Dave_26I’ve created some amazing performances with Superior Drummer 3 in a handful of songs in the last year that I am extremely happy with.
Now I’m moving to the final mixing stage for these songs, and because I want full mixing control without having to go into SD3’s mixer just like I’d have for any other song I’ve tracked with live musicians, I’ve been exporting the drums as audio tracks out of SD3 as printed audio to bring into Pro Tools and mix from there.
I know staying in SD3 permanently is an option, it’s just not one that I desire. I’d rather leave SD3 completely and mix every single thing back in Pro Tools.
There are so many options for how to export – I did my best a while back to determine what seemed best for me. But now I’m realizing that there’s much more to total control than I ever thought, and I’m a little overwhelmed with how to get the result I desperately desire.
The first thing I noticed once I was beginning to engineer and listen was that there is, by default, so much damn bleed from the kick and snare into all of the overhead mics (or overhead and ambient stereo pairs – however you want to refer to them) that once I was mixing the kit purely as audio, it was like the individual kick and snare mics don’t even matter. They are so loud in the OHs that you can mute their individual mics and it changes nothing, and if you turn their mics up so they actually do something, now they are WAY louder than the cymbals and totally undesirable.
So I began simply looking and learning about the bleed settings more. And it felt like maybe I just need to turn down the bleed from kick and snare into the overheads/ambients. But THEN the sound that I’m so very used to changes sort of dramatically and the great tone of the kick and snare isn’t what it used to be. So that’s no good either.
I’m almost beginning to think that I need to print/export MULTIPLE passes of each OH/amb stereo channel with different bleed settings so that I have OH and Amb faders for each part of the kit.
That really is not what I WANT but it might be the only way to achieve the mix I want to after leaving SD3.
For both OH stereos and both Amb stereos, that would mean one pass/export of each set of 4 stereos:
1 – where only kick bleed is enabled and everything else is muted/off
2 – where only snare bleed is enabled and everything else is muted/off
3 – where only hi-hat is audible
4 – where only toms are audible (maybe even split into rack and floor toms)
5 – where only cymbals are audible.
Has anyone else been down this crazy rabbit hole who can help me out?
I’d love more than anything to find a solution that’s simpler than this.
It’s quite a bit overwhelming and feels like it’s going to take forever to figure out what to do, and I can’t have this hold me up for days or weeks.
Thanks!
JohnWell,
there’s no right or wrong here, just opinions so I’ll just leave you with what I normally tend to do:
Turn down everything BUT Cymbals in the OH channel(s)
Do the opposite in the AMB channel(s), i.e. turn down HH and Cymbals
How much I turn down depends but I would guess around 6-12dB depending on how much I plan to treat those channels in the mix, which in turn has to do with musical style and how I imagine the end result.
Again, one man’s floor is another man’s ceiling, there are no rights and wrongs.
BR,
John
John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
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Thanked by: Dave_26Dave_26Thanks for your reply. Yeah after posting this I watched a video about taking cymbals and hat out of the OH dyn and only having them in the OH cond.
And of course all the combinations of that sort of thing – amb stereos as well depending on what you have loaded, etc.
I’m realizing there are just so many options and I’ve got to figure out what works best for me.
I’m partially thinking it would be great to make multiple versions of the OH dyn and OH cond – so that I can dial in exactly what I want of everything once I’m in PT. But I could also go down a major rabbit hole with that for not a lot of return in the long run.
The issue is balancing how much I want to be able to tweak with how long that takes to achieve endless printed options — and how much those options will just clutter things.
Maybe I need to just do the minimal and have more faith that these kit sounds have been extremely well-crafted already.
Lots to learn in SD3! Still been using for just a little over a year. More to go.
Anyone else have helpful suggestions, too? 🙂
Tetr4Why would you print/export anything. Just assign the outputs from SD3 to channels in Pro Tools?
Tetr4Funnily enough the Jan 2020 Sound on Sound has a feature on mixing virtual drums. Only couple pages but it’s not bad. Like all things sonic right and wrong can be subjective and contextual but it’s a good starting point.
Dave_26I’d think it would be obvious that there are a ton of reasons any user may desire to leave SD3 after completing programming
Tetr4True but he doesn’t mention any of those things, colab mixing engineers etc. He says wants to mix in pro tools. Which he can. By routing.
If he’s unaware he can do this will save him time plus has the bonus of being able to change a drum or an envelope etc. And can set up templates for quick routing imports.
Mixing from audio has it’s own advantages of course like offline editing fades etc. Universality. TCE – weird 4tet style double time forwards into reverse double time backwards things etc 🙂
If not doing that or giving it anyone else you can start in tools as sends them commit the channels when he’s happy. Then it’s future proof.
Dave_26I am the original author of this thread/post, so I’m not sure why you’re talking about me in the 3rd person unless you truly weren’t aware of who the original poster was and that I just replied to you.
And I can appreciate that someone who doesn’t know much about SD3 and is unaware may like hearing another way of working, so your suggestion may have benefited others and thank you for trying to help.
I did, though, mention exactly “I know staying in SD3 permanently is an option, it’s just not one that I desire” so it wasn’t something I was looking to get convinced about otherwise.
If anyone else has stories to share about they ways they’ve exported from SD3 for good mixing control after-the-fact, I’m still all ears and would love to hear.
For now it seems like changing what’s bleeding into the OH stereos and even doing multiple exports of OHs stereo pairs with different instruments in them at a time is probably going to be the way to go for me.
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