bobbyharlowHi folks — I’ve recorded a lot of live drummers over the years, so I know as much as most engineers do about the flexibility of EQ, compression, distortion, etc. I’ve worked in super nice studios with Fairchilds + basements with duct tape on the mic stands. I’ve wrestled with all types of crazy drummers and problematic recordings.
I’ve had Superior Drummer 3 for a year now.
I really want SD3 to be the beat-all-end-all, but I just can’t seem to find the sweet spot in terms of getting these drums to sound like a real drummer. The kick drums are good. The snares can be made into something that totally works. The cymbals sound fine. The toms are a nightmare to me. I’ve purchased the Decades pack, the Hip-Hop pack, and the Custom & Vintage pack and none seem to be super usable.
I’ve hit “reset” on my perspective of what these drums are, and have accepted that they’re recorded really well and boring, therefore I need to spruce them up with plugins that make them exciting sounding. Okay — just like most sessions, the drums lack character until I stick them through plugins that beef them up and get them pumping. I can not, for the life of me, get the toms to make sense. They all sound like wooly basketballs at best.
Alright, you can no doubt sense my frustration. I’m in the middle of a project and my drums sound great (and my toms sound terrible). Has anybody figured out how to get the toms to sound like a classic rock band? Think ELO, Boston, The Eagles, or Fleetwood Mac — I’ll take any tips that lead me to a place where the toms sound like a drummer with a stick in his hand and some force behind a hit.
Is there a particular pack that I need to accomplish this? Is there a secret to getting the toms to sit in the mix? Less room? More room? No bleed? Only bleed? Who here knows the secret to getting the toms close to something on Abbey Road? Somebody must know, and for that, I love you.
Thanks in advance!
Bob
ScottI’ve not found the S3 toms and more or less difficult to mix than real toms or other virtual drum toms.
My tom processing is:
– all toms bussed to a stereo bus. Processed together. Individual toms are eq’ed separately but compressed/room reverb together.
– 2 mono compressors. Not linked. 2 1176s set to nuke works well. Chandler Limiter works a treat too. These are run as parallel compressors and not directly on the toms bus.
– aphex aural exciters. So key.
Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
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Thanked by: ChadwickDunderc0ck and bobbyharlow
Jason Moore LAcI agree that the Tom’s are the most difficult to dial in. I also agree with Scott. Use Parallel compression!!!!!!
Also… I find that one of the biggest necessities for SD to sound real is to use your mic bleeds. ALL OF THEM, but especially ambient mics and surround mics (even if you’re not mixing surround sound). I had to buy a new MacBook so that I can properly use SD and it even pushes it to 120 degrees and runs the fan constantly because my tracks are running 7-8 gigs of data and 20-30 gb of RAM (luckily I got a machine with 64).
That and the right parallel compression (with an eq after the compressor) has everyone saying “damn, your drums sound amazing”. Also….. of course.. experimenting with lots of different drum sets / pieces
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Thanked by: bobbyharlow
Bear-Faced CowConsidering the bands mentioned by the OP, I don’t recommend parallel compression in this case. What matters more in a classic rock mix as pertaining to toms is the EQ curve. Generally, you will be working to bring out the lows for the thud and the upper-mids to get the whack of the stick, while suppressing the lo-mids. I usually follow that with the Comp76 compressor in SD3 (or UAD’s 1176 if I’m routing directly into Logic) very mildly, balancing both the EQ and compression as the compressor will help keep the lo-mids suppressed while taming the transients and adding a certain color to the toms. Also keep in mind that the music of that era was recorded to tape. Thus, you’re going to want to experiment with certain types of saturation. The tape plug-in is okay, but it’s definitely more of a caricature of tape than a reproduction. I will often output my drum mix to UAD’s Studer tape plug-in, with the possibility of a UAD Neve 33609 before it for some added punch.
As well, the drums in those bands are rather dry, so you don’t want any far ambiences. You mainly want overhead and near ambient channels. In the classic rock cases pertaining to the bands mentioned, you’ll build your mix with the OH and close mics and then tuck a little bit of the near ambient channels underneath.
