# Zeus Drummer (Superior killer?)



## DoomJazz (Dec 24, 2013)

8Dio Zeus Drum - deep-sampled progressive metal rock kit

What do you guys make of it? For 150 I might snag it, it could be good, but I'm definitely not the most experienced engineer on this forum, so would anyone else like to weigh in?


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## Djentliman (Dec 24, 2013)

Wow. I wonder how this would sound under a metal mix? The flow note thing is really cool and something that Toontrack could have thought of for SD. It makes the kits seem that much more real. Super interested and if I wasn't moving into a new house, I would totally grab this.


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## DoomJazz (Dec 24, 2013)

The note flow tech, that's something I wouldn't have thought of unless I heard it, so now I guess it's something to listen for? I like the idea, it's definitely an improvement. I'm curious as to how deep the samples go, and how the mixer is and whatnot. At face value, it looks insane.


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## Djentliman (Dec 24, 2013)

I have always looked at Toontrack and thought that they should put in something that would allow cymbal build ups and more realistic hi hats. Its kind of like how Line 6 doesn't put user importable impulses in the sense that they probably know that it is an issue, they just might not want to take the time to fix it for whatever reason.

I went to the website and it has one video but in the video, the guy says that in the other video, they talk much more in depth about the other features of the program. Where is this other video or was he talking in a way that the other video has not been made/uploaded yet?

EDIT: I was thinking that you had put an extra F on of and meant to say "that's something I wouldn't have thought of unless I heard it" instead of what you actually said. The first half of my post was in reply to that. Now that I read it the right way, I agree with you! It is a great idea and if this gets huge like SD, I feel like there will be people trying to implement it into their own programs ie, Toontrack and Steven Slate Drums.


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## skcidrgross (Dec 24, 2013)

I heard Steve Slate was the bomb.


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 26, 2013)

While Zeus sounds awesome, and flow-note sample playback definitely makes things clearer/punchier/realistic/mixable/natural sounding, I wouldn't describe it as a SD killer.

The kit, routing, panning, bleed control, and number of articulations available in Superior Drummer is so much more than Zeus that those aspects will keep people going to SD for a long time to come. Also, consider that in order to run Zeus you have to own Kontakt, so you might as well buy Komplete. That's no small thing, considering Komplete is $500.

So yes, Zeus sounds phenomenal, and if Toontrack has any brains in it's head as a company it will start looking into some similar capability for their updates and releases. Otherwise somebody is going to come along and absolutely crush them.

To be frank, I think that Toontrack has started to give up on developing their product too much further though, which will ultimately spell their end. With all these small studios coming out and more programmers developing audio stuff, it's only a matter of time before nobody uses their products anymore.


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## Djentliman (Dec 26, 2013)

Damn. I believe it is the stupidest thing ever when a company makes a product or service and then charges you to use a product or service within that product or service that you already pay for. For example, Xbox live gold is not free and neither is Netflix. But when they bar you from using Netflix on a silver (free) account, it gets a little ridiculous. Simple solution, make it available (as well as other apps on xbox) to silver users as well.


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## Chi (Dec 26, 2013)

Wow, this sounds bomb.


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 26, 2013)

Djentliman said:


> Damn. I believe it is the stupidest thing ever when a company makes a product or service and then charges you to use a product or service within that product or service that you already pay for. For example, Xbox live gold is not free and neither is Netflix. But when they bar you from using Netflix on a silver (free) account, it gets a little ridiculous. Simple solution, make it available (as well as other apps on xbox) to silver users as well.



To be fair, it is extremely common for small developers to make instruments for use in Kontakt, as it's one of the world's most stable and widely used sample performance engines. 8dio is a quite small little organization of folks, and as such it would be a huge undertaking to create an entirely independent sample performance engine on top of all the boutique work they do just to make the quality samples and instruments that they already do.

Toontrack and Native Instruments got moving right around the same time (Toontrack in 1999, NI in 1996), so it makes sense that they would both have sample performance engines because there was nothing that existed in maturity at that point. 

8Dio was created by award winning film composers in 2011, long after Kontakt had already taken it's seat as the world-leading sample performance engine. The key point there is that these guys are media composers, and a lot of their products are geared toward people who work in media music... hence Kontakt as their choice host for their software instrument. 

