DFH2 or DFHS or neither

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Vullkunnraven

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Hey everyone...
Would you guys recommend an intermidiate midi man to get Drums From Hell II or Drums From Hell Superior for recording? If you've seen my other posts I have a Yamaha DTXPressIII Special edrumset, Reason 2.5, and protools le thru a dual g4 w/ 1gig ram. Is DFH really that amazing? Will it blow away the drum sounds I can get out of Reason or my Yamaha Kit? Can it be edited in PT via Rewire? Does it live up to the hype and is the learning curve really that bad???

Your thoughts/experiances HR...?
Thanks!!!
 
Vullkunnraven said:
Will it blow away the drum sounds I can get out of Reason or my Yamaha Kit?
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Probably. The secret to either one is the huge samples and multiple 'mics' ('samples' in other apps) that combine to make huge-sounding drums.

Can it be edited in PT via Rewire?
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No. You have to do all of the editing from the Graphic User Ineterface of the plugin itself. Or a control surface configured to edit it via midi CC's.

Does it live up to the hype and is the learning curve really that bad???
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It's one of those programs that you either love or hate. Some on the board love it, some just don't talk about it much anymore.

And you may have trouble first getting protools to run it as a plug in and second, even with a dual G4 w/a gig of ram you may risk not being able to run it on your machine. I'm not sure if Native Instruments has a demo version on their web site, but that would be my first stop.
 
I checked out the site...

I checked out a demo on East West's site for DKFHS and it sounded pretty impressive. It was a flash demo so it showed some live screenshots on how to use it and on certain kits there would be up to like 3000+mb of ram loaded. Then they would say since only a certain amount of pieces were being played only a percentage of that is actually used by your computer. I don't know, i'm kinda skeptical, as I have seen a lot of other posts regarding this topic... I guess I'm still on the fence and thnx ssscientist for mapping this out for me... I might give it a shot...
 
DFHS is a pain to set up, although it's got better, but you only have to learn it once, and when you have - excellent. I have heard that the new BFD is equal or better, but can't comment first hand.
 
Dfh2

I own the DFH2, it was sort of a pain to get set up, since it really takes up a lot of RAM (I had to increase mine to 1024) anyway, I use PT and I have had great success with it. The drums really sound terrific! I use my old drum machine to program the entire song, and then imput the midi information into PT. Once I have midi into PT, I load DFH2 as a plug in (RTAS) and then I load up single drums (bass then bounce, snare then bounce, hihats then bounce, etc.) This way I have control over the individual drums as they would be recorded in the real world. I add whatever effects needed for each drum, then I get some killer sounding drums!

For 100 bucks, this is a great sounding program (once you get it set up). The kit does limit to only three snares, but does give you three bass drum beaters and tom, and bottom snare mics. The thing I really love about this program is that the samples are played using the left and right hands of the drummer, thus making it extremely realistic sounding.

Although the way I record may sound a little time consuming, there maybe easier ways to record this program in PT, but this works for me and I get great results.


Superior just gives you a ton more of kits and samples to use, and I may upgrade in the future, but for now this is a good program.
 
Interesting

So once you endure the setup, I guess DFH should be a pretty valueable tool. I've been recording drums thru Reason (for electronic sounds) and using the sounds in my Yamaha DTXpressIIIS for the more acoustic sounding drums (although the crashes can sound better, and FYI for anyone using this kit you can get them sounding better by reducing the decay and/or layering mulitple crash voices onto eachother in the brain). But I'm going to try DKFH2...

I'm curious about your recording technique SilverbayJ...

*So I guess while you are hitting your drum pads on your drumachine to program the song, you are hearing the sounds in the drumachine, not DKFH2 right?

*Also, i've had no luck recording midi data into PT from my edrum kit or my midi keyboard. For example I connect my edrums' brain to the digi002r and I know it reads it, since i can trigger Reason with it, but I can never get any midi notes to record onto PT. I'm using channel 10 as the input on the midi track, but i guess i'll have to figure this basic issue out. I'm just confused on how to set the inputs and outputs for midi tracking, eventhough audio tracks have never been an issue (feel like such a mididiot).

*Do you set the RTAS plugin on the midi track where you recorded the programming?

*Does the fact that there are two different midi notes set for each drum sound in dkfh2 cause a problem? I saw on Toontraks site that the midi keyboard has two different notes for each drum to supplement the left and right hand samples. This shouldn't be a problem if you are using a keyboard, but do you need two different triggers for every 'drum' on your drum machine to match this left and right hand sampeling?

Thanks :o
 
Well, first things first.
In PT, I open a new "audio" stereo track. This will be the track I open the DFH2 RTAS on. We'll call this track 1.

Next I open a midi track in PT, we'll call it track 2. This is where my midi data will be recorded. I program my entire song on the drum machine, but you can also hit the pads during recording to record the midi events (it's easier to program it before hand). Anyway, track 2's (midi) input should be set to receive midi data from your source (drum machine midi out). I usually have everything set to "OMNI" instead of channels 1,2,3 etc. Track 2's output should be set to DFK2, this is where the sounds from track 1 will be sent or played from.

It should be noted these two tracks work together, without the other, you will not get the sounds you need. You will enable track 2 to record, and record your data. At this point, track 1, open DFK2 and only load a drum. Don't load an entire set as I have encountered crashes. Set the drum to "OMNI". I bounce the entire track to the hard disk as a multiple mono track. I continued to do this with each drum part you want or need. At this point, you have seperate tracks for bass drum, snare, hihats, cymbals, whatever you used. I would import those tracks into PT as wav files on seperate tracks. TIP: Make sure you use GRID in PT, to make sure all of the parts bounced are the same length and begin and end at the same point.

On my drum machine I have assigned each pad to a different sound I.E. pad 1=snare left hit 2=snare right hit 3=open hihat 4=right hi tom 5=left hi tom, etc. You do run out of pads, but once the midi data is recorded you can move them around in PT and tweek the notes, velocity, and everything in PT. This is where things sometimes get time consuming, but since I have been working with this way of doing it, I have gotten VERY effecient at it. The learning curve is where it takes the most time.

If you have any further questions on this, especially since I only scrathed the surface of this...
rowlandj@frontiernet.net
I can send you some mp3 samples if you want to check it out.
 
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