Improve your LSpro drums tracks !

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Musart

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I know this is not related but i want to share some experiments i made with great results. With the help of Drum & Percussion forum.

I use Sonar 2.2 anyway :-)

I always wanted to improve the realism of my midi drumtracks. Since i use Sonic Implants soundfonts which are really awesome, something like room or ambience was missing.

In real life in a studio, you would put many microphone on a drum set (ie: Kick drum, Snare, Hi Hat, every toms, etc.). Also, there is two microphone place left and right of the drum set called OverHeads. They captures the cymbals and slightly all the drum parts as well as the ambience of the room.

These Overheads microphones are recorded on a stereo track and what your hear is the cymbals, other drum parts but at really lower volume(you don't even hear the kick). These overheads tracks when mixing to the other drum tracks bring some live to the drum set !!!

So how can i simulate that in Sonar ???. I made some research on internet trying to find a sort of plugins that do that but no one exist at this time. Anyway


Here's what i tried with great results !!! :

First i split the midi drum track into many wave track - Kick, Snare, Tom L, Tom R, Hi hat, cymbal L, cymbal R using bounce to track technique.

I Insert a Waves Thrueberb into an AUX to emulate small room and lower hi - frequency slightly.

I lowered the snare, toms (L & R), hi hats tracks volume at about -16db . Armed the AUX send (to send them in the reverb)

I muted the kick since we don't hear it on the overheads track.

Then i bounced them in stereo with the cymbals track.

I raised all the lowered volume back to their orignal volume.

So what i get is :

The original Kick, snare, toms(L and R), hi hat track PLUS a stereo cymbals track mixed (bounced) with the process track which emulate the overheads. This is what you have in real life !!!

So i got really realistic overheads ambience.

For hints to EQ drum tracks (with mp3 example) i found this link on the drum & percussion forum. This is for real drum but you can use these for soundfonts as well :



Hope you envoy this. If you find improvement on this technique, please share it ;-)
 
moskus said:
Great tips! :) :) :) (But for me there was nothing new...)

If you have the XL version of Sonar, you really should check out DR-008. It let's you output different drum-sounds to different tracks. It's great! :)

Have you read this posts? https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=39305&highlight=great+drum
I have XL. I've never tried Dr-008. Does it support soundfonts or do i have to convert all the samples indivually in wave ? Or maybe you have a link in this forum (to answer this) ;-)

Thank you

Musart, Member of the ACKUS Guild ! ;)
 
Musart said:
Also, EQ and compression. When you compress some drum element indivually you can really stunning results and flexibility
Yepp! :)

But no, DR-008 doesen't support soundfonts. But it has some incredible kits with it. And of course it's supported by the best kit ever, the Drumkit From Hell! :)
 
DrumKit From Hell .... ok yeah i've seen this on a website.

By your experience, how does it sound compare to sonic Implant drumset ?

I'll try to play with DR-008 tonight. Maybe i should consider buying DKFH ...

Meanwhile, if i understand, i could extract all the wav from a Sonic implant drumkit soundfont via Vienna and arrange them to be used on the DR-008. But i think it would be very memory consumming because of all the velocity layers involved ... ouf !

I'll wait for your mini review of DKFH. Do you have any sample song you have made with them ? If so, i would be pleased to hear them ...

Musart

:D
 
Musart said:
By your experience, how does it sound compare to sonic Implant drumset ?
Nothing compares to the Drumkit from Hell!

And that's just the way it is... ;)
 
moskus said:
Yepp! :)

But no, DR-008 doesen't support soundfonts. But it has some incredible kits with it. And of course it's supported by the best kit ever, the Drumkit From Hell! :)

Moskus, good news for soundfonts users .... There is an utility to get soundfonts into DR-008 see below :

In this day and age, it's very important that all your software works together. DR-008 is compatible with all major VSTi, DXi and RTAS hosts on the Windows platform; it imports audio files in all WAV and AIFF formats, and can use the huge variety of third-party kits available in LM-4 and Battery formats. With the AWave utility from FMJSoft, it can also import SoundFonts (.sf2) and Akai programs
 
Well Moskus,

Now i believe in miracle !!!