Really, this little drum kit is the first thing they've done that even marks a blip on the metal-head radar, and that's only because Taylor Larson did the samples. Otherwise nobody on ss.org would even be talking about or even know who the frack 8Dio is. 

My main message, of course, was that the Zeus drum kit does sound really good (I'm not sure I like the toms but each to his own), but it's not really fair to compare SD or Slate to 8Dio.


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## coreysMonster (Dec 26, 2013)

Speculum Speculorum said:


> The kit, routing, panning, bleed control, and number of articulations available in Superior Drummer is so much more than Zeus that those aspects will keep people going to SD for a long time to come. Also, consider that in order to run Zeus you have to own Kontakt, so you might as well buy Komplete. That's no small thing, considering Komplete is $500.


Don't you only have to have the Kontakt _player_? 

I found out about Zeus Drum yesterday, and I've seriously been considering getting it. The snare and hihats sound so goddamn fantastic, and for 120&#8364; (conversion from $) it's a real steal. I own Kontakt (the full version) so it wouldn't be a problem either way, though I don't understand why this library would need all the other samples (which is what you pay for when you buy Kontakt 5), instead of just the player.


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 26, 2013)

Oh of course! Kontakt player would of obviously be the answer. Egg on my face!


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## coreysMonster (Dec 27, 2013)

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EDIT: Disregard that, this is an unlicensed library, so it CAN'T be played with the free Kontakt player.


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## noUser01 (Dec 27, 2013)

Kontakt Player only lets you use Native Instruments packs. If you use 3rd party sample packages you can still use it, but only for 15 minutes before the program shuts down. You then have to load it up again. It's more a nuisance than anything, you can still use it but it will close on you every 15 minutes.


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 27, 2013)

*Feels justified in initially uninformed opinionated statement*

Yeah and it actually says pretty clearly on their page that you need the full-retail version of at least Kontakt 4.2 in order to use the instrument. So I'd say that's the biggest factor in saying that this isn't a SD killer. I mean - seriously? Close every 15 minutes? It will take people longer than 15 minutes if they've never used kontakt to even figure out how to use multiple channel routing...

I do, however, own Kontakt 5... so this still remains as a temptation for me...


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## GunpointMetal (Dec 27, 2013)

stupid proprietary nonsense....


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## coreysMonster (Dec 27, 2013)

ConnorGilks said:


> Kontakt Player only lets you use Native Instruments packs. If you use 3rd party sample packages you can still use it, but only for 15 minutes before the program shuts down. You then have to load it up again. It's more a nuisance than anything, you can still use it but it will close on you every 15 minutes.


This sounds very strange, because Steven Slate Drums uses Kontakt Player (or at least used to) as well and that never happened to me when I got SSD years ago.

But damn, they actually do require a full version of Kontakt. What the hell, man.

EDIT: Wait, Steven Slate's stuff is licensed, this 8dio stuff isn't. _NOW _I get it. Only the Kontakt Retail Version allows unlicensed libraries. 

Which makes me ask again: What the hell, man?! Get your stuff licensed before you shove a 500$ extra piece of software on people, Jesus Christ.


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## Sacha (Dec 27, 2013)

It costs a lot to get a player license for Kontakt, that's why you don't see most smaller companies doing it. Look for the sales on Komplete (like they just had), it's one of the best bargains going considering all the sounds and killer plugins you get for the price.

Back to Zeus, I got the beta to play with from their little drum programming contest which was cool. The sounds are really good. Cymbals especially. Shells are quite raw and ready to be mixed if that's your thing, if you want to plop in mix ready probably not so much although the retail version comes with some presets. 

It was fairly limited in functionality compared to industry standards like SSD and SD2, but they did add a number of key features requested to the final version like Multi-out and a few other items.


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## Sacha (Dec 28, 2013)

Made a quick clip: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2183128/ZeusClip.mp3

Kick is replaced, snare is augmented, gave it a basic mix. So far I think the cymbals are great, the bleed is a bit out of control but luckily you can control that by ....ing with the level balances. Bleed must be a big part of Taylor's sound but it was a bit hard to work with for me. Snares are not my favourite, pretty thin.

