# The recommended drum software?



## 7 Dying Trees (Jan 3, 2008)

OK, so I got a copy of DFHS through the mail today, scored it for a decent amount, BUT...

Since I bought it I'v ebeen told BFD is better, that EZ-Drummer + the metal oriented expansion kits is really good etc etc... hence the following question.

Based on that:
1) I don't mind fiddling around, whatver happens I'll end up with an autoload/default song load consisting of all my tracks set up as i want them to be, so I don't mind tweaking

2) In an ideal world I'd like to be able to blend in and/or replace the kick sound entirely. Kind of like triggering really. Either blend or replace. I know this isn't too hard using battery or something like that with a solitary sample.

3) Whatever the software, it has to be able to be got for around the 100£ mark (or whatever I can sell the unopened DFHS for)

4) I'll be mainly using this in Cubase sx3, and possibly in logic 5.5. The only reason I am really switching from logic to cubase is to be able to use the more advanced drum programs.

So, what would the advice be? I'm not (as far as i know) going to be recording an album with this, it is purely for demo purposes and for inspirational fodder to be honest!


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## newamerikangospel (Jan 4, 2008)

dkfh superior has alot more "tweakies" than the ezdrummer+dkfh expansion (thats the only "metal" kit im aware of, and it is pretty much the original dkfh with everything loaded into a automated drummer map, giving you the randomization stroke thing). In usd, ezdrummer+dkfh is about $220-$230, whereas dkhs was around $250-260. I dont know what the difference would be over the pond, but it would be much, if any with the discounted stock. 

Bfd is okay, but dkfh blows it away in my opinion. The only difference I have heard with any drum synth is that dkhs are raw samples, that you can/have to tweak to get a great sound, whereas the others are already mix/compressed. It may take longer to get a sound in rough comparison to ____ sampler, but you also have the ability to make it sound completely different since you aren't dealing with set eqs, or set compression ratios. 


But if you want to sell your dkhs, send me a pm


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## smueske (Jan 4, 2008)

Dood, I prefer Battery 3 *because* you can do sound replacement, augmentation, etc. (your first requirement). You can't, in DKFHS, blend in other wav sounds. To me, Battery is by far the simplest app to use and it is the most flexible. The only downside is that there are no room ambience blends unless you go with a CPU hungry multi-mic kit. The pros, however, outweigh that. The ability, for example, to take any pad and route it to any output, blend with other pads, detune, add effects (I know, I know, DKFHS has detune but it doesn't have voice grouping, voice choking, looping or any other of the features that Battery has). It's less expensive and you have the ability to load and trigger just about any sound you want.

Anyway, I'll get off the soapbox now.


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## newamerikangospel (Jan 5, 2008)

.....your mom is flexible


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## TomAwesome (Jan 5, 2008)

EZDFH is nothing you ever have to think about again if you have DFHS. It can work for some things, but it doesn't work well for fast paced metal. The humanization makes it sound like crap when there's a lot going on, and there aren't enough velocity levels. Superior is just... well... superior. I've been trying to get EZDFH to work for a demo we're trying to record soon, but at this point I'm pretty close to trying Battery 3 with the DFH1 samples and some other samples I've got.

BFD is pretty neat. I'm not terribly familiar with it yet, but I've been messing with it a bit, and it seems to have potential. You have a lot of say so over tweaking the humanization, I believe the hits are multisampled even within the same velocity level, and I think it's compatible with DFH sample libraries as well as whatever other samples you have lying around. The default libraries aren't half bad, either.

Edit: I somehow forgot to mention Slate Drums. It seems like a fantastic program/library, and I'd love to try it out. Addictive Drums looks pretty interesting, too.


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## 7 Dying Trees (Jan 7, 2008)

So basically:

DFHS - Takes longest to get results, but way more flexible

BFD - Fast to get results, but will always sound fairly similar

Battery3 - Good for comping kits together.


What would a combination of battery3 and DFHS be like, or does that sound too protracted?


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## John_Strychnine (Jan 7, 2008)

7 Dying Trees said:


> So basically:
> 
> DFHS - Takes longest to get results, but way more flexible
> 
> ...



BFD is harder to mix, especially bfd 2 because of the flexibility of the double miced kick and stuff.

Takes longer to get a good sound but sounds better than dfh i beleive.


