Sorry – I do not get SD 3 at all

[Alex Olivari]

I had high expectations in Sd3, so I bought it although no demo version was available.
I am pretty much familiar with drum plug ins, I have or have had AD2, NI Studio/Abbey Road, Battery, Maschine etc. and work with them on a daily basis for clients.
I think the whole concept of Sd3 with its mixer, groove section is pretty awesome. The quality of the samples is great, maybe the best so far.

But: I just cannot use it in my (pop/rock/dance) productions.

– most of the snares are ringing like crazy, it takes major eq-ing to get over it.
– most of the kicks have a ridiculous sustain/decay.
– (ALL !!) OH and ambience mics introduce a hall/cathedral kind of reverb
– the hits somehow lack impact.

I can work around some of these issues by using the envelope generator, eq and compression. But honestly, I do not see the point to spend time on solving conceptual problems before getting into my workflow.

I spent hours to get this thing working for me and cannot but shake my head.
The grooves are fantastic – I use them with AD2 now. IMHO.

Topic

[Jack 007]

You got some luxury problem LoL, as SD3 is so versatile, that one can loose himself searching. Want mellower snares, Indiependant is a good choice f.i. I like N.Y vol 3 too …. if you take the time to construct and save the kit you put together as .sd3 file, you’ll be off with a lot more fine tuning & editing possible as with AD2. And you can get rid of the reverbs, look for the dry kits, or switch them off when possible. J

[Alex Olivari]

Thanks for your reply jack 007. What is NY vol. 3 ? A separate drum kit ?  I will not spend extra € for ad packs. Of course I can get rid of the reverb by just switching off the room (ambience) mics or lowering the gain for kick and snare in the OH  – or only utilizing the close mics. But honestly – I haven’t spent 350€ for not using 40gb of ambience. OH and room mics are the base of the drum sound IMO. And here lies the problem with SD3.

• This post was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Alex Olivari.

[Mark King]

SD3 sounds like real drums and a has a huge amount of flexibility. I don’t get the snare ringing as they don’t ring? Are you using the pre-sets as these are more like examples of what you can do not what you have to use. I don’t use any of the pre-sets and just make my own.

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

[Author]

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