Hello.

I thought I'd share a feature request I just submitted to Cakewalk.

I'd be interested in having some feedback on this one.

Some background as some of you may say that you could use this or that plug-in/VST but as a synth hardware aficionado, I don't like having lots of plug-ins/VSTs etc, or having to keep paying out for lots of them, especially when Sonar includes so many great plug-ins as I prefer to master those and only when I find that something can't be done, I'll go on the hunt for one that will!

Therefore for drum sample reply, I really like Session Drummer 3 as it's easy to use and very quick to achieve what I want.

However, it's occurred to me that it could do with a couple of features adding to it to make it really good so I submitted the following:

A Decay Control - obviously for adjusting the tail of a sample so that I don't have to keep loading up different samples or kits because of the varying tail/decay that I like on certain sounds between projects.

Multiple Sample Pad Function Menu Driven - so that I can assign multiple samples per pad and don't have to waste time messing around with editing SFZ files.  This could be achieved is by assigning 4 groups of sounds per pad and allowing the group to be changed by either a button or menu clicking.

This is exactly how the Roland digital series of TR drum machines worked.  You'd have 16-pads with 4-banks/groups A to D which you could choose which 16 sounds you wanted assigned to the pads, totalling 64 sounds.  Obviously, all 64 were available as a complete kit so that they could be assigned a note number but it's the ease of set-up that made the difference.

Perhaps I'm using the wrong VST but anyone else think these would be useful enhancements?

Cheers!

Session Drummer 3 is a good entry level drums plug-in and (intentionally ?) lacks many features.


SD3 is targeted to playback already processed drums sound (via sound library upgrade) with minimal sound tweaking, so you can concentrate on creating drums patterns - so the features you requested, and many more, is just not there.

However, there are many options available to tweak the sound by using multi-outs and effects.. have a look at the drum production, master class.

http://www.cakewalk.com/CakeTV/SONARU.aspx

You can also use more than one instance of SD3 for more sound.

I agree is session drummer is really good but its about 2 steps away from competing with ez drummer and some other great virtual drum vst-I's.

I love the idea about decay control. I have also feature requested this as well.
one would think it would'nt be to tough to through a mix control in there but the way sfv's work, its not that easy.

like I said, session drummer is close to being a big money maker and a highlight to buy sonar.
use it all the time.
because I can throw real drum samples inside of it, it doubles as a sampler.

Thanks guys.

Yeah, I've studied that tutorial and the other one on drums, which is why I decided to use it rather than buy a plug-in but also, rather than use the PX-64 on each drum sound which would use a lot of processing, I thought a decay control would make it real easy to use and therefore superb and wouldn't add any CPU overhead.

Again, I realise that you can open multiple instances of SD3 but my suggestion would again minimise the CPU overhead.

We'll see what happens if anything . . .  the developers are probably overloaded


As it seems that most DAWs now pretty much offer the same functionality, it's gonna be down to the value-added stuff and how good that is which will sway users toward a product in future.

im guessing it would be the same as droping reverb on a bus and routing a send from each session drummer channel, same thing.
but it would be convenient the way you mentioned before 

Just a suggestion, with each drum on a separate track, you can use the Pro Channel PC4K Expander / Gate threshold knob to make one or more tracks to sound tighter, shortening the decay.

I think the Pro Channel Gate will not use up a lot of CPU overhead.