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## smueske (Jan 7, 2008)

I would disagree that DKFHS is flexible. I *would* agree that it has the most authentic sounds, simply because of the amount of velocity layers. But it is a proprietary sampler that only loads its own sounds to its own pads. You can reroute the pads by assigning different MIDI keys and such but it is by no means a traditional sampler.

Battery 3 is way more flexible in terms routing, loading and unloading sounds, combining sounds, processing sounds, etc. I think of it like a hybrid between a sampler and drum sound processor. 

It really depends on what you want to get out of it. If you want straight ahead drum sounds and that's all you want, go with Toontrack. If you want to highly customize your sounds and be able to use sounds by other manufacturers (including yourself if you like to design sounds) then DKFHS is not the way to go.


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## guitarplayerone (Jan 7, 2008)

the slate drum samples sound really good....


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## JBroll (Jan 8, 2008)

Slate's stuff sounds godly, and he's a cool guy on top of that. I basically found when talking to a few people who mix these things that at least three of the CD's I've bought in the last three months have had Slate's stuff thrown in there.

BFD is a joke compared to DFHS... it's good, but it's blown out of the water if you know what you're doing. 

My best advice would be to keep DFHS, get something like APTrigga or Drumagog for sound replacement if you don't feel like just copying and pasting MIDI to another track for another sampler (if you don't need to be that lazy, just get a free sampler), and get the Slate stuff anywhere you can.

Another thing to note is that over at the Sneap forum Slate posts pretty frequently and if something goes wrong he's pretty much around on a daily basis so you'll get more than your money's worth if you ever need help with the stuff.

Jeff


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## Shorty (Jan 8, 2008)

If you end up selling superior, first dibs please


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## 7 Dying Trees (Jan 8, 2008)

Shorty said:


> If you end up selling superior, first dibs please


I've sent you a PM, I got my copy for 83£ 9including delivery). If anyone else wants to know I'll post up the link, I think they'll do european delivery as well.


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## newamerikangospel (Jan 8, 2008)

7 Dying Trees said:


> I've sent you a PM, I got my copy for 83£ 9including delivery). If anyone else wants to know I'll post up the link, I think they'll do european delivery as well.







Nag on 01/04 said:


> But if you want to sell your dkhs, send me a pm





:'(







*types frantically on emoforum*


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## 7 Dying Trees (Jan 8, 2008)

Well, to be nice, and I'll post in the "where can i get dfhs omg!" thread  here's the cheapest i found it in the UK for, which, to be honest, is a really good price considering what it was, and 60%-75% of the cost what other places seem to be blowing it out for.

Toontrack Drumkit From Hell Superior V2 - DISCONTINUED


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## smueske (Jan 9, 2008)

Ah, now Slate Drums ver. 2 sounds cool. Will have mappings for current samplers, something I felt was missing from ver. 1.5. Loved the sounds from the site but there was no way I wanted to load and tweak velocity layers for each drum and then map them in the sampler.

WWW.STEVENSLATEDRUMS.COM/TWOINFO.HTML


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## skinhead (Jan 9, 2008)

I listened to Steven Slate's samples and they are awesome.


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## Emperoff (Jan 10, 2008)

Those Slate Drums are fucking great. Are they used the same way as any other VST Drum plugin?

And when will be out the 2.0 version?


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## Oneiros (Jan 10, 2008)

ADDICTIVE DRUMS FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## smueske (Jan 10, 2008)

> Are they used the same way as any other VST Drum plugin?



As far as I can tell, it's a sample library not a VST plug-in. This is one of the reasons I've held off. However, the new version will have Drum Maps for current samplers, so you'd need to have a sampler to load the samples. The libraries are currently in wav and drumagog format (drumagog is a sound replacement software that is itself a VST plug-in).


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## Roundhouse_Kick (Jan 15, 2008)

7 Dying Trees said:


> Well, to be nice, and I'll post in the "where can i get dfhs omg!" thread  here's the cheapest i found it in the UK for, which, to be honest, is a really good price considering what it was, and 60%-75% of the cost what other places seem to be blowing it out for.
> 
> Toontrack Drumkit From Hell Superior V2 - DISCONTINUED



I was really considering that until I looked on the page - OUT OF STOCK!!!


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## smueske (Jan 15, 2008)

I wrote to Steve Slate Drums and they said that version two will be released at NAMM.

Steve


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## nicomortem (Jan 15, 2008)

acoustica beatcraft is my fav program and its only $50. download a 7 day trial its awesome.


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