Superior Drummer: opinions please

Really not trying to drive this into the ground or anything. We do what we gotta do. My main point being that this...
miroslav said:
...Then, I may also set individual instrument levels in the construct window...
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...doesn't exist in the real world. You don't have a volume control on each cymbal on a real kit. You take what you get out of the OH mics. If it's too loud you can move the mics or tell the drummer to stop hitting the thing so hard. If we assume that we've already placed the mics where they sound best and get the best overall mix of all of the elements in the kit, and one cymbal is sticking out too far, all you can do is kick the drummer. (Or, I guess, edit/automate in the mix)
 
Well...if you're going to beat it into the ground... :D

....in the real recording world, you DO have the option of raising/lowering the mic levels, just like you have the option of raising/lowering the levels of the tracks after recording...which has nothing to do with how hard the drummer was/is hitting.
Actuallly...even for a live performance that has mics on a kit...you have the same volume options.

We are not talking about a live acoustic drum situation where the only volume comes from the drummer's hits. :)
 
Ash: The grooves/beats tab is in the upper right corner dude...It's about the same as EZD though....

Miro: Got the e-mail/files you sent man, thanks!!! Yes, you're right about losing the sound of the kit by solo'ing the pieces, but my whole point was to show you that it could be done somehow so that you could pan the cymbals anywhere in the kit (although it'd be totally dry) with the bounce function....

I've actually learned a little today about Superior, & it makes me like it even more than before...I'm gonna mess with the pitch function a little more, although I will admit, the few times I did mess with it yielded less than desirable sounds....


I personally don't like the way most, if not all of the presets sound in SD or EZD....I always have to tweak the kit, always....Even with other drum sounds (Slate, Native Instruments), it's the same too....Something I always do first thing is set all the faders in Superior to "0", then adjust the faders in the daw....

I personally think Superior (and all the drum samplers) are a godsend because I don't have a kit, don't have the gear to record a kit, couldn't have the noise from a real kit, so for people like me, they're about the only option I have....I did buy an e-kit but that's for trying to get my midi performance more realistic....


Thanks for the tips guys!!!
 
miroslav said:
Well...if you're going to beat it into the ground... :D

....in the real recording world, you DO have the option of raising/lowering the mic levels, just like you have the option of raising/lowering the levels of the tracks after recording...which has nothing to do with how hard the drummer was/is hitting.
Actuallly...even for a live performance that has mics on a kit...you have the same volume options.

We are not talking about a live acoustic drum situation where the only volume comes from the drummer's hits. :)
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Are you just deliberately missing the point?

IRL, you have one pair of overheads to pick up all the cymbals. You can't turn each cymbal up or down with respect to the others. You can turn the overheads up or down, but if crash 1 is louder than you want compared to crash 2, or splash, or even the toms or snare, there is no individual volume control for that one single cymbal.
 
I thought we were talking about velocity VS volume....not just the OH mics. :)

And even if you want to just talk about the OH mics...volume change is still possible for them too.
I mean, when you set up the OH mics...you don't just put them up, and then from there tell the drummer to hit harder or hit softer if the OH mic level is not right...you adjust the mic levels too.

The take away is that in recording/mixing or any drum mic situation...drum level is not purely coming from the velocity of the hits. That's all I was saying....and that IS "real world".
Also....we are using a DAW, samplers, etc...and that too is "real world".

I don't know why recording/mixing is always getting mixed up (no pun intended) with some purely acoustic, live performance process.
Recording isn't generally about documentation or absolute mimicking of that....it's a whole different production mindset....and I think you, with the type of music you do, would agree with that more than most people. ;)
 
Fuck it, I'm done. Don't actually care enough to try to argue it. Pretty sure anybody else that reads the thread will get what I'm saying. Maybe if you re-read my posts a couple times...
 
:D

Don't go away mad.....

All the volume options are there with recording...it ain't just about hit velocity.
Tell me I'm wrong. :)
 
...Though actually, I wanted to quick comment on this:
minerman said:
I thought you could control the pitch knob better by holding shift, but apparently it doesn't work, so I type the number in manually...
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In most plugs in most DAWs, if you hold down Ctrl (I think Cmd works same on Apple) while turning a knob or moving a slider, you get finer control. Can't say I've ever tried it on that particular knob, but usually...
 
ashcat_lt said:
...Though actually, I wanted to quick comment on this:

In most plugs in most DAWs, if you hold down Ctrl (I think Cmd works same on Apple) while turning a knob or moving a slider, you get finer control. Can't say I've ever tried it on that particular knob, but usually...
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I've tried CTRL dude, it just resets it, shift doesn't help....Guess I need to RTFM....lol....You can type in numerical values too man, & this is way more precise too....


