WolfgangUsing SD3 with a Roland TD-27 I’m looking for a kit that sounds and plays as acoustically as possible. From what the sound demos show my favourites are the Modern and the New Era kit from the Jazz SDX plus the Songwriter kit from Stories. With the kits I own (Fields of Rock, Hitmaker, Stockholm, Decades) I experienced that they differ in playability, for example the open/closed states of the hihats. I find some from Fields of Rock pretty good whereas the ones from Stokholm sometimes feel a little bit uneven.
Maybe someone here has played the mentioned kits in a quite similar setup and could share his or her experiences? Or does anybody already have State of the Art? I kind of like the Firebird kit.
Thanks for any participation!
Wolfgang
drumjack52Part of getting an acoustic sound out of any SDX is to work with the bleed controls. That and working with the controls on your drum brain. Please explain what you mean by your statement on the hihats. Getting a good (to you) sounds on hats is a problem even with acoustic kits. Some of that entails with mucking about with the physical setup.
Jack
aka musicman691 on other forums
Superior Drummer 3.4.0
Area 33 1.0.0
Death and Darkness 1.0.1
PT 2021.6
OSX 10.13.6
3.46 GHz hex core 2012 MacPro 48 gig ram
WolfgangThanks for answering! Turning up all the bleeds ist usually the first thing I do with every set 🙂
I spent a fair amount of time with dialing in the trigger parameters in the brain and am pretty happy with it. Next I startet with the TD-50X MIDI preset in SD3, tweaked some things like the response of the snare zones and the hihat open/close states. In fact after fiddeling around for some weeks I pretty much came back to the defaults. I tested and tweaked all these things during several recording sessions and three live gigs and I think I came to a state where it works the best it can.
One set I used to play was based on the Fields of Rock Stone set. The 15“ Istanbul hihat has a pretty nice transition from closed to open with kind of naturally differing states in between. In the Stockholm Rock kit the 15“ Paiste hihat feels like it doesn’t give me the same amount of subtleties, like some of the 7 states sound too close to each other.
Sorry, not a native speaker here so I hope I can make my point clear.
edit: using the digital pads on hihat, snare and ride
drumjack52Perfectly understandable what you wrote. So you went through all the usual suspects which is good. One of the things you may be experiencing is that not every kit was played by the same drummer; different SDX’s and different drummers so you’re going to get variations. Another could be the variations in cymbals from say Paiste to Zildjian to Sabian and to different hats within the manufacturer. Like I said hats are probably the most difficult cymbal to work with.
Jack
aka musicman691 on other forums
Superior Drummer 3.4.0
Area 33 1.0.0
Death and Darkness 1.0.1
PT 2021.6
OSX 10.13.6
3.46 GHz hex core 2012 MacPro 48 gig ram
1
Thanked by: Wolfgang
Bear-Faced CowOn top of what Jack mentioned, there are other variables such as the producer, their choice in drum tuning, their recording chain, the setup in the studio, and even the studio itself. It’s no longer a “drums in the room” type of instrument but more of a recorded drums situation. Each library will act differently to your playing more because of how it was captured.
jord
2
Thanked by: Wolfgang and drumjack52
thedrumdoctorI have an incredible sounding kit from the SD3 core sounds. My aim is to try and reproduce a sound exactly like sitting at a real drum set. This means carefully mixing the overhead mic sound and using minimal room mic sound. Room mics are fantastic in a finished song, but in reality, drummers do not sit on top of a room mic sound!!!! Also, we don’t hear our instruments in stereo so I always make sure my Focusrite interface sends me a mono mix.
Toontrack obviously want to sell us their SDX add-ons, but the core software itself has many tweaks with which we can dial in realism to the software.
I must also declare that I use the eDRUMin MIDI controller to trigger SD3, which is far more advanced with MIDI note control than any drum module. I used to have a Roland module but Roland write their software to work primarily with Roland internal sound libraries. I would advise anyone wanting to get the maximum functionality from a drum VST to unplug their modules and invest in one or two eDRUMin units. There is a learning curve, but you will soon realise how limited even the most expensive drum modules are for triggering VST sounds!
One final thing, the eDRUMin controller sends the purest CC information to SD3 I have ever seen. Again, Roland make their modules to work with their internal sounds and this is very, very clear when it comes to CC info and their hi-hat controllers. For a realistic hi-hat experience with SD3 I recommend the eDRUMin controller. When you realise the power the eDRUMin controller gives the drummer over the MIDI information sending to a VST, you realise that you really don’t need a huge library of SDX sounds to achieve an almost perfect acoustic drum set response.
thedrumdoctor
Wolfgang@thedrumdoctor Would you mind sharing the kit you built based on the core sounds?
Andrew PayneAlso what physical hi hat are you using – Roland ? and which VH ? I don’t think that VH14 is compatible with eDRUMin – as an example.
