# Superior Drummer 3 Announced



## ZombieLloyd (Aug 15, 2017)

Hey guys, I just got an email that Superior Drummer 3 has been announced. Here's a link to the announcement page https://www.toontrack.com/superior-drummer-3-announcement/. What is everyone's thoughts on the announcement? I, for one, am excited because they're bringing that beat search feature from EZDrummer 2.


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## Winspear (Aug 15, 2017)

I wasn't too excited considering I've always used Superior 2 as close to being a real kit recording as possible. By that I mean I choose my samples, route them out to individual DAW channels, and then never look at Superior again. So things like the mixer, built in rhythm editor etc don't interest me. Cool nonetheless. 
Great to see 3rd party sample support however! That's a huge one. Along with the audio to midi/drum replacement. Essentially killing Drumagog with a great all-in-one option.
More samples is always great, 5 stock kits is pretty awesome!
Love the advanced surround sound recording and i'll be interested in using those as ambient mics. However I am refraining from getting into surround sound. I'll become obsessive and it'll take too much of my time, only making me angry that probably 0.5% of the listener base will ever hear it as intended haha.


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## ZombieLloyd (Aug 15, 2017)

Winspear said:


> I wasn't too excited considering I've always used Superior 2 as close to being a real kit recording as possible. By that I mean I choose my samples, route them out to individual DAW channels, and then never look at Superior again. So things like the mixer, built in rhythm editor etc don't interest me. Cool nonetheless.
> Great to see 3rd party sample support however! That's a huge one. Along with the audio to midi/drum replacement. Essentially killing Drumagog with a great all-in-one option.
> More samples is always great, 5 stock kits is pretty awesome!
> Love the advanced surround sound recording and i'll be interested in using those as ambient mics. However I am refraining from getting into surround sound. I'll become obsessive and it'll take too much of my time, only making me angry that probably 0.5% of the listener base will ever hear it as intended haha.



Before I would "write" my own drum beats, I used EZDrummer 2's rhythm editor and beat search function, a lot of the features coming to SD would have been good for me up to like, when I started making my music under "Phrygian" earlier this year. I'm much like you now, found the samples that work for me, EQ'd them to my liking on seperate DAW channels and never looked at Superior again. 

I agree that the 3rd party sample support is pretty big. The audio to midi doesn't really affect me since I don't play drums in real life in any capacity. The advanced surround sound and ambient mic thing sounds pretty cool. I don't really have the setup for surround sound so again, doesn't really matter to me too much but its cool nonetheless. I think I'll also have to get that SSD with all the samples on it though since 235GB is literally around half my iMac hard drive storage. But I'll most likely upgrade my iMac this Christmas so we'll see.


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## Señor Voorhees (Aug 15, 2017)

All the new features look pretty nice, and considering the library of sounds you get, the $200 upgrade price seems worth it. 

I'll definitely be buying it, even if only for the new sounds and future expansions. 3rd party samples is definitely a plus.


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## Drew (Sep 27, 2017)

Anyone else grabbed this yet? 

It took me a couple days to get it all downloaded and installed (busy weekend plus the workweek, I'd start a bundle downloading whever I was home, then start it installing and start the next one downloading when next I was around), but I've spent a couple hours on it the last couple nights, swapping it out for Superior 2.3 on some existing projects I've worked with. 

I dig it. There are a TON of options in terms of swapping around different snares and toms and whatnot (and it's cool that when you swap snares, the image of the snare changes in the interface) but by and large they all sound pretty natural to me, respond well, and seem less "polished" out of the box than Avatar did. That's a pro and a con; the down side is that you're going to need to do more work mixing the kits (unless you're relying on their included presets, and they had some big-name engineers like Chris Lord-Alge and Bob Rock do presets), but it also means you have a lot more flexibility in the way you can shape your drum sounds and tailor the mix. And, the overall realism seems quite good so far, though I haven't pushed the limits extensively. 