And yes, the raw kit pieces are boring… I’m sure experience has taught you that all unprocessed drums are boring. However, I will also disagree in that the toms in any of the packs I own are not unusable by any stretch. I have worked with far worse throughout the years.
jord
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Thanked by: bobbyharlowbobbyharlowYou guys rule. Thanks a million for these super thoughtful comments. I’m going to try all of this. I’m sitting here under headphones now stressing over these darn toms. I’ve never over-thought drums this much in my life! ha. Thanks for the encouragement and great tips. I’ve got much of the UAD stuff and 64Gb of ram — so, I don’t have any limitations. My whole kit sounds great — except these toms are killing me. I’m working on a “stadium rock” project. Listening a lot to classic bands for inspiration. If anybody has the secret to the Boston sound, let me know — and the secret to the songs — and the money. All of it would work for me. 😉 Thanks, again!
ChadwickDunderc0ckIs the exciter by waves much better than isotopes exciter (Ozone’s Exciter)? I have isotopes and use it.
I use to LOVE adding the BBEs maximizer hardware to my live guitar rigs… it was a killer.
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Thanked by: bobbyharlow
WhagiIm using the Death and Darkness SDX for most of my stuff now, love the toms 🙂
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Thanked by: bobbyharlowJason Moore LAcI like the Izotope exciter from Ozone better than the Waves one. But…. you can demo Waves and check for yourself risk free 😉
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Thanked by: bobbyharlowbobbyharlowUPDATE:
This may help somebody who was struggling like me — after exploring some of the options suggested by the cool people above, I’ve arrived at a sound that’s much closer to a real drummer.
First of all, Jason is 100% correct. ALL of the atmospheric channels need to be turned on. What I didn’t realize is that these channels are muted in the side menu. I just assumed that there wasn’t any info to send (depending on the kit selected) because I never saw levels on them. Nope, all have to be manually engaged. I highlighted each one of these: Center, Surround, Front Height, Rear Height, & Reverb. I turned on every piece of the kit. Then I went through every regular channel (kick, snare, high-hat, etc) and turned on the bleed for every instrument — no exceptions.
I then went to my isolated tom channels and applied the EQ — I chose two in succession: EQ “mud remover” preset and the EQ84 “OH crisp” preset. What this did was lob off all that overwhelming low end and exaggerated the attack. I did this because there’s a lot of weight coming from the overhead (and the rest of the room mics), and I want the toms to feel like they’re part of the kit, not sitting on top and bottoming out every time they hit (especially after hard classic rock compression).
I left all of the channels balanced the way SD3 has them. I didn’t touch them — reason being is that SD3 probably took a lot of time to balance their kits so we don’t have to. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. However, I opted to send all of the kit channels out to individual channels in my DAW (Logic), so I can apply quality plugins and fine-tune the mix.
In my DAW, I’ve routed the kick, high-hat, and overhead to Bus 1. The snare is a straight stereo out to preserve dynamics, rather than including it in the main drum bus where I’ll compress. The toms have been routed to their own bus (bus 2) so I can have easy control over the group level, and that bus is routed to bus 1 with the rest of the kit. All of the room mics are routed to bus 3, which gives me a single fader to control the amount of atmosphere.
Because I’m going for the classic ’70s rock sound (big and tight sound), I’ve opted to mono out all of the room mics, with the exception of the “surround” channel (still stereo). What this did was focus the sound so it was punchier and less smeary. I’ve smashed these through the Waves Abbey Road Studios TG12345. The reason I left the surround channel in stereo is so I could sneak it in conservatively, to create a seemingly wider field without cymbals moving from left to right.
Lastly, on the main drum bus, I’ve added the UAD V76 preamp + the UAD 660 Fairchild. On my independent snare channel, I’ve added the UAD V76 pre to give it some crisp, vintage tube sizzle.
I can imagine routing the whole kit to a parallel bus and compressing the heck out of it to sneak it in the mix slightly for more power if need be.
For anyone interested, I’m using a blend of “Custom & Vintage” and “Decades” packs to zero in on a proper thuddy, vintage drum sound.
To my ears, the above is a great starting point and has relieved a tremendous headache. Thank you all for your help. Hopefully, this update will help out somebody trying to get their head around this. Superior Drummer is by no means a “plug-and-play” tool. It is, but don’t expect the drums to sound like a drummer giving it their all. That said, the key points made by the above users made all the difference in the world. Thanks, again.
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Thanked by: Jason Moore LAc and glowtone
Mark KingThe rimshots on the toms give a much better crack
SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors
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Thanked by: bobbyharlow
Mac McCormickFor what it’s worth, I will usually use the Transient tool to just slightly shorten the ring of the toms on those vintage kits. That seems to give them more punch, at least to my ears. I seem to notice more of the attack when the ringing of the toms is shorter.