So, which do you use Ash, SD or EZD???
 
minerman said:
I've tried CTRL dude, it just resets it, shift doesn't help....Guess I need to RTFM....lol....You can type in numerical values too man, & this is way more precise too....


So, which do you use Ash, SD or EZD???
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I have both. I use EZD unless I actually need the features of SD that I mentioned above (X-Drum because I haven't upgraded EZ, and the key-mapping capabilities). For a lot of things I do, just dropping in EZD, picking a kit, and maybe swapping out a piece here or there is all I really need. As I've already said, the mixing and routing in EZ is more than sufficient for my needs.
 
That's cool man....but, you can actually just load up SD & it'll do the exact same thing if you didn't know....AFAIK, when you load up (for example) the standard, EZD Pop/Rock kit/default, that's what loads up in SD, unless you tell it to load another kit as your default...Apples/oranges I know, but just sayin'...

I figured out how to better control the pitch knob with the mouse, when you click on it, move your mouse pointer away from the knob in the gui, the farther away it is, the finer the control....But, that's pretty silly to me, as you have to have your pointer on it to begin with, & it moves like waaaaay too far at start, so I'm just gonna stick with typing in a numeric value...:).
 
Yeah...if you tell SD where all your EZX and SDX packs are...it will load the same EZX as EZD does, and then you can do as little or as much as you want in the construct and mixer window. You don't have dig deep with SD if you don't want/need to....but it's great how all those EZX packs all of a sudden have more flexibility in SD than they did in EZ.
 
Yep. I don't have a good reason to use EZD, especially now I know I can get to the grooves, but it's still in my default template because I haven't bothered to update it, so...
 
Schwarzenyaeger said:
I've never used EZDrummer but I have SD 2.0.
If you spend some time with it, you can get a very convincing sound.
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Yeah, it's pretty much like having a real kit recorded in your daw....The only thing (and this goes for all drum samplers) is the hi-hats, they're really hard for me to make sound natural...I suppose it's just the fact that the sampled hi-hats have about 4-5 open/closed sounds/postitions, & a real hi-hat has lots more than that, but overall, the drum vsti's are a godsend for people like me, I don't have room for a kit, don't have the $$$ for the gear to properly record a kit (that itself is a whole 'nother can of worms too), so I'll just stick to my fake drums.....:)
 
minerman said:
but overall, the drum vsti's are a godsend for people like me, I don't have room for a kit, don't have the $$$ for the gear to properly record a kit (that itself is a whole 'nother can of worms too), so I'll just stick to my fake drums.....:)
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So many people aren't aware that having a treated room the size to fit drums and drum microphones is a priviledge. If I had a trained drum monkey and a room, I'd be using the monkey instead as well.

I'd rather save myself the 500k € loan to buy a house and buy Superior Drummer instead, thanks. :D
Maybe in another life time.
 
I do have to admit, if I had the space, money & patience, I'd do the real drum thing...A few people here finally convinced me to go the real amp route, & I love it....Yeah, it's loud, & yeah, it takes more space & a little more patience than an ampsim, but I love the results I get with a real amp, cab & mic...

What's your "go-to" drum expansion in Superior dude??? I'm really liking the new "Made of Metal" EZX myself...But, I usually blend another kick & snare with 'em....I have been working on the SD snares/kicks trying to get 'em to sound better though....
 
I don't really know shit about the program, I'll tell you that. I just have the 18GB of stuff that was on the 6 (!!!) DVDs that it came with.

I have the "EZ Drummer" pre-set turned on and go from there.
I have a Pro Tools preset where I load four different instances of SD. The 1st one is the cymbals, the 2nd the snare, the 3rd the kick and the 4th the toms.
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I have manually deactived all the other drum parts in the kit.
I usually use the "Slingerland 70's" snare, since it's the only one with any punch if you ask me and the 14x24" GMS kick since it's the only one with punch as well.

I play around with the cymbals a bit. I have alternate and random turned on on all parts, which really helps with making it sound real.

I send the snare, toms and cymbals to a reverb with an EQ on it that filters out some low end and try to get a room sound from that.



As you can see, I try to avoid actually using the program's internal mixers since they are ugly and dumb and just use the samples and handle all the MIDI (velocity, quantization) in Pro Tools.
 
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