Dell Precision 7730, i7 6 Core 2.6 GHz, 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 3 x 2TB SSD, Windows 11, Cubase Pro 14, SD3 plus a variety of SDX's and EZX's, Orchestral Percussion, EZBASS, RME BabyFace Pro FS and KRK V4 monitors. Modified Yamaha DTX900, DTXPRESS4 and Edrumin10 triggering SD3. Yamaha pads/cymbals and Roland VH-10 HiHat. PDP Maple acoustic kit for live playing.
WolfgangAs I said: digital pads on hihat, snare and ride. And no, these pads aren’t comaptible with eDRUMin, I use my eDRUMin 4 to make the crashes 3-way.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all of your answers! But it’s not about triggering or trigger settings in general, I’ve put quite some time into dialing all this in. There is some experience here with e-drums over the years (decades…), anybody remembering the old TD-7? 🙂
As this is a rather special point maybe the best would be if Toontrack would offer some kind of demoing. Coming from a long time with my acoustic drums I’m probably just very petty.
Andrew PayneSorry my comment above was meant for @thedrumdoctor
Dell Precision 7730, i7 6 Core 2.6 GHz, 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 3 x 2TB SSD, Windows 11, Cubase Pro 14, SD3 plus a variety of SDX's and EZX's, Orchestral Percussion, EZBASS, RME BabyFace Pro FS and KRK V4 monitors. Modified Yamaha DTX900, DTXPRESS4 and Edrumin10 triggering SD3. Yamaha pads/cymbals and Roland VH-10 HiHat. PDP Maple acoustic kit for live playing.
1
Thanked by: WolfgangthedrumdoctorI forgot to add that 2 of my kit components are from the SD2 core Avatar kit. I use a 14 x 14 floor tom and a Sabian crash – but my snare, bass drum, rack tom, hi-hats, 2 other crashes, ride and tambourine are all SD3 core. I also put the cross-stick onto a Roland BT-1. I’ve always hated the unreliability of cross-stick triggering.
thedrumdoctor
thedrumdoctorI use a Drone optical hi-hat controller which transmits clean CC info from 0-127. I made my own 2-piece hi-hat with the top cymbal being a Gewa 14 which triggers incredibly well set under the LV hi-hat setting.
I loathe those plunger type hi-hat controllers – though I suspect they would work really well straight into an eDRUMin controller. The Roland modules limit the hi-hat CC info passed through to a VST. I used to watch this on a MIDI monitor when I had a VH-11 through a TD-20. So unreliable at the top and bottom end ranges of the notes. When I got the optical controller through the eDRUMin it actually showed how VST hi-hat articulations are still really in their infancy. But VST developers aren’t going to expand hi-hat articulations until the major e-drum brands start building that functionality into their propriety hi-hat controllers.
thedrumdoctor
WolfgangOn top of what Jack mentioned, there are other variables such as the producer, their choice in drum tuning, their recording chain, the setup in the studio, and even the studio itself. It’s no longer a “drums in the room” type of instrument but more of a recorded drums situation. Each library will act differently to your playing more because of how it was captured.
jord
The crucial point is exactly how each library acts with your individual playing. Maybe some time we get demo versions…
Bear-Faced CowThis will vary from drummer to drummer. One thing you can do is make adjustments to the velocity curves for to match your playing and either save your own preset or drum map.
jord
WolfgangI’ve bought Stories and State of the Art and tested them for a while. Maybe some of you are still interested in this topic:
With Stories I particularly like the Classic Rock, which goes well with a production I’m currently working on. Modern Rock is a kind of all-purpose but I don’t have any use for it yet. Musical Theater is good because of its different playing styles. I still don’t understand why Toontrack doesn’t do this with more kits. Please sample less kits but more playing styles!
My absolute favorite for what I was looking for is the Songwriter Kit. Very detailed and dynamic, very balanced and musical. Perfect for quiet to medium loud pop and folk. The big disadvantage of the kit is the hi-hat. The transitions between closed and open are unfortunately very uneven, the individual stages sound too different. That’s why I replaced it with the 15” Paiste 602 from Hitmaker, for me one of the best hi-hats out of the SDXs I own.
With State of the Art I haven’t used the drier-sounding sets from Studio Iso and the Library yet, but that may still come. My personal highlights are the Craftsman Kit and the Teardrop. The Craftsman is wonderfully versatile, I like that it sounds a bit darker so it fits well into the mix. The Teardrop surprised me as I’m not really a big fan of “vintage”. But it sounds really detailed and differentiated, I’ll definitely be using it soon.
Regarding the playability of the hi-hats, I find those from State of the Art better. With Stories (especially the Songriter Kit) the individual stages sometimes sound so different that there are clearly audible breaks when you open or close them slowly. And yes, I use the setting for E-Drum Optimized. Hopefully Toontrack will improve this with SD4, along with the missing transition between positional sounds of the snare. These are still the two biggest weaknesses of the software for me.
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