Virtual drums

[ChrisW]

Let us know what the jury decides.

[Text_Edifice]

Just a hunch but I think you might come back to the Massey plug and custom samples.

[rick]

That's no help Dave
I already like the Massey plug
It works .. Just don't have a cool instrument player
With 5 great snares in it ..

Hang on I did this already today

Slight timing adjustment

... >........<.........>.........<..........> ?

[Text_Edifice]

Yeah I should have kept my mouth shut - you're using the latest version right?

I don't think you'll like the Slate stuff - more for replacement than reinforcement.

[audioio]

the last thing I want to do ever is break out 25 years of samples and build my own library again ..

I find you dont need that many different types of samples in the end.

These comments remind me of one of the best commentaries on the state of electronic music, at the time it was made and probably now.

[peat]

cant say enough good things about slate trigger,

easy as hell, great samples, easy to use your own.
The platinum, deluxe and CLA packs are pretty damn good too.

Being able to tune and affect the envelope of your sample within the plugin is also great.

It's cheap too!

I use trigger purely for enhancement, never fully replacing anything.
You can choose if you want it to use different velocities, or just the same hit each time.
Never really encounter any slight time adjustment issues either.

If you want a virtual instrument player, then well....
Avid Strike is actually really good. Xpand 2 can get you out of a tight spot too.
EZ drummer and superior drummer are great too, NI do some things that are good.

But for good real time sampling, trigger has never made me not smile.
used the demo years ago and within 2 mins it was working just the way I had always imagined.
great room sounds in it too! I use them instead of reverbs some times.

etc...

[walding]

Slate trigger, just excellent, works as it should, sounds are very tweakable, and you can stack 5 of them at a time.

I more use it as a enhancement tool, but in rare cases when the drum sounds really suck, its excellent.

Don't understand the dislike for it here.

Ps I bought it on sale a few years ago, and it's been a great investment, and I rarely buy plugins.

[tunetown]

Just to add to your confusion, I have both Slate and BFD2. I mostly use BFD2 with the Platinum Samples expansion pack. Jim Scott, Andy Johns etc. They are easily the best sample sets I have tried. I never record real drums. I only ever trigger these through a Roland TD12 V-Series. I guess to define a difference, the Slate seems more processed and the BFD2 are more raw. Slate is cheaper.

I'm not sure if you can use these samples through a DRT but I assume so.

[Drumstruck]

Would you look at that - a thread about drumstuff - and just when I was away for a few days....

The t'rock sample set sounds interesting - I'll bet there are a few nice snare drums owned by the members

[Ender]

+1 for Trigger, admittedly I haven't tried many others because Trigger just did what I was hoping in a simple way. Agree though the samples seem a bit over processed, but I found the Deluxe pack does seem a bit better (ie. drier). If it wasn't for the dogtags, it may be a more popular product (or brand?).. but at least Trigger does what it says on the box.

[waitup]

I use Trigger. Don't know about that Steven guy, though.

[Chinagraf]

[quote="tunetown"]Just to add to your confusion, I have both Slate and BFD2. I mostly use BFD2 with the Platinum Samples expansion pack..[/quote]

I don't know if Trigger does it or not, but the thing I like about Drumagog is it will host vst plugins, so I load bfd into Drumagog and can use all my snare packs/samples form BFD and have the sample multi mic positions adjustable through the BFD mixer. Sometimes I just use the ambient mics. Cool thing, and yes agree the rawness of the BFD samples compared to all the ready mixed sample packs available is a bonus. That's also why I like using my own samples too, because they aren't already mixed/processed etc. Isn't that what I'm here for?

[Drumstruck]

I haven't seen anyone mention latency yet? so I think you'll be slipping tracks with any of the apps mentioned Rick.

.... as a player (ha you say), I could not play live with the latency in SS, BFD2 or NI thingy... apparently it doesn't bother some people, but it's no good for me...

Have you got a clasp yet?

[Wiz]

well, the slate thing (and drumagog I think) are meant to be sample accurate , and in the case of one of them, I think Slates trigger, phase accurate as well...


so says the blurbs..

drum replacer emptor of course

[jkhuri44]

I haven't seen anyone mention latency yet? so I think you'll be slipping tracks with any of the apps mentioned Rick.

thats the reason why i mentioned having to align the hits, because of latency....i thought it was implied that was the reason for it. but yeah, latency, and phase issues.

[rick]

So I downloaded both demos last night
To be honest drum agog is harder to configure
And has a bunch more options probably well worth learning
All seemed to work triggering was a little fiddly compared to
Massey but it worked out
Can't say it was intuitive for me and the linked sounds
For the demo were ok

So I loaded up dog tags world domination product
And to their absolute Credit it works perfectly
triggers perfectly without dicking around
No latency phase or any issues really .. Science fiction for
A guy like me that hates this stuff

And the sounds seemed perfectly workable

So I bought slate ex ( $99 whole dollars )
And the small libary of sounds that came with it
Slotted into three different tunes I tried this morning
Without me having any idea how or why it works

So I would have to say for the simple
" why does every thing the band recorded sound like
Either a hi hat mic or an overhead mic instead of a kick or snare "
The slate thing works by a process they call magic

I have a album to start mixing which I don't think
Needs this thing but I might play with it and learn how
The smart guys use it .. Figure out the hard stuff


But Usability for the dumb reluctant guy
1 slate
2 drum a gog
3 massey

Sounds that work in a badly recorded rock band straight out of the
Gate .. Without me having any idea what I am dealing with

The Dog tag crew gets the LA tricky handshake thing !
No question ..
Bet he reads this ..
Damn

But fairs fair
It's totally what I wanted

[walding]

You made a wise choice, grasshopper

[ChrisW]

Yep, from what I hear it just works great.
Not sure if the 'instrument maker' is a separate download (free), but worth exploring I would think.

