I’ve been on the forum here for a little over a year now, and I haven’t ever seen much (anything?) posted about this before, but pardon me if it has been discussed and I’ve missed it.
One of the things I’d really love to see from Toontrack is a new simple plugin solution whereby I can use my existing Superior library to directly trigger drum hits from audio tracks in my DAW. What I mean is that I’d like to be able take my live-tracked drums, and, say, instantiate this new (theoretical) plugin on the snare track, and load up whichever snare I want to use out of all my Superior or EZ products. There could even be a few checkboxes to use room mics or OHs (or not) on the kit element in question. This could presumably be a fairly small footprint plugin, processing wise. It would just take up as much RAM as it needs to run the samples on an individual basis. The key would be that the Toontrack samples are being triggered by audio, not by MIDI.
I know there is Drumtracker. I have Drumtracker and I use Drumtracker sometimes. But it is quite time-consuming when I’m trying to improve a snare I’ve recorded live and I have to launch Drumtracker, import the snare audio file, process the file, assign it to the right MIDI note, export the newly created MIDI region (and try to remember which MIDI format to use), import the new MIDI region into my DAW, instantiate Superior on that track, load up the snare I want, discover the MIDI region doesn’t start at the right spot compared to my audio, slide the MIDI track around by a bar or two (or sometimes several beats) until it’s in the right place, and then finally get what I’m looking for.
Don’t get me wrong, I really do use Drumtracker. I’m not trashing it. It has been a lifesaver for me on a few songs recently, mostly for kick and snare (and the resulting room sounds). It’s just that I think about how much easier it would be if I could just load up this new plugin I’m imagining directly onto an audio track and have immediate access to my Superior library, which is fairly extensive.
As it stands, I’ve actually considered picking up Slate’s Trigger a couple of times now, but honestly I’d prefer to be able to use the Toontrack samples I already know and love.
I know Toontrack doesn’t comment on future unreleased plugins or ideas they’re working on, which is totally cool, of course, but I wanted to put this bug out there to let you guys know there are people ready to spend money on this kind of thing. It could really extend your reach into the drum sample market even further. Triggering has become so popular these days, it’d be great to more easily use the Toontrack samples in this kind of workflow.
Thanks for listening, guys! I continue to use your products every day in my work, making both myself and my clients very happy.
Cheers!
Mark
MBP 2.4 GHz | 4GB RAM | OSX 10.6.8 Logic Pro 9.1.5 | Metric Halo LIO-8/4P | Apogee ONE SD 2.3.0 | EZP 1.1.0 | Drumtracker 1.0.2