There are some nice ease-of-use tweaks as well - you can now select multiple mics at once in the Mixer interface, so, for example, if you want to route all of your toms to the same track in your DAW, you simply click and select them all, and then edit the routing on one track to change them all. Initial routing used to be a pain in the dick if I just dropped S2 into a blank DAW and left it stereo while sketching out ideas, but it's pretty efficient in 3.0. (you of course need to have the tracks available). 

That stuff however is less important to me than how the kit sounds, and my very initial impressions are that overall Superior 3.0 sounds more natural and less processed than Avatar did in 2.0. I think it's a definite step forward in terms of realism; over the next couple weeks I'll be trying to spend more time with it to figure out just how _far_ that step goes.


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## brutalwizard (Sep 27, 2017)

Ive been digging it the interface alone is worth it to me. They have really taken midi drum production to a whole new level.


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## Dayn (Sep 27, 2017)

Oh sweet. It's a pity my dentist is getting money that would otherwise have gone into this. But _soon_.


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## Kaura (Sep 28, 2017)

Sounds really tempting. Bought GGD earlier this year but haven't really used it much, especially since the multi-out stuff is such a pain and it's also very taxing on my pc since it's Kontakt-based. I hope Toontrack offers an upgrade discount since I already own SD2.


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## ZombieLloyd (Sep 28, 2017)

I'm glad to hear good things about it. I haven't been able to pick it up yet, but I hope I'll be able to soon.



Kaura said:


> Sounds really tempting. Bought GGD earlier this year but haven't really used it much, especially since the multi-out stuff is such a pain and it's also very taxing on my pc since it's Kontakt-based. I hope Toontrack offers an upgrade discount since I already own SD2.



They do offer an upgrade version that is cheaper. From comparing prices online, it's close to 50%. £287 for the full version, £147 for the upgrade from 2.0.


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## Drew (Sep 28, 2017)

Kaura said:


> Sounds really tempting. Bought GGD earlier this year but haven't really used it much, especially since the multi-out stuff is such a pain and it's also very taxing on my pc since it's Kontakt-based. I hope Toontrack offers an upgrade discount since I already own SD2.


Yeah, in the US it was $199, and it allows you to continue running both S2 and S3. 

I spent some more time playing with this last night, and not _entirely_ across the board, but damn near, I'm finding I prefer 3 to 2 in a mix.


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## Kaura (Sep 28, 2017)

Nice. Might pick it up once I get my next paycheck, but god damn. Over 200GB for the full library. Looks like I need to get a third hard drive just to install the whole thingy.


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## ZombieLloyd (Sep 28, 2017)

Kaura said:


> Nice. Might pick it up once I get my next paycheck, but god damn. Over 200GB for the full library. Looks like I need to get a third hard drive just to install the whole thingy.



Funnily enough, you can buy an SSD with the 250GB sound library separately. Though you would still need to buy SD3 for a grand total of like $6-700.


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## Drew (Sep 28, 2017)

Kaura said:


> Nice. Might pick it up once I get my next paycheck, but god damn. Over 200GB for the full library. Looks like I need to get a third hard drive just to install the whole thingy.


It took me a couple days of starting a file downloading, leaving, coming home later that day, installing the first and starting the enxt downloading, leaving, etc before I got the thing installed.  I'm on a Mac with a 2TB drive so space isn't exactly a concern, but it's NOT a fast install.


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## noise in my mind (Sep 30, 2017)

Drew said:


> It took me a couple days of starting a file downloading, leaving, coming home later that day, installing the first and starting the enxt downloading, leaving, etc before I got the thing installed.  I'm on a Mac with a 2TB drive so space isn't exactly a concern, but it's NOT a fast install.


What year is your Mac?


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## Drew (Oct 2, 2017)

I honestly don't remember. 2012-13, maybe?


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## Señor Voorhees (Oct 3, 2017)

I actually only downloaded the first few parts of it. Mostly because I'm lazy and didn't want to wait any more. (It only took a couple hours to get the stuff I did, so I'd totally be able to manage getting the rest before I have to pick up my fiance for work today in two hours.)