[Kurt]

Doesn't every DAW have plugin delay compensation these days? The only hold-out was Protools, which does it too now.

I haven't seen anyone mention latency yet? so I think you'll be slipping tracks with any of the apps mentioned Rick.

.... as a player (ha you say), I could not play live with the latency in SS, BFD2 or NI thingy... apparently it doesn't bother some people, but it's no good for me...

Have you got a clasp yet?

[a.d.a.m. baby]

I want just the one hit .. sounding like a record ...

Yes!! that's the one I want too!

[tunetown]

I haven't seen anyone mention latency yet? so I think you'll be slipping tracks with any of the apps mentioned Rick.

.... as a player (ha you say), I could not play live with the latency in SS, BFD2 or NI thingy... apparently it doesn't bother some people, but it's no good for me...

My system runs at .688ms. I have no issues with latency. What system have you tried these on??

[ChrisW]

I don't think there is any latency with the replacer plug-ins. That's their point, to enhance or replace without too much fiddling.
I've experienced latency with Superior when playing v-drums into the computer, but with already recorded midi I find the timing perfect.

[Drumstruck]

My system runs at .688ms. I have no issues with latency. What system have you tried these on??

Tried it on a variety of computers - (Windows Vista, XP and W7 in 32 and 64 bit - all powerful quad or 8core PCs / MacBookPro w/ fastest CPU and 16GB etc - no slouch systems), ran the apps standalone and as a plug in PT and Reaper and using a variety of triggers (eDrums, kb, mallet).

But, as I said this is from a player's perspective - for me the latency makes it very uneasy when tracking, and if I don't slip it in playback the "feel" is not mine....

[ChrisW]

I generally track (midi only) using the v-drum onboard sounds for monitoring, then playback the midi triggering the drum software.
I haven't found any latency on midi playback, only my own, which I can't blame on the computer or software.
Trying to play the vst's in real time to a click, yes I've found the slight latency distracting.

[Wiz]

I generally track (midi only) using the v-drum onboard sounds for monitoring, then playback the midi triggering the drum software.
I haven't found any latency on midi playback, only my own, which I can't blame on the computer or software.
Trying to play the vst's in real time to a click, yes I've found the slight latency distracting.

Chris how do get the hi hats, to sound even remotely close to something interesting, tracking with the vdrums and then using something like superior?

I always found, that the vdrums tracked hats always sounded, well, crappy (vdrums driving superior drums via midi). Then when you looked into the midi note assignments within the provided grooves that come with the product (all of the toontrack stuff) you would see that the hi hat was often split over multiple notes, even on the one closed sound. I even raised this point many years ago with toontrack and was told they edited all the stuff that was played in live (so imagine one hi hat closed tip note) into what was in the provided midi. I was always very grumpy that it tooks so much to actually find that out.


I used Vdrums driving S2, for my last album, with the drummer being in Dallas and Me here in Bundaberg it was the only reasonable way. But the hi hats, among other things , drove me completely round the bend.

I have yet to hear a Vdrums driven Toontrack product, that hasnt been edited to death , sound even remotely real... now given your skills and involvement with the product, I wonder how you fare? Are you manually moving the notes around afterwards? Or are you able to really get a finished drum track with what you lay down via the vdrums.

This aspect, actually drove me into buying a real drum kit and starting to play drums. So there was an upside i guess 8)

The day, they bring out a midi drum kit and a related software sound set (either that is within the drum brain or in computer) that actually sounds like a drum kit being played, I will be back into it and would pay the unbelievable prices that roland and yamaha charge for their kits.

[Kurt]

Tracking V-drums with real cymbals works a treat Midi and a stereo pair.

I guess manufacturers are trying to release a product that people will be happy to just record the output of. I cant see any justification for spending thousands on a drum kit you won't use the sounds of?

[ChrisW]

Gotta say I find v-drums hard.... and I agree, if you can get a good sound with real drums it's a much easier way to go.
I play v-drums about once a year, and that's really nowhere near enough to get used to playing a very different instrument to real drums. It's like the difference between grand piano and Fender Rhodes to me. Both great, but somewhat different techniques required.
When I've created midi performances for Toontrack, I've always used the onboard sound in the Roland modules for monitoring.
I tend to play less complex hi-hat parts I admit, but the last time I went through this process I didn't do much post editing at all. The main thing I edit is reducing the velocities overall. I've found drum software sounds best at medium hard velocities, but the accuracy of v-drums is best when you hit them harder. I record slamming the v-drums, then 'select all' the midi and drop the entire thing down from 127 to 110-120.
I think real drums are very forgiving, but v-drums pick up every inconsistency and fluffed note. I really have to concentrate on my accuracy and dynamics when I'm recording v-drums. I think it's an art you need to practice, and I don't play them enough.
Nir-Z is the man when it comes to v-drum triggering drum software.
This is just straight up playing, no editing after the fact:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giFEKDweJss

[Phoenix]

"Slate is really great" .....especially with the new deluxe sample set. These have minimal processing so you can do your own thing to them unlike the first batch he did which sounded "canned". For about 4 years you could hear those samples on many, many records which did get quite depressing. The new ones have very good room ambiences which are separate to the direct sounds. I find having access to these ambiences a life saver when I'm mixing home recordings for clients. Slate is also committed to the AAX platform.