Hi,

Toontrack been releasing some good drum library expansions for both EZ Drummer and Superior Drummer lately. For this thread I'd like to ask all of us to rank the best, favourite SDX expansion for Superior Drummer only by voting your go-to expansion, or favourite, or obsession. We have a lot of choice for SDX expansion and we all hate real drummer the same. lol, jk

I understand that not all people prefer the SD3 now that there are hundreds of other good choice out there for drum library but would like to hear what do you think about these expansion for SD3, I bet atleast 90% of people that doing acoustic drum programming at some point in their sad miserable drummerless life have used Superior Drummer. Some stay, some moved on to other bad products but that's subjective yeah.

The size of the SDX expansion is getting ridiculous by days now that it reaches 150GB still it is nowhere near the core 250GB library tho, lol. I haven't really tried nor have all of them tested for now because my old man once told me to find something I love and let it kill me, it's the Rooms of Hansa SDX for me now for a really long time, still breathing however. I have used the New York SDX Vol. 2 for countless of mixes too.

Sound-quality wise, I want to hear opinions, if possible what do people think about the older SDXs ? I'm just wondering if the old SDXs are still good or up to the newest standard of drum sampling technology that keep improving by days now. Or maybe people just prefer the "character" or "vibe" of those Mr Eddie Kramer and the great Al Schmitt R.I.P and that sound quality can be achieve at the later stage of music production. It's drum anyway.

Is it worth it to keep all those old SDX Expansions, especially the one released back in the vanilla and v2 of Superior Drummer ? or they aren't relevant no more ?

Or it's just a waste of time to keep using all these big ass library because with a proper listening and mixing skills EZX (for EZ Drummer) Expansion can give better result and faster more efficient workflow ? I personally really like the EZX compared to the SDX to be honest but when it goes to mixing stage I always wish I had more tracks/mics and sometimes that can be a bummer. Ambient/Room mics especially, but these days those EZX newest expansions are starting to separate them to individual tracks, it helps.

Anything, just say what you want to say, share your tips, share your secret, but make sure to vote first and hope we get big enough sample size of votes so it will help people in order to pick which one to try, buy, keep whatever.

Thanks for you time. Peace.

Voting Rule : Pick 1 or 2. Added the Core Library too because let's just count it as SDX.

 

Last edited: Sep 24, 2023

Music City USA. Drums sound exactly like what I dial up when micing a kit. The presets suck though. Wish they would come out with a part two because I'm so tired of hearing this same kit haha.

 

that SDX was released 13-14 years ago no ? hahaha, there's no preset back then, it's just kits selection. Anyway, I use that SDX for its Black Beauty snare only, for layering. I figured it has the best snare sound ( 6x14) that sounds real like a Black Beauty I know.

 

There are way too many there with not enough selection capability . I started selecting fav's and couldn't go past 2.

Also, if anyone cares, I have print-ready cover art that I have built for standard DVD cases used to store a select lot of these SDX libraries and a few other Kontakt and synth lib's. They are all built from flotsam that lives on the web and assembled into a neat commercial looking cover usually modeled after the original. Free for the asking if anyone wants a copy(s).

Cover art for the following;
Toontrack Superior Drummer 3
Toontrack New York studios 1 SDX
Toontrack Metal Machinery SDX
Toontrack Hitmaker SDX
Toontrack Rooms of Hansa SDX
Toontrack Progressive Foundry SDX
Spitfire Audio - Strings/Percussion
Cineperc complete - cinesamples
Mojo Horn Section v1 and v2
CineBrass Pro
Silka choir
Chris Hein orchestral collection
East/West symphonic orch
Iconica Opus
Sample Tank 3 content
Sample Tank 4
Spitfire Symphonic woodwinds
Spitfire Symphonic brass
Fluffy Rinascimento
Omnisphere
Stylus RMX
Trilian

 

Last edited: Sep 24, 2023

No surprise that Rooms of Hansa is everyone's favorite so far. I too am a fan specifically of NY Vol. 2, but had to give my vote to Death and Darkness. I want to snag Stories soon, based on the demos, looks like it will do well with alternative/experimental, (80's) revival, jazz, fusion, and even for scoring. It's probably everything I wanted out of Indiependent, but with exceptional engineering and a snappier edge.

 

I voted Fields of Rock (besides Hansa) because it fits what I'm doing recently (sort of stoner/doom but with keys) but I also like Legacy if Rock a lot and I probably should change my vote. Hitmaker is also way better than I expected.
Oddly, the Hansa kit I use all the time is the vocal booth kit.
The New York Studios kits still hold up damn well.

 

Idk, i just chose the ones i'm most familiar with (decades and core), i've never really pushed those to the limit enough to feel like i need to get more. I'm not very active prodictionwise so those two are more than enough.

 

I haven't fully explored the library but I have used it once and found out the drums are a little too resonant to me. I don't know how to phrase it accurately/correctly because a good live drum suppose to be filled with all sort of resonances but on this SDX recordings especially I felt it is too much and I found it quite annoying the last time I worked on it because it doesn't resonate (can't help it, sorry) well with the whole arrangement of other sounds in context. It feels like the drumset will only want to play with things in certain keys or range it covers and drive the production to a certain range it wants, if that makes any sense. I think it was the Live kit. I got so mad about it and the mixing process was pain and I ended up abandoning the whole song and I don't that much these days.

