When it comes to recorded samples of hi-hats, I could think of quite a few factors that affect overall "quality":

• the hi-hats cymbals / drum kit used (hi-hats can sound vastly different from one another)
• the microphone + setup used
• the recording medium + fx chain (reel tape? 24 bit? 96khz)
  
• the room / drum booth used (preferably a room with very little decay)
• velocity layers and round-robins included? (more relevant when using multisample / Kontakt type drum libraries as opposed to one-shots)

 

Last edited: Dec 12, 2022

Then in all honesty, I vote the Vocal Booth kit from Rooms of Hansa (ToonTrack S3). Or many other TT hats, I bet there's about 300 to choose from. But RoH Vocal booth are clear, expressive and quite dry.

 

I think the best quality hi-hats in your project, will ultimately be the ones you replace the old ones with; right at the very end of your project. Those ones you haven't had enough chances to screw up via compression and limiting. Yet.

 

I disagreed with that poster who said to go buy percussion because of this pretty much. it made me laugh thinking of someone going out, buying some random drum shit, microphones, getting set up to record.... then trying to play trap style hat fills. "this sucks!"

not that recording percussion isn't cool, it just depends on the context obviously.

 

What do you mean by awful quality? I've been using Splice for years and although there are some packs that I've skipped there's a ton that is really good on there, and a lot of producers use it with no issues. I think you should look into it further, there's a preview button for every sound in the pack... up to you

 

I use all sorts of sources, but Shroom has a dope series called Killer Hi-Hats that're loops, which I'm normally not into, but with the variations and slower BPMs, they give you plenty of of space to chop out the hits you want, lending to some nice round robins and velocity change-ups to layout and layer into your 16teen... well, that's what I do, I don't know if you're using a sampler or what. Either way, the chic who plays them uses a nice selection of different brands, sizes and styles of Hi-Hats for the sessions (there's eight volumes; I own a couple of them, all solid,) so each pack is fully worth the price, though I'd wait for Christmas or New Years and get that shit at 50% off, but I'm a broke bastard, sooo...

https://www.shroomsamples.com/collections/drum-kits

 

Battery

 

As Hazen said above..
+ this: not upconverted from/compressed in mp3, not clipped asf, no aliasing (but it may be fine if it is vintage digital or smth), no noise hiss hum (not bad if it is vintage digital), no bad edits/sudden stop/clicks/background stuff/phase issues amd dc offset and more.

Usually each sound/sample I use, I manually reedit/restore with RX by using free selecting area on spectrum and gain down, select and replace, select and cut etc. And some rx modules. My sample usually are superclean, wav only, not upconverted)

 

OK, if we talk about realism and what is meant by realism, we will probably never finish talking about it. Let's say that the hit-hats of "Billie Jean" if extrapolated from the song we wouldn't have bought them even under torture, but in truth they have sold over 14 million ( physical ) copies worldwide. Much depends on who "plays" them, the context ( also time frame ) and their placement in a sonic context in which they sit well. However, to go one step further, I believe Drumdrops.com has the most realistic and well recorded drum parts out there today. They are not single samples, but single samples still can't be compared to real instruments at the moment. Great stuff can also be found at Bigfishaudio.com, but we're still there: They're pre-recorded phrases from real instruments played by humans

 

already went through battery

 

yeah idk man I looked at a bunch of stuff on there it all just sounded low quality

 

So maybe you want to start with a realistic kit like Superior Drummer?
If you want a lofi feel you can always degrade it

 

Cymatics has the best content for hip hop producers. I really don't dig into splice for that because i feel that the sounds are hyperprocessed and it's harder to mangle and make something unique. So much layers of sound, on the drums and melodies. On cymatics there are lots of midi and stems, so the life is easier when you want make something that's yours and want to avoid copyright issues (there are tons of issues related to splice between producers claiming be the owners of melodies that are actually royalty free; and i already found by myself and find out other people that spotted uncleared samples being sold there). And cymatics HH are dope.

 

That's one of the things that i don't like about them. World is a funny place