The flow note technology is an interesting idea but not sure it works that great unless for really fast stuff. It seems to just mute the hits, they still don't really ring into each other like a real cymbal IMO.


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 28, 2013)

And see what really kills it for me is those toms... Dee-doo-dee-doo Dee-doo-dee-doo! They sound so much like "sampled drums"... I'd like to see what your mixing chain is like. Can you control the spread on the toms or are they fixed?

Why not use the kick? I think their kick actually sounds pretty nice and natural - something I can't say the same for SD kicks...

I like a lot of bleed, so is there any way you could upload a solo'd out drum so we can hear exactly what you mean by "out of control"?


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## Kurkkuviipale (Dec 28, 2013)

I actually liked the snare, kicks and crashes a lot in this. Dunno if it's worth 180 bucks tho.


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## Sacha (Dec 28, 2013)

Speculum Speculorum said:


> And see what really kills it for me is those toms... Dee-doo-dee-doo Dee-doo-dee-doo! They sound so much like "sampled drums"... I'd like to see what your mixing chain is like. Can you control the spread on the toms or are they fixed?
> 
> Why not use the kick? I think their kick actually sounds pretty nice and natural - something I can't say the same for SD kicks...
> 
> I like a lot of bleed, so is there any way you could upload a solo'd out drum so we can hear exactly what you mean by "out of control"?



Haha, and who do I bill the hours to for all these clips and info? It was just a quick clip m8, I think you need to try it for all the gory details! If you've heard my mixes 'natural' is not really what I'm going for...

Personally I'm not sold on it yet compared to my other favourites. I definitely like the cymbals a lot and find it has a cool gritty realism to it overall.


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## DVRP (Dec 28, 2013)

The flow note thing just screams I'm too lazy to program my drums by hand.


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## fwd0120 (Dec 28, 2013)

I dunno. It sounds good, but it doesn't sounds better than SD2. I don't care if it is kontakt or not. Kontakt is good. I would rather it be stand-alone though (as it's own VST) just because I prefer drums to stay out of Kontakt... I just don't like the workflow as much as I would if it were other instruments in Kontakt. I don't think this has a MIDI library, and that would turn me away from it. Reason being - each virtual drumkit has it's quirks that the built-in midi files work with. SDX and EZX midi is catered to the drum-kit, so the results are great.

TL;DR - It looks very good, but needs time to mature.


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 28, 2013)

Sacha said:


> Haha, and who do I bill the hours to for all these clips and info? It was just a quick clip m8, I think you need to try it for all the gory details!







Whoa there horsey! Didn't mean to step on those delicately painted toes you've got going on. I just meant maybe if you've still got the project on file you could do something like bounce the snare track or the rack/floor so we could get a feel for what you are talking about. No need to get all huffy-puffy about it.

I'm with what a lot of folks are saying. I like the snares. I like the kick. The cymbals sound good. But this product isn't so revolutionary that I think I would pay $250 (which is what it will be after January 7th) for it.

8dio has some other amazing stuff, but they KNOW it's great and price it accordingly... To purchase all their sample instruments would cost you around $6,500 currently at max discount... And if you plan on running a whole orchestra live you'd need a damn fine computer as well...


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## Alphanumeric (Dec 28, 2013)

1 Kick drum mic? 

1 room mic?

Doesn't seem overtly flexible with this.


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## Sacha (Dec 29, 2013)

Speculum Speculorum said:


> Whoa there horsey! Didn't mean to step on those delicately painted toes you've got going on. I just meant maybe if you've still got the project on file you could do something like bounce the snare track or the rack/floor so we could get a feel for what you are talking about. No need to get all huffy-puffy about it.
> 
> I'm with what a lot of folks are saying. I like the snares. I like the kick. The cymbals sound good. But this product isn't so revolutionary that I think I would pay $250 (which is what it will be after January 7th) for it.
> 
> 8dio has some other amazing stuff, but they KNOW it's great and price it accordingly... To purchase all their sample instruments would cost you around $6,500 currently at max discount... And if you plan on running a whole orchestra live you'd need a damn fine computer as well...



Lol, I'm the farthest thing from 'huffy-puffy' don't you worry there chief! Thought people might appreciate a quick little clip is all. Got a lot of actual work to do now, cheerio!