Cubase Pro, Korg Kronos, M-50, Hammond XK-1c, Toontrack SD3, EZBass w/lots of expansions, many VSL Vi's, Shreddage 3 everything, and shit-tons of FX plugins.
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Thanked by: bobbyharlowbobbyharlowAh nice! Thank you. Yeah, it’s the opposite of a live kit. I’m usually chasing the body of the toms, but in this circumstance, I’m chasing the attack. Thanks for the great tip! Speaking of the live kits, years ago, I did a record for an artist who had a very rhythmic pattern going on the floor tom — the problem was the song was mellow and beautiful, but the floor tom sounded like a basketball. I ended up sampling the kick drum and replacing the floor tom with it. It sounded incredible and worked flawlessly. This may be a fairly common solution, but for those who haven’t tried it yet and need a prominent, punchy, and warm floor tom rhythm, it could be a lifesaver. 😉
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Thanked by: Mac McCormick
glowtoneAs well as explaining the answer to your issue bob, your update there also imparted tons of great info for somebody like me who’s pretty new to SD3 and Drum programming in general. Thank you.
Mac McCormickBobbyHarlow:
Wow, I have never thought if that. It’s something I will definitely have to try.
Did you play with the formants of the kick drum when you did that, or did it just work as is with a bit of EQ?
Cubase Pro, Korg Kronos, M-50, Hammond XK-1c, Toontrack SD3, EZBass w/lots of expansions, many VSL Vi's, Shreddage 3 everything, and shit-tons of FX plugins.
Bear-Faced CowI can see where certain kick samples would work for tom attack, but I couldn’t see myself replace the tom outright. If anything, I have been able to take care of issues with various toms with EQ to get what I need to sit in a mix, SD3 being no exception. Beyond that, I will bring it out with some compression, or if I want something more modern, I will reach for a transient shaper.
Of course my first rule of thumb is to ensure that I am using the proper kit for the sound I’m after.
jord
Robin GardnerHi there! I’m not at all any “SD3 genius” I’m afraid and I really struggling a lot with Superior Drummer 3, for about a year now… But recently I found some help when watching YouTube-videos by this guy (Mike Luke): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtJJEAwANzFc9pXUF9lWohA
His english may not be the best but he has many videos about SD3 and seem to know a lot about how to work this piece of drum software. For example I learned a “one-trick-pony” to get me started using SD3 from one of his videos.
Goes like this… when in your DAW, open Superior Drummer 3 as an VST instrument but keep it “none-multi out”. I don’t think it matters what you start with but I usually start with one of the “Clean Kits”, for example the “Pearl Default”, “Ayotte Default”, “Premier Default”, etc. Then I go down to “Part Preset” and from “Drum Kits” I for example choose “Pearl Masterworks” or “Premier Genista”. Those two seem to get me going quickly. Still the drums sound a bit luck luster though…
So the “trick” is to next add two compressors after each other on the inserts of “Out 1/2”. First the “Classic Comp”, then dirctly after that add “Comp 76”. Now it will add a lot of compression and volume too! So I’ll adjust the mix knob quite a lot, mostly on the “Comp 76” though because it makes it sound so hard otherwise… Well, after that I’ll change the “Envelope Release” for certain drum channels in the SD3-mixer and where I see fit. For example on the Toms, so they don’t have those “long, bad ringing” to them. Also might lower the release a bit on Amb channel. I might also get a different snare, maybe change the hi-hat, etc all depends on the song really… But, maybe add an EQ after the two compressors to get the drums a bit brighter overall with a high shelf and also remove some mud/boxiness. Still the toms could sound better imo! They seem to be the hardest to get exactly how I want them… I want them to sound big, lush & thunderous but without them getting in the way of other instruments and sound too boxy/hard/loud… That’s the tougher part imo! Still working on that…
Well… that’s what I’m doing lately with SD3. But nowadays I’m only mixing the drums inside Superior Drummer 3 and never send them out as multi channels to my DAW’s mixer (Cunase 10 Pro). My aim is to get the drum sound good before I do anything at all in the Cubase-mixer. That’s my goal nowadays anyway…
Well, keep up the work and in the end the result should only get better aswell!
//Many regards from Robin Gardner
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