Hi. I purchased Hugh Padgham’s Hitmaker and the sounds are great. However, when striking the snare while using Hitmaker (1.0.2) > Air or Gated Snare, there are no real dynamics as the snare is struck softer/harder; sound abruptly transitions from quiet to very loud volume as different striking force is applied. This is very evident when doing ghost notes or a crescendo roll from the edge of the snare and moving it toward the center of the pad. I though it might be related to the PD-140DS digital snare so I did some tests:
- I tried both the TD-50 (this is the module I have but with upgraded/digital snare, hi-hat, ride) and TRD-50x presets; no difference.
- I tried playing an analog Roland snare pad with the Air preset and had the same issue with dynamics/volumes.
- I tried various other kits in SD3 with the digital snare but dynamics/volumes worked fine.
- I tested the dynamics/volumes on the digital hi-hat and the digital ride, both work fine.
Any suggestions on how I can adjust for this (my mistake or otherwise) would be greatly appreciated. I am pretty new to SD3 (3.3.6).
Thanks!
Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.6
Operating system: macOS Ventura (13)
Hi there,
You’ve stumbled on an interesting situation. Your snare is probably working fine, verify this by muting the Snare Gate Channel (displayed below) and try your snare, chances are, you will hear all the dynamics in the close mic. Your dilemma will be in the muted channel.
The Comp 76, compressor has the input gain cranked up, but has a Gate in front, before it. When the dynamics of your snare hit a certain volume/velocity, it opens the Gate, sends the signal through to the Comp 76… BOOM.
May be the nature of the beast, however you might be able to play around with the input gain and gate plugins to see if you can tame things a bit.
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1
Thanked by: Scott EshlemanThanks for that recommendation! Yes, muting the gate showed the snare was working fine. So, I clicked the edit icon for Frequency Gate and it brought up the screen below. There, I changed the threshold to -80dB and it works much better now. I am not sure why it was not set similar to this originally but the low sound/full sound issue is now gone. I am sure I could tweak it more and I’ll report back what I find, if you are interested. Thanks again!
This is more by design than an issue. Remember that Hugh Padgham based the gated snare off of the song “In the Air Tonight”. If you listen to that song, he had no dynamics on the snare gate. If you look at the following screenshot:
You will notice that the input to the gate is one of the ambient channels, simulating a natural reverb. The frequency gate is only meant to open up for the very short length of time as a burst while the compressor pretty much flattens it to give it a more of gunshot like sound. Given the threshold of the gate, it’s pretty much an indication of how it was meant to be played.
The tweaks you are doing is really more making it your own. If that’s what works for you, great. However, that makes it more your preference than an issue with the preset.
jord