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## JohnIce (Dec 30, 2013)

DVRP said:


> The flow note thing just screams I'm too lazy to program my drums by hand.



...which may also be a sign that you're more concerned about making good music and less concerned about... that.  I've never played with a drummer who needed me to program his velocities, so why on earth would I want that from a program?


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## GunpointMetal (Dec 30, 2013)

JohnIce said:


> ...which may also be a sign that you're more concerned about making good music and less concerned about... that.  I've never played with a drummer who needed me to program his velocities, so why on earth would I want that from a program?



Well, if your drummer couldn't keep a consistent hit level, you'ld probably ask him to, right?


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## JohnIce (Dec 30, 2013)

GunpointMetal said:


> Well, if your drummer couldn't keep a consistent hit level, you'ld probably ask him to, right?



Sure! I don't get your point though... As far as I can tell, they've invented an algorithm for making programmed hits sound more "real". I just can't see why manually programming those hits to sound "real" as opposed to using an algorithm for it, is more commendable.


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## Genome (Dec 30, 2013)

This is why I love Studio One.

1) Draw hits in
2) Right click -> "Humanise" 
3)


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## GunpointMetal (Dec 30, 2013)

Its no more commendable, it just sounds better 99.99% of the time. I have yet to find a "Humanize" algorithm that is useful on its own...I'll use that feature in reaper on a long fill or something like that on the toms, but you still have to go back through and make the accents/ghosts louder/quieter. The humanize algorithms in SD2.0 and EZDrummer suck donkey balls.


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## JohnIce (Dec 30, 2013)

GunpointMetal said:


> Its no more commendable, it just sounds better 99.99% of the time. I have yet to find a "Humanize" algorithm that is useful on its own...I'll use that feature in reaper on a long fill or something like that on the toms, but you still have to go back through and make the accents/ghosts louder/quieter. The humanize algorithms in SD2.0 and EZDrummer suck donkey balls.



I don't doubt that (I personally use neither) but what Zeus is doing is claiming to be better at that. My point is I don't see how using this flow-note function means people are "lazy". All I see is Zeus being one step closer to the experience of playing with a real drummer, and if so then hell yeah I'm lazy cause I want to play guitar, not edit velocities


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 30, 2013)

How the hell did flow-note technology become a debate about velocities or using good humanization? Flow-note technology has absolutely nothing to do with how you go about humanizing beats or velocity. Nothing at all, in fact.

8Dio is trying to solve the problem that happens with percussion when a sampled drum or cymbal is played multiple times in a row. In reality, a cymbal or drum sound doesn't stack up on top of itself like we hear when a sample re-triggers. At the same time, when a cymbal or drum is struck multiple times in a row, the sounds previous to each successive hit aren't completely cut off upon being struck again. Rather, with each successive hit that follows a still vibrating sound, little bits of the previous hit ring through and add to the percussive excitation as the sound develops. This is much more obvious with cymbals and hi-hats than it is with drums.

So if you write mechanical drum-parts without heavily editing your rhythms/velocities, your drums are still going to sound robotic. They'll just sound a little bit more like a robot was playing an actual drum kit than a robot playing samples - at least that's what 8Dio wants us to believe and sell us on. 

As someone has already pointed out, the kit sounds good but it still doesn't sound like "real" drums. I think we're a few years off yet from getting to a point where it's so dead accurate we can throw the drummers out with the bath water. Cheers!


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## Blasphemer (Dec 30, 2013)

Genome said:


> This is why I love Studio One.
> 
> 1) Draw hits in
> 2) Right click -> "Humanise"



Logic has it, as well, but it isn't great. If it had a "smart humanize" function that would actually accent downbeats, thatd be great, but I find that velocity adjustments by had are still very necessary to get a realistic sound


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 30, 2013)

The Logic humanize function is good for displacement of beats though. I definitely don't use it for humanizing velocities though. It just causes more problems than anything else.