It's all around an improvement. The interface is nice, and I'm happy with the new features in general. I couldn't care less about the midi library stuff, but the drum replacement stuff is insanely cool and pretty accurate if you have the stems. I mostly just bought it because I want the future toontrack products and a massive stock library is already cool... For the $200 upgrade price it's a damn steal. The added effects are also pretty cool. SD 2.0 was incredibly limited and you were essentially REQUIRED to use external effects. SD 3.0 gives you a bit more versatility, and while it's still ideal to use external effects, the ones you get included are quite a bit nicer.

It's a definite recommend in my book. Anyone turned off by the size can get away with skipping half the downloads (like my lazy ass.) I think you only NEED the first one or two files (which are still pretty big, but not the 250gb or whatever it is big) so it's only excessively space hungry if you want it to be. Pretty sure the last couple files are only the weird surround mics, which are cool for extra ambiance, but certainly not needed to get a great sound out of it. Some of the presets, which I usually never use, are actually really cool. I almost hate to admit that I've been almost exclusively using the "Ludmire" preset for my tracks lately. Such a sick drum sound out of that kit.


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## FIXXXER (Oct 5, 2017)

absolutely not liking it, well the program/sampler itself is amazing, especially what you can do with MIDI.
unfortunately this does not help if the sound is not what you are looking for and in my case i just don't like
how it sounds, can' thelp it. hopefully i can sell it ASAP and buy something else...


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## Drew (Oct 6, 2017)

FIXXXER said:


> absolutely not liking it, well the program/sampler itself is amazing, especially what you can do with MIDI.
> unfortunately this does not help if the sound is not what you are looking for and in my case i just don't like
> how it sounds, can' thelp it. hopefully i can sell it ASAP and buy something else...


...so use one of the other drum kits it includes, try some of the presets, or mix it like you would a regular drum kit. The default sounds are relatively natural, unprocessed drum sounds - there's a LOT of flexibility with what you can do in a mix. 

Like Superior 2, and arguably to a greater extent than 2 was (Avatar was already pretty polished out of the box), Superior 3 isn't a "plug and play" solution to drop in some midi and get super-processed, already mixed drum sounds. If that's what you want, EzDrummer is the way to go. Superior is a way to generate convincing unmixed drum sounds for you to mix.


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## FIXXXER (Oct 7, 2017)

Drew said:


> ...so use one of the other drum kits it includes, try some of the presets, or mix it like you would a regular drum kit. The default sounds are relatively natural, unprocessed drum sounds - there's a LOT of flexibility with what you can do in a mix.
> 
> Like Superior 2, and arguably to a greater extent than 2 was (Avatar was already pretty polished out of the box), Superior 3 isn't a "plug and play" solution to drop in some midi and get super-processed, already mixed drum sounds. If that's what you want, EzDrummer is the way to go. Superior is a way to generate convincing unmixed drum sounds for you to mix.



it's not that simple i'm afraid...

yes, the drums are natural/unprocessed and yes, i absolutely hate how these sound!
i was always a fan of the Toontrack cymbals and always hated how the shells sounded 
but now they managed to fuck up the Cymbals aswell! 

there is not much to choose from when 90% of all the samples sound like shit (to me!)

this has also nothing to do with raw/unprocessed and super processed drums, that's not the reason i do
not like it, it's the overall tonal character of the raw samples. 

the presets are also not that good, even the Andy Sneap presets sound really really bad to me, 
so that much about "you can process them to sound good"

when i say i do not like the sound i am talking mostly about how the drumkits sound as a whole.
many kit pieces have unwanted noise. many sound extremely muffled, others are piercing, the overall balance is not good.
realism is also not that great, even when i set the layers to unlimited it sounds very artificial, especially on 
fast played notes (using the Toontrack MIDI files so it's not about bad programming )


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## Santuzzo (Mar 1, 2018)

I am debating on whether or not to get SD3. I have SD2 and I'm already overwhelmed with its mixing options. For that reason I mostly have been using Addictive Drums which to me offers enough flexibility but is not that complicated for me. But the upgrade price seems like a really good deal, so I'm intrigued.....


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## Drew (Mar 2, 2018)

FIXXXER said:


> yes, the drums are natural/unprocessed and yes, i absolutely hate how these sound!
> i was always a fan of the Toontrack cymbals and always hated how the shells sounded
> but now they managed to fuck up the Cymbals aswell!


