csbtoonI love Superior Drummer 3. Fantastically recorded and mostly sound great. With one exception: the cymbals. I’m not sure if it is something in my setup or just a characteristic of the program, but my cymbals have strange sounding artifacts, particularly in the tail of the sound. I have attached a short sample of what I am talking about.
Can someone tell me if this is normal behavior? And if it is not, how it can be fixed? Thanks!
I love Superior Drummer 3. Fantastically recorded and mostly sound great. With one exception: the cymbals. I’m not sure if it is something in my setup or just a characteristic of the program, but my cymbals have strange sounding artifacts, particularly in the tail of the sound. I have attached a short sample of what I am talking about.
Can someone tell me if this is normal behavior? And if it is not, how it can be fixed? Thanks!
JohnYeah, it pretty much renders it useless for cymbals; it is very annoying. I am going to have to record my own cymbals. Gating it helps but it cuts the sustain.
Hi, you are welcome to elaborate; what exactly is rendering it useless for cymbals? Do you have any audio examples? If you do, please save a copy of the SD3 Project, zip compress and attach to a post here. And/or your DAW Project (without audio files).
BR,
John
John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
Bear-Faced CowIn addition to John’s post, it would also help if you list your system specifications, as well as your audio interface as most artifacts are a direct result of that, rather than Superior Drummer.
jord
JustinI have been having this same problem with SD3 for years now, have been chasing other things thinking it wasn’t the drums, but tonight, again with just SD3 and a midi piano part playing as I build the song I can hear distortion in the cymbals as I was trying to record another lead piano line.
Literally almost every track on my latest music album except one song (so 7 out of 8 tracks) have all used SD3 and all I have spent days if not weeks trying to troubleshoot the distortion sound in my mixes, thinking it was this compressor, or that compressor, or that I needed to change my gain staging yet again, and on and on. But then about a week ago during one of the Toontrack weekend sales I was listening to some drum audio and I could hear quite clearly distortion in the tails of the cymbals, and then again tonight, as mentioned I was recording a midi piano line with just drums (SD3 hitmaker preset) and I could hear what sounded like distortion in the drum part.
It may not be actual distortion but it sounds just like distortion. It may be some gating or choppy-ness to the audio which makes it sound like distortion or some other artifact. Either way, it sounds like something in 7 out of 8 mixes I have done this year that are edit artifacts and would normally need fixing or editing in some way. I would often use izotope RX for clicks pops and distortion if it cannot be fixed any other way, but these artifacts or distortion in the drums (it seems the cymbals for me mostly) cannot be easily fixed.
I have used a plethora of different drum libraries in SD3 that have this issue, including Fields Of Rock, Hitmaker, and the SD3 default library, and all seem to have these distortion artifacts at times. I think it depends on the actual midi used. Sometimes it is fine, sometimes not.
You can here this issue in your own audio demos on the Toontrack website, like I said I heard it just last week when looking at one of the SDX libraries that were on sale, a flash sale, so it cannot be just one person’s setup. But FYI I am running Windows 11 with 64GB RAM on a 14th gen i9 with 24 cores, and an RME Babyface Pro FS.
Thanks if anyone at Toontrack can investigate this and fix it hopefully.
Edit – and if you cannot hear these issues, then learn to train your ears. For me, I don’t know or not if the average listener will notice, but when I listen this distortion sounds to me like an issue in my mixes that needs to be fixed. I don’t have golden ears (there is no such thing) but just have learned and trained to listen and to listen carefully. It is part of the job description of mixing and mastering engineers to be able to listen critically.
Bear-Faced CowNot our ears. Been doing this long enough to know the difference and have listened to Superior Drummer 3 at various velocities.
Could very well be your interface or audio chain. What sample rate are you using?
jord
JustinHi jord,
thanks for the reply. Didn’t mean to come across condescending, I guess I was just frustrated with what seems to be a SD3 issue.
Running a sample rate of 44.1KHz. Buffer size when mixing and mastering at 1024. Bit depth 24 bit.
It may not be distortion, but certainly sounds like it to my ear. Problem is once you hear it in a song, you can’t “unhear it”.
Cheers – Justin
JohnIs it possible for you to save a project with said cymbals and piano only and zip archive it and attach to a post here? Preferably together with an audio file that showcases the distortion.
BR,
John
John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
JustinHi John,
for all the tracks on my current CD that had issues I have compensated, typically by re-doing the drums or changing the library I used. But I will try and see if I can reproduce the issue, and then I will upload something here.
Regards,
Justin
JustinHi again John,
after some searching and testing, it seems that in the case of the song with just SD3 and piano, the issue was not distortion of the cymbals, but on the drum track there were a lot of low velocity cymbal hits in fast succession, that, in the context of all the instruments, I mistook for distortion.
I do apologize. Also, I went through some of my other tracks, and in one song, the drum track that I originally used (that I thought was distorting) also had sections of really fast, low velocity hi-hat hits. I am guessing that I may have also mistook that for distortion. It definitely sounds like distortion in the context of a mix.
Anyway, sorry about the mix up. At least now I know what to look for, and I guess I can just edit the drum track if, in the context of a mix, it sounds wrong.
Thanks – Justin.
Bear-Faced CowYou might want to try making certain adjustments on that kit piece, such as smoothing. Also, which articulation were you using in fast succession?
jord
JustinYou might want to try making certain adjustments on that kit piece, such as smoothing. Also, which articulation were you using in fast succession?
jord
Hi jord,
what do you mean by smoothing? If you could give more details, that would be much appreciated, as I’d like to be able to adjust the sound if I can.
As for what articulations, I cannot say without turning the audio track back into a midi track, as I have already transformed all the SD3 tracks into audio.
For now, I am just happy to be aware that the fast, typically low-velocity hi-hat or other cymbal hits sound like distortion in the context of a full mix, so I can be aware and make adjustments as needed.
But any input on smoothing would be good, thanks.
ScottHere’s a link to S3 Smoothing from the manual.
https://www.toontrack.com/manual/superior-drummer-3/3/3-5-property-boxes/#3-5-14-smoothing
Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
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