual mics each routed to its own track in the DAW. All recordings are stored on a second hard drive.

By comparison just checking my drives, AD2 uses about 9gb, SS4 uses about 9gb, so I think it would be unrealistic to think they could compete with a full install of Superior and EZdrummer. They may sound good to many of you doing a mix on small monitors or headphones, but playing it on a kit through a loud PA, they sound fake. BFD3 may be a viable competitor, but I never got past testing it. I just didn't bond with it like I did with Superior 2.