Getting the most out of Steven Slate drums

So...my buddy has a PT rig and uses the exact SSD set-up as I do (Kontakt 5, identical presets, etc.) but his kit sounds ENORMOUS compared to mine. Crystal clear, in your face, and BIG. He inserts Smack! in the channel buss (which sounds incredible), followed by an eq with 1.6db gain at 203Hz. That's it. All of his mixing is done within Kontakt...he doesn't even run separate outs to each drum. Anyway...I just wanted to know if any of you have any tricks/techniques/suggestions when it comes to getting a great SSD sound within SONAR (parallel compression, etc.). I'm envious of his simple, incredible sounding drums. Thanks in advance.

I agree Bob-I love the SSD4-great stuff. I also have the Kontakt 5 3.5 stuff-never use it anymore.

I've tinkered here and there with PX-64, but will try to fiddle with it some more with SSD. Yeah...Smack! is pretty awesome. Wish there was a (legit) VST equivalent.

I was just listening to the SSD4 stuff this morning and have to say they are very good.
He claims in his video that his presets cover hundreds of genres but I listened to all 87 of the solo drums demo think he might be exaggerating quite wildly.
I didn't even think there were that many genres. It seemed to me that they were very much rock based of the ones I head.

Anyway despite that they are still very good and expressive and lively feeling.

What I wanted to know how well featured is the mixer. I would really not want to mix drums in kontakt as I'm not impressed with it in that respect
I youtubed some tutorials but none showed them mixing within SSD4 it's self but either in contact or their host sequencer which might lead me to think the SSD4 mixer isn't up to much
but it looks better than kontakts which isn't hard.

I think I would definitely recommend SSD4 for anyone wanting very good out of the box presets for anything rock orientated. They sound much better to me acoustically than Addictive Drums.

Steve

Still looks better than kontakt  


Steve

Middleman


Controversial response here but I am finding that plugins under the RTAS umbrella sound significantly better than their VST counterparts. I don't know why but I have run tests in VST and RTAS for the same plugin and there is a clarity and depth on RTAS side of things that I am not getting from VST. Also for the engineering crowd, files don't sum when you compare VST to RTAS although its very challenging getting the same settings accurately which could contribute some of the differences. The drum tracks I get in Superior 2 in RTAS are very realistic under VST same track, duller and not as 3D sounding. I just wonder if developers have to make compromises when porting to the VST framework.

Interesting and weird as well as possibly controversial.
RTAS is just for mac is it not?


Steve 

Middleman


RTAS can work in Windows depends on the program.

Sonar not being one of them what programs do support RTAS?


Steve

Middleman


It is the program which should not be named on this forum.

hat's all of them surely ? 

Steve

Just give me the first letter at least

Question for you SSD users...I'm looking at the current audiomidi no-brainer, SSD Essential (same engine, but only one kit) for twenty bucks. The demos don't blow me away, except for the kick sound, which is enormous. I'm thinking about spending the $20 just for that.

Oddly, there are few technical details on the SS website; hence my question(s). Can anybody comment on things such as velocity layers and round-robin? Listen to the "dry 'n fat" demo (here) - the hats and snare sound very machine-gunnish. 

Thanks for that insight, Rain. I have friends who use SSD and they get excellent results with it, but they're doing a different style of music that favors simple drum parts. I find that Superior Drummer really shines when you start getting fast and fancy with lots of dynamics and subtlety. My only complaint is that I've never been enthused about the kick sounds I get from SD. That's why the SSD Essentials no-brainer caught my eye. The kick in the demos sounds very good.

I just installed it. Had a quick play and routed it out to sonar and created a template.
The mixer does nothing for me so I would probably do most of in sonar but I do like the sounds I got and will do some more with it tomorrow

Bit, are you sure you weren't listening to the demo's for the SSD4 platinum? 

I shall report back after more investigation. Don't see it replacing BFD2 for speed and diversity but that's not what it's for and for $20 it seemed churlish not to 

Steve

Re: the machine gun demos
Mr. Slate said on KVR that those sequences were played by a real live human. By a drummer whose nickname is "The Machine".

Here's what I've tried. 

1st thing I did was to load a mixdown I've just received in both Studio One and PT and use a single Waves plug-in in each application, so that I could simply use the same factory preset for both the VST and RTAS version.

RESULT:  files didn't completely cancel each other, and I could hear and see the frequencies dancing on the meter starting at around 2 k. But we're talking about lower volume stuff - peaking around -50 db.

2nd I loaded a stereo instance of Superior Drummer in both PT and S1, picked up a midi loop and bounced.

RESULT: difference was much more obvious this time - frequencies registered everywhere on the multimeter and as loud as -30, even if the actual audio files were much quieter than the mixdown I tried in my first test.

I assumed that this was maybe due to the fact that the same midi sequence would not necessarily always trigger the exact same samples every time it played back through SD. 

But I did the test quickly in Logic using the Audio Unit version and rendered two copies of the same loop - the two AU bounces completely cancelled out. 

I then compared the Audio Unit bounces from Logic to the Audio Unit bounce I had done in Studio One. The difference was just as obvious as w/ VST or RTAS.

Finally, I went back to Studio One and bounced both a VST and a Audio Unit instance of Superior - the cancelled each other perfectly.

So I would be tempted to think that the difference may have more to do w/ the host than the plug-in format. Obviously, this little improvised test doesn't take into account that one app may have a 64 bit engine or such. And it doesn't really tell us if RTAS sounds better or worst or if it's only the PT engine.

Unfortunately, I don't have FXPansion's VST to RTAS adapter so I can't try to bounce a VST in PT. But I'm tempted to believe they'd be pretty similar.

I agree, what sounds best is subjective and many people would need to hear and make that call. There is a difference in the sound however between VST and RTAS, at least between X1 and PT. That difference to my ears is more punch in the low end and more clarity in the high end. caminitic, your ears confirm what I have been hearing as well.

I thought, although its been a few months back that the I did the test, that X1 and PT summed with very low level differences. So that's where I came to the conclusion that the VST vs RTAS had more of an impact.

Middleman


I agree, what sounds best is subjective and many people would need to hear and make that call. There is a difference in the sound however between VST and RTAS, at least between X1 and PT. That difference to my ears is more punch in the low end and more clarity in the high end. caminitic, your ears confirm what I have been hearing as well.

I thought, although its been a few months back that the I did the test, that X1 and PT summed with very low level differences. So that's where I came to the conclusion that the VST vs RTAS had more of an impact.

Yeah, looking back, it's puzzling to say the least. 


The mixdown I processed was a 6 minute music piece (part of a soundtrack, so to speak) w/ a very wide dynamic range and a wide variety of sounds - piano, vocals, percussions, electronic drums and acoustic percussions, sound effects etc. 


I would have expected to hear more difference using that piece than using a simple loop using the same instrument, w/ all faders at unity gain and no panning whatsoever, the only difference between both being the plug-in format. 


If anyone has any idea as to what would cause this, I'm all ears. I thought internal processing Bit Depth may have something to do w/ it, but I wasn't expecting such a difference.


I have an option to work w/ dual-mono files in Logic, so I may try to do a few more comparisons between AU and RTAS later today, and see how/if they differ.



EDIT: I'm thinking of something. Superior Drummer has an option to bounce internally. Technically, if the plug-in format made any difference, an internal bounce using the RTAS version should differ from an internal bounce using VST or AU, agreed? I may give it a try too.