For all you virtual drum users out there.
I am using Superior Drummer 3 and was wondering when you add your drums to your mix do you use the room ambiance with the kit you have selected or do you prefer to add your own room reverb plugin to the drums in the DAW, so you can add it to all the other instruments as well and make the mix sound more realistic?
Also is there a way to add the room ambiance from the kit to the other instruments in the mix?

 

It depends on the room you are sitting in and monitoring, if the room is bad which it almost always is, you should add the room shapers like reverb and delay. This is all very subjective, because ultimately everyone hears differently and has different preferences, some like it bassy and the other want the drums rather more restrained.

I like a little more space so I usually add some delay and some reverb so that everything sounds a little bigger and more monumental.
As you surely know the Superior Drummers were recorded in a studio with very high ceilings. That means the room is pretty optimal, in other words you can't record them any better.

 

1) I always use the room ambience, because it is already tuned perfectly for the room size, depth etc. Most of them carries together the vibe of the room recorded on console from a particular studio that is legendary and can be heard in thousands of record. 90% of the time, it is already good and realistic.

2) will only add reverb for certain element of the drum if needed (plate for snare mostly) and some automation reverb for FX purpose here and there.

3) yes you can't record anything any better than George Massenburg if the high ceiling room you are referring is the Superior Drummer 3 factory library. It would be wasteful to try to beat that one just to prove a point because of they already spend a lot of time and effort for that library, the amount of personnel involved is already too much. It is already super good, but super good is not what you want all the time, sometimes character is desired more than that, depends. My personal favourite is the Hansa Studio library, because it sounds familiar and reminds me of 80-90 records that I love.

4) I suppose if you select a library and change the kit piece one by one it should leave you with the original ambience mics with the newer kit, no ?

 

I've done both. If the room from a given S3 kit sounds right, great. If not, I might try a convolution reverb instead but more often I grab a 2nd S3 kit I like, solo only the room and just use that. It tends to be more natural and mixing and matching different kits and rooms rarely sounds unnatural in a mix. I've never given any craps about trying to somehow make a session sound like it was tracked live in a single room. But, every now and then, very rarely I do put a room reverb on a master buss just to tie things together. It's shockingly easy to ruin a mix that way though.

 

I use the 3 main popular drummer programs in Electronic types of music (ez,SD3,AD2). So I use them like "drum candy"; where they do not supply my main Kick drum, Snare, or Closed HH. Generally, I use their own internal FX; but then I send a small portion (around 40% or less) to a "Reverb Bus" VCA, with the 2 nice subtle Logic reverbs which are commonly Defaulted to 1 instance of Chromaverb (short verb) and then an instance of Space Designer. Like a "garage rock band" style send setup, very basic but it keeps me out of trouble. generally.

 

Thanks for the reply's.
It would be interesting if these drum plugins supplied a separate room reverb plugin for each kits room so we can add it to our guitars, bass and other instruments. Do you guys think this would be a good thing or not?

 

Reverb Parameters and how they work - English - PDF

 

I also try to "emulate" another room with reverb, and the result is not pleasant for me. It takes away realism. To my ear, it's perfectly recorded just the way it is. Perhaps, as they said, depending on the song, more or less room could be used. Or if you want it to be more attached, you remove room. What works in my case, and precisely depending on the song, is to send to a reverberation bus, as @clone said Always talking about how real you want it to sound. I say because maybe he wants a sound in particular, and there are no rules, we are always talking about art.

But this you can do. In Room or the other rooms. You turn off the microphones and just leave the "send" that you want.
Suppose you want the snare room only. Well, you go to the exit of "Room" you turn off all the sends and leave the Snare. Now all that remains is for you to assign an output to that "room", or render it. You don't exactly have one by one separately, but you can do it.
Now, will it look good or will it look bad? it will be your own experience


I'm also thinking that you can create other tracks with kick, snare, etc. And just assign room to kick, snare, etc.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 16, 2022

I always insert Seventh Heaven Pro “Boston Hall 2”100% wet into “Altiverb Fox Scoring Stage” 100% wet followed by CLA76 blue all buttons mode everything set to 10 then Eventide Black Hole “Default” 100% wet on drum bus…… …… … ….. Nails that super dead D’Angelo Voodoo lol drum sound.

 

So far I've always used impulse responses of rooms. I don't like algorithmic reverbs on real drums most of the time.

 

forgot to mention Accentize Chameleon
that should give you all you need.