Missed this earlier - honestly, the improvement in realism in the cymbals are, for me, the single biggest improvement in the whole program, so I'm surprised to hear you say this. 

S2.0's brass always sounded a little stiff and artificial to me; the tone was... fine, I guess, but the response was very artificial and the cymbals, in particular, I always struggled to get sounding like they'd been played by a real drummer and not sequenced.

S3.0 isn't _perfectly_ real... But the cymbals and hi-hats sound a whole heck of a lot more natural to me. Unmixed, in a rock mix, the drums sound objectively bad... But, that's _because_ they're unmixed.  Avatar was processed enough that you could use it right off the bat, whereas the S3.0 kits really do need to be EQ'd, compressed, etc before they start sounding like an album. You can use the presets as a shortcut if you're doing something in a hurry, but I've found you have a LOT more flexibility to color and mix the sounds the way you want with the 3.0 samples, whereas 2.0 was already pretty heavily shaped right off the bat.

So, if you want a drop-in solution, then unless you happen to really like one of the presets, 3.0 isn't for you. If you don't mind/want to mix your own drum sounds, though, and I guess importantly if you know what you're doing (like, if someone sent you raw, unprocessed drum tracks, you could make them sound like a record), then 3.0 is pretty damned impressive. I haven't really done a full hard rock/metal mix with it yet, but on some of the folk-rock stuff I HAVE done with this (the kind of stuff programmed drums usually fall down on) I got a lot of people saying they wouldn't have guessed the drums were sequenced had I not told them it was Superior. And that was programming grooves and fills by hand.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Mar 5, 2018)

Drew said:


> S2.0's brass always sounded a little stiff and artificial to me; the tone was... fine, I guess, but the response was very artificial and the cymbals, in particular, I always struggled to get sounding like they'd been played by a real drummer and not sequenced.



Program them better


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## Drew (Mar 7, 2018)

AngstRiddenDreams said:


> Program them better


Don't get me wrong, I got them to work... But, 3.0 is a clear step up in realism to me. 

In other news, they released 3.1 last night.  Time to download a patch...


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Mar 7, 2018)

I got a new laptop with a small SSD in it and after SD2.0 was installed I have about 50GB of space left so I will not be purchasing SD3.0 hahaha


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## FIXXXER (Mar 8, 2018)

Drew said:


> Missed this earlier - honestly, the improvement in realism in the cymbals are, for me, the single biggest improvement in the whole program, so I'm surprised to hear you say this.
> 
> S2.0's brass always sounded a little stiff and artificial to me; the tone was... fine, I guess, but the response was very artificial and the cymbals, in particular, I always struggled to get sounding like they'd been played by a real drummer and not sequenced.
> 
> ...



The realism has indeed improved but soundwise you can not compare the SD2 and SD3 Cymbals.
SD2 sounded very stiff in general i agree but the sound of the core library was way better, especially the cymbals.

It also does have nothing to do with ones mixing abhilities, i've heard people say the same thing about SD2 and yet i have not heard one
single example where SD2 sounded convincing compared to real drums or without external samples being mixed in.

The samples are RAW yes but not "great mic placement RAW" it's more something like "we just threw a bunch of mics tiogether RAW"
If you check out piece by piece the sound is terrible and extrmeley inconsistent, with a few very rare exceptions.

That's why Toontrack libraries are always cliuttered with extra mics, their approach of sampling is simply wrong and lazy
insteat having a "geting it right in the beginning" mentality they rather go with "yeah, so what we can fix it in the mix later"
and yet they are the leading company when it comes to virtual drums, that's simply because people are having pretty low standards nowadays.

Toontrack stuff is good no doubt but being good and being great is two different things, generally speaking Toontracks has made some very bad choices regarding the
sound library. 

The software is undeniably excellent btw!

The BOB ROCK expansion sounds way better, however completely excluding China cymbals in a sound library that has the name ROCK in it, is beyond
stupid, especially consierting tha fact that the core libryry china cymbals sound like ass.


