Drums Volume Balance (Progressive Foundry Vs. Legacy of Rock)

[Chris0505]

Hi!

I purchased the SDX legacy of rock and it’s GREAT! Every preset I choose is ready to play with the right volume balance between each sound. Jet Black is for me the best kit because it feels so real Wow! I purchased Progressive Foundry and the default kit (and the other kits) feels so wrong (volume between each surface). I mean the toms are like 10 decibels too loud, the snare is too low etc. I know I can turn down each instrument and make my own mix but I thought it was like Legacy of Rock. Is there a reason why it’s like that? I would like to just change through the presets and just play instead of mixing each kit I wanna use and then play. I wanted have fun with the presets of Progressive Foundry but I just went back to legacy of rock lol. Am I the only person that feels like that? Is it normal? Also, is there another SDX that is ready to play when you change through every preset? Rock Foundry? Rooms of Hansa?

 

Thank you!

 

Ableton 10 , Macbookpro 2019 32ram 8 core and a VAD-506 (TD-27)

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.4
Operating system: macOS Catalina (10.15)

Topic

[Tom Martini]

I would think that each SDX is recorded with different mics, rooms, locations etc. so sounds/levels are going to be different in many ways based on mixer, studio etc. used. I find it that I’m always tweaking things anyway and that’s the thrill of exploration in music. You’ll notice that as time goes on that the packs are getting better and better and comparing to older SDX’s isn’t practical. I use sound meters from Waves and other’s to regulate the levels. You can do this with any VU loudness meter and/or EQ as well. Happy Mixing.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.4
Operating system: Windows 10

Windows 11
Dell XPS 8940
32GB ram i9-10 Core
Focusrite 18i20 Scarlett +
Focusrite Octo Pre MK II for 36 channels in
Protools Studio / Studio One 6.5 Artist

[Bear-Faced Cow]

It has little to do with age of the SDX. We are talking about two different sub genres and their producers, along with the studio, equipment, and production techniques. It will all boils down to the type of sound that you want in your song. I have used progressive foundry in a few songs that required hard-hitting drums and they serve very nicely. Both Legacy of Rock and Rock Foundry SDX’s serve me very well in the classic rock type of sound, with the latter being a bit more hard-hitting.

however, I also do not use factory presets as I am often looking for a certain type of mix. I am known to use the ones that I have created as a jumping off point.

jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[Matias Lehtoranta]

Are you using only the stereo output from SD? No mixing in your DAW? Are you hitting the drums hard? Some presets use velocity gates, where high velocity values produce significant boosts in level and more layers are fired within a stack. You’ll miss out on that until you produce high enough midi velocity. This way of designing presets might not be present in all SDXs, or it might be done to a different degree.

I’m curious – what presets had the toms 10 dB louder?

However, assuming there’s no bug or user error going on:

I would argue that there should be sensible baseline volume balance across all SDXs. The production process, rooms, mics or gear itself shouldn’t (and honestly, will not) cause the player to feel like toms are 10 dB too loud. These are presets they mixed a certain way after the sample tracking was done.

What’s not certain is whether the presets were meant to sound balanced on their own, like a drummer would expect. Or if they were made to fit some potential mix where other instruments are eating tons of frequency spectrum. I’d like to believe it’s the former, but that’s not what the OP was experiencing here.

[tuenkone]

I experience similar issues.

The Core Lib cymbals (especially HiHats) are unusable quiet in in the Progressive SDX. You cant pull the volume high enough to use them at all. Thats really a pain…

Does someone NOT have this issue??

You want to be able to use i.e. a prog kit but with a corelib hihat or crash or anything!

 

🙁

[Bear-Faced Cow]

You cannot just take a raw cymbal from the core library and expect it to work just like that. You need to apply some processing in order to get it to sit in with the rest of the kit. The core library is recorded with all of its transients preserved. Thus, there is a lot of overhead.

jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[Author]

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