I've download Awave Studio Demo and converted my Sonic Implant Drum kit soundfont into a DR-008 kit !

It works like a charm !!! Took 30 seconds to do (between downloading the demo and conversion to dr-008)

Now, i'm in business with DR-008...:)
 
DR-008

Hey

Does the DR-008 have patterns that can be used, or is it exclusively a "build-it from scratch" program?

dana
 
Does the DR-008 have patterns that can be used, or is it exclusively a "build-it from scratch" program?
I don't have the dr-008,but I would assume it can be triggered by the session drummer or a midi track as long as you have your track routing correct.
 
Musart said:
I've download Awave Studio Demo and converted my Sonic Implant Drum kit soundfont into a DR-008 kit !

It works like a charm !!! Took 30 seconds to do (between downloading the demo and conversion to dr-008)
WOW! I believe in miracles too! :D

I'm off to download the Awave Studio demo! :) :) :)
 
Re: DR-008

mishappen said:
Does the DR-008 have patterns that can be used, or is it exclusively a "build-it from scratch" program?
Acidrock is correct. You trigger samples from a standard MIDI track. If you want pre-recorded patterns you have to get them elsewhere (or use the Session Drummer).
 
hey guys,

I tried this too...but, Musart, with the demo, were you able to convert instruments, or were you able to convert the sf2 files to a bunch of wav or aif files? I was only given this option. when I tried to convert the soundfont into a kit, it said the demo only supported wave conversion...did anyone else run into this? I read your post Musart as though you were able to convert the sf2 to an actual kit, not a lot of separate waves. Maybe it doesn't matter that much. I haven't used my DR-008 that much at all, but you guys love it so much, I feel I need to play with it now.
I'm super interested in the DFH as well...I just haven't bought it yet...still contemplating. Though, the price on it isn't that bad.

I may buy that, and the full awave before I buy the upgrade to Sonar 3 producer edition. I can't do it all now.
Thanks,
Kirstin
 
kgirl72 said:
hey guys,

I tried this too...but, Musart, with the demo, were you able to convert instruments, or were you able to convert the sf2 files to a bunch of wav or aif files? I was only given this option. when I tried to convert the soundfont into a kit, it said the demo only supported wave conversion...did anyone else run into this? I read your post Musart as though you were able to convert the sf2 to an actual kit, not a lot of separate waves. Maybe it doesn't matter that much. I haven't used my DR-008 that much at all, but you guys love it so much, I feel I need to play with it now.
I'm super interested in the DFH as well...I just haven't bought it yet...still contemplating. Though, the price on it isn't that bad.

I may buy that, and the full awave before I buy the upgrade to Sonar 3 producer edition. I can't do it all now.
Thanks,
Kirstin

Kgirl,

I was able to load a .sf2, select an instrument bank (if you have more bank in the same soundfont, the demo won't let convert a collection of instruments) after you only have to save (or export ... i'm at work now) as dr-008. And then, in DR-008 you select LOAD SETTINGS and choose your newly convert kit.

For example, yesterday i loaded the ambiance drumkit from Sonic Implants, i selected the first kit in the instrument bank (Dmaplekit) and save it to DR-008. I will confirm that tonight, if you have more problem.

Have fun
 
Duh.

Oh--I see. I was trying to do it all from the batch conversion wizard. That wasn't working for me unless I wanted to do sf2 to individual wavs. Now, I get it.

I think that when you have a crapload of soundfonts to do this with, the close/restart issue is a bit of a pain. Might be worth it to plunk down the $99 today!

Still holding on the DFH. I know you guys love it, but I need to learn to use the drum functions in this software better, and how to actually make some decent patterns until I spend that money, I think. I get so excited I always have all this stuff I don't really know how to properly use. I'm a bad girl!!!!

Thanks Musart, that cleared it all up for me.
-Kirstin
 
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