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## JohnIce (Dec 30, 2013)

Speculum Speculorum said:


> How the hell did flow-note technology become a debate about velocities or using good humanization? Flow-note technology has absolutely nothing to do with how you go about humanizing beats or velocity. Nothing at all, in fact.
> 
> 8Dio is trying to solve the problem that happens with percussion when a sampled drum or cymbal is played multiple times in a row. In reality, a cymbal or drum sound doesn't stack up on top of itself like we hear when a sample re-triggers. At the same time, when a cymbal or drum is struck multiple times in a row, the sounds previous to each successive hit aren't completely cut off upon being struck again. Rather, with each successive hit that follows a still vibrating sound, little bits of the previous hit ring through and add to the percussive excitation as the sound develops. This is much more obvious with cymbals and hi-hats than it is with drums.
> 
> ...



Cheers! Yeah it derailed cause I threw in the wrong word, my point actually had nothing to do with velocities per se  Sorry bout that!


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## DVRP (Dec 31, 2013)

Speculum Speculorum said:


> How the hell did flow-note technology become a debate about velocities or using good humanization? Flow-note technology has absolutely nothing to do with how you go about humanizing beats or velocity. Nothing at all, in fact.
> 
> 8Dio is trying to solve the problem that happens with percussion when a sampled drum or cymbal is played multiple times in a row. In reality, a cymbal or drum sound doesn't stack up on top of itself like we hear when a sample re-triggers. At the same time, when a cymbal or drum is struck multiple times in a row, the sounds previous to each successive hit aren't completely cut off upon being struck again. Rather, with each successive hit that follows a still vibrating sound, little bits of the previous hit ring through and add to the percussive excitation as the sound develops. This is much more obvious with cymbals and hi-hats than it is with drums.
> 
> ...



Well personally I really didn't hear a noticeable difference in the video demo.

I still contest that you can achieve similar results with all of toontracks products.


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## DVRP (Dec 31, 2013)

Just a thought, if a drummer performs with an electronic kit and records the midi. Is that going to sound robotic? Just based upon the fact the samples may or may not stack on each other as they trigger?


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## Speculum Speculorum (Dec 31, 2013)

DVRP said:


> Just a thought, if a drummer performs with an electronic kit and records the midi. Is that going to sound robotic? Just based upon the fact the samples may or may not stack on each other as they trigger?



I thought that the difference was noticeable, but I am not sure that those differences are so great that it is worth the limitations in the software instrument.

FWIW - A great drummer playing a great e-kit will solve some of the problems associated with the dreaded robot sampled kit. On the other hand, engineers will usually have to go back through a metal percussion performance and quantize things here and there to make them sound well... more machine-like.

Really, creating great programmed drums just takes time. If you are looking for some great examples of how MIDI looks when it's performed by great players, just load up some of the sample loops in SD and take a look at them. In Logic it's as simple as going to the grooves section in SD and clicking/dragging to the instrument region that SD is on.


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## tripguitar (Dec 31, 2013)

this is cool stuff. i prefer my pre-processed ez drummer samples though since im not doing full out production and just doing bedroom demos. (i understand these are different target markets, just sayin)

isnt this the same company that released the guitar sampler thing? like where you can program metal guitars that sound... well... not so bad actually?


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## Djentliman (Dec 31, 2013)

tripguitar said:


> isnt this the same company that released the guitar sampler thing? like where you can program metal guitars that sound... well... not so bad actually?



Yes it is! I am really interested in some of the other instruments that they have to offer. The Adagietto, the Taiko ensemble, the Djent thing (just for fun), and the dubstep instruments are really tickling my fancy right now!


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## FIXXXER (May 6, 2015)

here's a quick "metal" clip, ZEUS only, no samples and stuff! 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2576909/ZEUS_2.wav

much potential in this, however kontakt is such a piece of .... software.
imagine this in an EZ/Superior 2 format, hooooly ballz...


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## niffnoff (May 8, 2015)

FIXXXER said:


> here's a quick "metal" clip, ZEUS only, no samples and stuff!
> 
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2576909/ZEUS_2.wav
> 
> ...



Is it wrong that I can make a better kick sound with Superior than that paper thing that I'm hearing. My conclusion's from what I've heard from Zeus (and 8dio in particular) is that it would sound great in song writing for "epic" or film scoring. But for me I don't think we can use it in metal. Honestly the more I hear of it, the less I like it. Like others say. Snares and overheads. That's about it imo.


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