Working with drum samples in Home Studio

I'll tell you a little about the one I know.
Cakewalk's Session Drummer 2 has a GUI with 10 slots (drum icons) to load samples into. Easy.
I think most drum synths are similar in their operation.
 

Hey thanks fellas.
 
Beagle, thanks a bunch.  I did exactly what you said and downloaded Session Drummer II.  Not too bad as far as keeping the samples simple to assign and so forth, but it appears to be missing out on depth and realism - the price for simplicity I guess.  Still I'll get some use out of it. 
 
I'm wary about the sound quality I'll get once I scour the internet for sound samples and map them over.  Without the various velocity samples I can't help but imagine it's not going to sound too realistic - but I will certainly give it a try because it's very nice to use. 
 
 
I ended up creating a different kit by loading about 5 soundfonts and creating a Custom Drum Map, sending the bass notes to one soundfont, the snare to another, the toms to another, and etc.  Hopefully that won't be too taxing on my system.
 
Anyways, thanks a bunch.  I think an acoustic kit is really the answer here, but that will have to come later. 
 
 
 

Well let me ask some follow up then...I'm not familiar with working with any plugins in Cakewalk (by the way I'm using Cakewalk Home Studio 2XL, if that matters), so I'm not clear on how exactly Superior Drummer or something else integrates with it.

Does Toontrack's Superior Drummer work with pre-existing MIDI tracks?  If I'm able to use a MIDI out cable to my soundcard to trigger softsynths and soundfonts currently, then can I expect to do that with Superior Drummer?

I'm not a click and paste drum loop kind of guy - I like to play all of my parts using my electronic kit and then tweeking the imperfections and etc after the fact.  So, I've always resisted programs that seem to be geared for dragging and dropping loops and writing with the mouse. 

Does it still sound like Superior Drummer would work for me? 

My only other hesitation is that 250 bucks is a lot of money to "hope" they have my snare sound.  I've downloaded soundfont after soundfont and have been mostly disappointed and never blown away.  Is there somewhere to sample some of these sounds?  The snare in my head resembles Danny Carrey's on the Lateralus CD for Tool.   Seems to be hard to find that tone and attack, or whatever it is I'm hearing....

57Gregy


Do VSTi soft synths work with that software? Most new synths and effects are VST.

Yes they sure do.  The soundfonts I'm using at the moment are loaded via a VST called SFZ, I think.  I forgot where I got this stuff, as I downloaded and configured all of this years ago and never looked back...until now.