Being able to operate a sampler is important in the creation stages, but the end product is what musical productions are judged on. The samples used within the Steven Slate Drums software is what makes it stand out from any other sampler. The Steven Slate Drums 4 software covers all it’s bases by including features such as a built in mixer, room & overhead mic emulation, and the ability to split out your recordings to 16 individual outputs (8 mono/8 stereo.) Mix and match drum sounds to make your own User kit presets, then record a nearly perfect sounding kit using a MIDI keyboard or another form of triggering. With 100 kits to choose from, your possible overall drum sound is endless. I don't know where this whole thread went I didn't read the whole discussion, but I thought I would offer a little insight on my experiences on Steven Slate Drums 5.5 and Superior Drummer 3.Paving the road for the perfect drum sounds is not an easy task, but Steven Slate Drums 4 Platinum does a damn good job at it. To make it easier, I'll just say SSD5.5 (Steven Slate) and SD3 (Superior Drummer). In a nutshell, I find that SSD5.5 is great if you want something that's fairly mix ready right off of the bat. They take processing well and the stock sounds area really nice. I don't have the CLA or Blackbird packs, but I would like to get those eventually based on examples I've heard of them. Where I think Slate falls a little short is in the realism of close mic'd sounds in my opinion particularly the snares. In my experience, as an audio engineer and practicing mixer, if I need more impact and oomph from the snare (proximity effect low end build up from close micing a drum), the slate stuff doesn't sound like it's mic'd up how I would normally mic a snare drum. It sounds like the snare mic is placed further away in a way where if a live drummer were actually playing, the bleed from the hi hat and close snare would be quite awful. The only reason I say this is because of my experiences as an engineer and how those close samples sound. There is also a promo video of the CLA stuff where you see the snare mic close how most would mic the snare, then in another shot when it seems like the drummer is taking samples, the mics on the snare are pretty far backed off. I don't know if those made the cut, or what the deal is, but it seems to line up with my experiences. Now, NONE of this is bad it's just a sound, and a good one too - more airy and has a little more space if that makes sense. Onto Superior Drummer 3, the reason I like this in addition or as another option is that when I was in a position where I need to sample a drummer to get the impact of a close mic'd snare because his performance was inconsistent, SD3 sounds exactly like how I would mic up a kit, and I can expect the close mics to sound more like a close mic'd snare, or tom, etc more proximity effect, more oomph, more forward sounding. They also have tons of velocity layers, as well as bleed samples for every single channel, so if you program them right, if you printed the drums down to individual channels, nobody would have a clue that they weren't a real live drummer. That being said, you will need to do more work in mixing to counter balance some of the oomph and proximity of the close mics. They also have great presets as well that have everything eq'd/compressed, etc, so lots of flexibility. I like both because even now, I'm currently doing a mix where the drummer didn't quite give an even performance on the snare, so I'm using an SD3 snare sample for impact to make the snare more consistent, and then an SSD5.5 snare for colour, character, and tone if that makes sense. I will also say that while the SD3 samples sound really great, some of the stock samples left a little to be desired in terms of how hard the drummer who sampled them hit them. They said they left it open for people to have tons of flexibility, and if you need more impact to sound like the drummer hit harder, you can use the built in plugins with transient designers and EQ and compression. That being said, I don't necessarily want to mess with all of that if I need a quick fix for sample augmentation, so I have two other sample packs in addition the metal machinery and the progressive foundry, and those drummers smashed pretty hard, so you can get that impact before touching any processing. I will say that the stock SD3 samples are not useless by any means they have great presets that get you into all genres fast, and they do very natural sounding stuff very, very well.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |