My own library(ies) would consist ideally of everything that a TT library would.  Perhaps not as in-depth, but I’d like to at least get a pretty solid library of my own kits.  I could do this with Kontakt, but I’m pretty used to the workflow of SD.  It’s probably my single most-used plugin.  SD as a drum platform is just “easier” (to me) than Kontakt.  It’s like a purpose built sampler (kinda of like the SP1200).

I know you can add your own samples in, but if I recall right, it only works as a one-shot, one-layer, sound, not the multi-layer, random hit samples that you get with a TT library.  You could create a “stack” of one-shots, and set each element of a stack to a different velocity range to create the multi-layer aspect, but I don’t think you can do random hits as a “group” of sounds within a velocity range.  While that may work well for something like toms or kick, it probably would not work well for snares or cymbals.

I can see this from TTs perspective…If they opened up SD and handed out a developers toolkit that allowed people to make their own libraries, then there could be all sorts of competitors providing libraries for SD.  Since TT is the sole provider of drum libraries for SD, they have everything to gain from keeping their tech in-house and selling us whatever libraries they make themselves (which are quite good).  Also, providing a toolkit could expose some of the underlying tech of SD to competitors.  Those are reasons why I can understand TT would not want to provide tools for creation of your own libraries.

The only reason I think a person would not want to make their own library is the time and effort needed to do it.  That’s alot of work to record the samples, edit the samples, and then map them to velocity layers, MIDI notes, etc.  Further is linking samples of individual hits of various elements to the “bleed” of other channels.

I’ve made a couple of libraries for Kontakt for various things and have also made several libraries of Impulse Responses for guitar and bass cabs.  None of which have any commercial prospects, they’re for use in my own productions.  I understand the complexity of making the library and am willing to take on the job, but with SD currently being closed to this, I don’t really have a way of doing it in my drum tool of choice.

The idea of being able to make my own library for us in SD has been kicking around in my head for a few years now.  A couple of projects on the horizon that could benefit from creating a library have prompted me to ask.

James