I was using SD2 for many-many years and just jumped on the sale to get a free SDX with SD3 purchase. With SD2, I would build custom kits using drums from Avatar (NY Studio Vol 1) and Metal Foundry (yes, I am a heavy rock guy, sometimes). I discovered drums I liked and put them together to get a kit I liked and would fit with my music. Since you can’t use drums across sample packs, I use X-Drum feature. In one specific case, I would use Avatar and add the bass drums (double bass) and extra toms to build a larger heavy rock kit. I would kind of position the drums near where they would be in a real kit (sort of, obviously far from perfect because it wasn’t a real custom built kit).
In SD3, the added instruments show up in a column to the left. In my option, worse than the SD2 option. The reason this matter is because if you score drums, you need to watch them get played to see if a real drummer could play them. This is difficult when there is a long column of drums on the left (takes more thought).
What I would really like is the ability to BUILD a custom kit from the sample packs I own, including a visual representation of the drum kit. Doesn’t need to be beautiful, just an option that says ‘build new kit’, give me a blank floor and let me pick drums and place them onto the canvas. You can see in SD2, my right bass drum was over in never-never land, I would like to be able to move the drums over etc. to put in the actual spot. You could layer in a simple obvious model, where snare layers over bass drum, toms layer over snare drum, cymbals over toms and so on. Blue bass drum, gold snare, white toms, green floor toms,whatever. No need to make anything match and even the orientation would be pretty static. The placement is what matters. The orientation would usually be fine, since folks don’t usually place a floor tom on the left (unless you are lefty, of course).
I love the fact that I can use drums I purchased with SD2 on SD3 and look forward to the same in SD4, with new SDX added with new features (that may not work with my older sample packs). This all makes upgrades very easy, since I can use existing kits for current projects even if I choose to stop installing SD2 on new computers etc.
Thanks. /TomH