Simply put, it feels like the kit limited to a certain key and you have to play in that range or else everything is starting to give that bad dissonant vibe and feels weird. Funny enough, most of music I dig and work on are those in creative dissonance one and I developed this sense and can tell which is good and which isn't. This particular SDX gave me that undesired vibe. It had to do with taste too I guess, but I really want to like the SDX because of all the cool bands recorded at that studio. The weird thing, the drum sounds outstanding on its own, it sounded familiar, like records you love.

Do you have any particular preset or kits you'd like to suggest ?

 

Last edited: Sep 24, 2023

@Stevie Dude

I've been using the dry room, and a custom kit. I'm going for a pretty 1973 sound, just done in 2023... so you may well be right about the other ambiences.

 

For my money, new or old is irrelevant - I'm happy to use samples lifted from 1960s-1970s records (preferably not 1980s, I like my drums relatively dry thanks).

What I do like, as a keyboard player, is to layer sounds. My first drum machines (Roland CR78, TR707, R-8) and samplers (Roland S330, S50, S760) notwithstanding, my first drum module was the EMU Procussion - which had lousy snares and cymbals, but had a patch structure that allowed easy layering... and I got hooked (being no stranger to layering synth and keyboard sounds).

And there is nothing in the older libraries that cannot be layered with other (older or newer) libraries.

That's how I approach my sound libraries - and how I keep my old synth or drum libraries relevant 10+ (or 30+) years after original purchase.

Granted, layering hats and cymbals is not in my arsenal of tricks, but then, those sounds don't really age either, do they.

 

For my personal usage, The 'basic' Twisted Kit from Easy Drummer 3 outshines all of the other kits I've tried in SD3!

I know that wont be the case for everyone, but if I need to I can add other samples in place of, or in addition as and when I need to.

I've yet to hear anything to my taste in SD3 that beats it, but I'm always open to other suggestions though.

I had to choose 1 in the list, so I went with the standard SD3 core, purely for the basic Ludwig kit.

 

Last edited: Sep 24, 2023

Why that? I don't use SupDrum but would be interested which library is most popular.

 

I don't just rely on SDXs. There's several EZXs I use all the time, either as base sounds or for layering.

 

yeah, please change the option, I can't do it. Also please fix this :

Death & Darkness SDX by Mark Lewis, Tue Madsen

missed the word "by" there. Thanks.

interesting. I only like the Pearl kit for some reason. One of my favourite band uses that exact drumkit (they recorded live) and they sound the same.

while I do use SD3 for layering job, the close mic capture and stuff, the one thing that made me prefer SD3 to other drum library is the ambient of the room, the room sound, the whole stereo panorama of the room. I love all the recorded far & near mics, mono room mics through a console, EQed and blended together by the engineer can give a realistic imaging of a really expensive room, without the user ever needed to do anything. It's what I don't have and hard to create on my own and make it sound expensive. I figured the older SDXs aren't particularly great at this area, it gets better on SD2 and when George Massenburg did the SD3 Core with all the fancy mic positioning, things starting to get real good for all the SDXs released after. EZX too.

They captured it really well, those famous studios especially the Hansa. I see a lot of people here prefer the dry kit, and I for some reason will always go with the one that has most characterful sound, especially a studio that known to have famous chambers and plate and will capture those with Acentize Chameleon after to use it with other added percussive element or FX so they all sound cohesive and feels like in the same room. I always refer to the records mentioned on each SDX and try to get to that ideal sound of that studio. I believe good imaging is key when it comes to acoustic drums, SD3 is the best in business when it comes to that, well it's not usually the case when it comes to drum machine I guess.

 

Last edited: Sep 24, 2023

Done and done.

 

One of the great things included with all the rest of the greatness about SD3 is that fact that you can tune the kit pieces within reasonable parameters.

 

That's exactly what I have been doing lately as well. For anybody who doesn't know, Acentize Chameleon let's you extract the reverb from a stem or sample. Not perfect but does a good job.

 

Tuning just the close mic fundamental frequency doing close to nothing in solving the problem. Especially when it's already tuned nicely. It's the combination with the room resonant is the real problem here. no fucking way I will want to touch that Envelope Pitch thingy, that thing can destroy hours of work real quick and make your ears go crazy and the next day when you listen to the drum mix with fresh ear, you will delete the project right away. A big no.

 

Metal Machinery was my go to for quite a while, But Death & Darkness, more specifically Death is by far the best metal sdx they've done imo. I never understood the hype for the progressive SDX and EZX... maybe because it shared the name of a sub genre that was popular at the time? idk.

 

Hmm. I have actually used the tuning features in SD3 before and they worked quite nicely. Mind you I don't use it often and it must be used judiciously, but it has worked fine in the past when subbing a different drum into an existing kit that doesn't really mesh with the tuning of the rest of the kit - i.e. like subbing a 9*13 tom for a 8*12 or some such. it does work. At least for that kind of instance anyway. If you were trying to tune a whole kit up/down a major-5th or something, that is something I have never attempted with SD3 and not sure what would happen. I have never noticed anything anomalous in the ambiance when adjusting a drums' tuning. The adjusted tuning seems to produce the adjusted ambiance just fine. Then again I have never messed around with the "envelope pitch". For tuning a drum(s) up/or down such that proper musical intervals between the kit pieces is happening, the "envelope pitch" doesn't really enter into the picture... However, one thing I don't use is the "process" algo when doing a drum tuning change. It seems to work the opposite of what is intended and gives a more un-natural sound to the drum as opposed to leaving that off.

 

Last edited: Sep 24, 2023