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## Drew (Mar 9, 2018)

FIXXXER said:


> It also does have nothing to do with ones mixing abhilities, i've heard people say the same thing about SD2 and yet i have not heard one
> single example where SD2 sounded convincing compared to real drums or without external samples being mixed in.


Yes, but the problem with S2.0 was that out of the box the Avatar kit already sounded pretty fully mixed. I'm saying the biggest differences I'm hearing in S3.0 is that the drum samples are a _lot_ less processed sounding right out of the box (and, accordingly, _need_to be mixed to sound like a mixed drum kit), but also that the overall realism and response of the brass in 3.0 seems to be the single biggest area of improvement. 

How realistic 2.0 cymbals sounded, no matter _how_ well mixed, doesn't really tell you anything about how 3.0 sounds. And, my _personal_ opinion, as soneone who owns and uses the program, is that 3.0 represents a significant improvement in cymbal realism, and as such helps fix one of the biggest weaknesses in 2.0.


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## jvms (Mar 9, 2018)

I tried the SD3 library and I actually thought it sounded really, really bad, like everything was lacking punch and balls. The cymbals sound paper thin and the shells sound like they are being hit by a girl. Went back to using TMF with Metal Machinery Toms. People bash the fuck out of TFM, but excluding the Toms, that library had tons of balls. Also as raw as the SD3 library, so processing is not the reason they sound better.


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## FIXXXER (Mar 9, 2018)

Drew said:


> Yes, but the problem with S2.0 was that out of the box the Avatar kit already sounded pretty fully mixed. I'm saying the biggest differences I'm hearing in S3.0 is that the drum samples are a _lot_ less processed sounding right out of the box (and, accordingly, _need_to be mixed to sound like a mixed drum kit), but also that the overall realism and response of the brass in 3.0 seems to be the single biggest area of improvement.
> 
> How realistic 2.0 cymbals sounded, no matter _how_ well mixed, doesn't really tell you anything about how 3.0 sounds. And, my _personal_ opinion, as soneone who owns and uses the program, is that 3.0 represents a significant improvement in cymbal realism, and as such helps fix one of the biggest weaknesses in 2.0.



Toontrack always stated that SD2 was RAW, so i guess it was not really mixed but recorded in a much better way with much more efffort.
There are surely some EQ adjustments but i would not call it "mixed" at all. 

You also have to differentiate realism and sound, the brass in SD3 sounds
better in terms of realism but the tonal quality is shitty as hell. 

There are also a lot of mistakes, which have been partially fixed but some are still present.

There is also an extreme inconsistency, some cymbals sound extremely dull others have a massive noise floor, i think in general that George Massenburg was a bad choice, he surely made himself a name but that's exactly what Toontrack is selling. 

I'd rather have a lesser known guy record the drums but then properly but yeah this would not be a good advertisement right?



jvms said:


> I tried the SD3 library and I actually thought it sounded really, really bad, like everything was lacking punch and balls. The cymbals sound paper thin and the shells sound like they are being hit by a girl. Went back to using TMF with Metal Machinery Toms. People bash the fuck out of TFM, but excluding the Toms, that library had tons of balls. Also as raw as the SD3 library, so processing is not the reason they sound better.



I absolutely agree that's exactly my problem with SD3 and Toontrack Products in general.


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## Santuzzo (Mar 10, 2018)

FIXXXER said:


> Toontrack always stated that SD2 was RAW, so i guess it was not really mixed but recorded in a much better way with much more efffort.
> There are surely some EQ adjustments but i would not call it "mixed" at all.
> 
> You also have to differentiate realism and sound, the brass in SD3 sounds
> ...



What drum software would you recommend or do you like?
I'm not very knowledgeable about the mixing process and to me pretty much all of the drum libraries/programs I have sound good (SD2, Slate Drums, Addicitve Drums).


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## bhakan (Mar 10, 2018)

Drew said:


> Missed this earlier - honestly, the improvement in realism in the cymbals are, for me, the single biggest improvement in the whole program, so I'm surprised to hear you say this.
> 
> S2.0's brass always sounded a little stiff and artificial to me; the tone was... fine, I guess, but the response was very artificial and the cymbals, in particular, I always struggled to get sounding like they'd been played by a real drummer and not sequenced.
> 
> ...


Are the folk rock tracks you've done with it publicly available somewhere? I'm real curious to hear how it sounds in that context. I've always felt like SD2 sounds great for heavier stuff but the cymbals started to give it away when I use it for softer stuff (which is a lot of what I do nowadays).


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## oneblackened (Mar 10, 2018)

So I have to agree - for metal I was underwhelmed by the stock library. Which is why I use Metal Machinery for metal, and SD3 for everything else.


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## FIXXXER (Mar 10, 2018)

Santuzzo said:


> What drum software would you recommend or do you like?



it's not easy to recommend anything, it alwas depends on what you are looking for. 
For me it's good sounding natural drums that sound as close as possible to the real thing. 
In this case i'd day BFD3 but the problem with BFD 3 is the plugin itself, the graphzical interface is confusing and not very
intuitive. SD3 has the best software/interface but i hate the sounds. Addictive Drums 2 sounds great if you are looking for that particular sound.
Steven Slate Drums 4 is outdated and does sound very unnatural, Perfect Drums sounds killer out of the box, especially for metal, rock and pop
but the drums are heavily processed so if you are looking for natural drums it might not be the top choice. Get Good Drums sounds kind of good
but KONTAKT is a pain to work with, same for any other KONTAKT drum library.

IMHO The perfect Drum Sampler would be the software/interface from SD3 and the sounds from BFD3.

The best sounding samples i have heard so far are http://www.mixosaurus.com
You can still buy the samples to use them in KONTAKT but the product is officially discontinued, listen to the sound files,
it's absolutely amazing, because it is ONE kit that blends in with itself, everything fits perfectly, this is how you get great drum sounds.


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## Drew (Mar 12, 2018)

FIXXXER said:


> Toontrack always stated that SD2 was RAW, so i guess it was not really mixed but recorded in a much better way with much more efffort.
> There are surely some EQ adjustments but i would not call it "mixed" at all.


They may have said that, but I disagree with them. You could pull up the default Avatar kit and drop it into a rock mix, and it'd sound fine. That is definitely NOT the case with a raw drum track.


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## Drew (Mar 12, 2018)

bhakan said:


> Are the folk rock tracks you've done with it publicly available somewhere? I'm real curious to hear how it sounds in that context. I've always felt like SD2 sounds great for heavier stuff but the cymbals started to give it away when I use it for softer stuff (which is a lot of what I do nowadays).


No - it's a project I've been working on with my dad and uncle, for their brothers and sisters. I'll try to get some clips up from some of the more-finished mixes in the next couple days, though. I don't want to broadly share anything without getting their go-ahead, but a couple clips from some of the instrumental sections shouldn't be a problem.


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## FIXXXER (Mar 16, 2018)

Drew said:


> They may have said that, but I disagree with them. You could pull up the default Avatar kit and drop it into a rock mix, and it'd sound fine. That is definitely NOT the case with a raw drum track.



can't disagree with that, just saying what i have read from Toontrack. Generally SD3 seems like it's "too RAW"
some kit pieces simply sound like crap, you can only get a decent sound out of SD3 by blending multiple kicks, snares etc. together
or adding external samples but that's not how it should work IMHO.


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## Drew (Mar 16, 2018)

FIXXXER said:


> can't disagree with that, just saying what i have read from Toontrack. Generally SD3 seems like it's "too RAW"
> some kit pieces simply sound like crap, you can only get a decent sound out of SD3 by blending multiple kicks, snares etc. together
> or adding external samples but that's not how it should work IMHO.


That's because it actually IS raw, though, unlike Avatar, which wasn't even close - I mean, listen to the kick, for one, there's no way there isn't a substantial mid scoop on that. 

Look at this logically for a second. One of two things is happening here - either George Massenburg and the entire staff at Galexy Studios are hacks who don't know how to record drums... Or, you just don't like totally raw drum sounds that need the same sort of substantial EQ and compression needed to make them sound like a "pro" rock or metal mix that you would expect from a real kit.


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