i did a tune recently, one i programmed back when i first bought EZDrummer...
i know a lot of folks here use it..
 
anyway, i wrote and recorded a tune, using the mixer and playing the drum tracks straight from the toontracks mixer....
my typical M.O. is to leave it in midi until the final mix, then freeze the track to audio, and do the bounce from there.
 
 
since then, i've used the superior kits almost exclusively, tho i still like the old ezdrummer default kit.
 
 

i've always mixed THRU the SD mixer, which of course, is loaded with every option any DAW would have per channel..
it's kinda like a mini daw inside my DAW (sonar)

so, i took a new approach....


i changed my kit, from the original EZDrummer kit i started with,
to the new york avatar kit.
i believe this particular kit i built uses a Black Beauty snare piece....



i took the raw drum samples at 24 bit, PRE SD mixer...
bouncing off line from samples to audio wav files...

and output them all to individual audio tracks, as if i had recorded the samples myself straight to audio.


this includes all close mics, and a plethora of stereo room mics, near, mid, distant, room mics, and overheads...

it's 24 tracks of drums and mics!
LOL

(if you don't know about this program, it's really worth a look just to see how they captured the performances that became the samples)


anyway, to my ears, simply 'faders up' and no EQ except kick and snare, it sounds better and more natural than routing thru the small internal mixer.

man, did that open it up.



i have a lot to learn about the ways of outputting the drums and mics, but as it is, right now, the way i chose the bounce routings, there is bleed on every channel, of varying degrees, like natural bleed would occur without using gates and whatnot..


and i could almost mix the kit just using the room mics.

as it is, i have a good balance between the close mics, and the room mics, and the kit sounds wonderful to me.



i put a limiter across my drum bus, just to catch the hardest collective peaks...
i put all the toms into a 'toms bus', and put a limiter across that, much the same fashion...

but nothing on the kick, nothing on the snares, nothing on the overheads, and i really like the sound of it.


it is GLUE, as you mixers say.


no reverbs or delays, just natural room decay with the room mics.

bats, I'm just curious why you feel the need to export the audio like that? Did you know you could route Superior right into Sonar's tracks (without physical audio, yet it would show up like audio was there and you could engage waveform preview and see waves) and treat it exactly the way you are with the wave files?
 
If by chance you'd like me to explain it in depth with pics or a quick vid, I have no problem putting it together for you as it would take me like 5 minutes. If I'm reading you correctly, you're basically setting up your kit, then exporting each piece and then importing the wave files back in to where it looks like you recorded each track, correct?
 
If I'm right, the only reason you'd do that would be if your pc is super slow. You can do all of that in real time in Sonar's mixer. You don't have to use Superior's mixer or their effects if you don't want to. We can virtually hook up each kit piece to a track in Sonar in real time and you could process it any way you like. The only thing that would be missing would be the wave file data...as it wouldn't be needed unless you have a specific need for that.
 
When running Superior "virtually" it is the exact same thing you're doing minus wave files. So we'd take the mixer outs of each drum in the Superior mixer (This is the only time you will have to mess with the Superior little mixer.) and set them for an individual out. You know how they all come in at like channel 1 in the Superior mixer? We'd bring Superior in using synth rack and then change the mixer outs in Superior to read a different channel other than all reading "channel 1". So for example....
 
kick on 1
snare top on 2
snare bottom on 2 (or 3 if you want)
hats on 4 etc...
 
Once you're all done, when Sonar brought Superior in through synth rack, it also created virtual tracks all down the side. So you have all these blank tracks that were created. You'd take the inputs of those tracks and point them to the correct Superior outs you created in the Superior mixing board. For example...
 
We did kick on one. So you'd go to the blank kick drum track that was created and set the input for 1. When you press the kick drum in Superior, you'll see signal coming out of the virtual track that Sonar created. When you get done setting up all the rest of the in's, when your midi plays into Superior, all the drum sounds will come out of each Sonar track that was created just like what you're doing with all those wave files only no wave files will be present because you don't really need them, understand?
 
We can do everything you've done in seconds instead of exporting and importing like you're doing now. The only drawback to what I'm talking about would be if you had a slow cpu. I run all my drum modules the way I told you above. The thing that sucks is setting up the ins and outs for the first time. But all you have to do is do that once and save it as a template and you will never have to do it again. So the first time you do it (if I do a vid for it and show you, you'll get it in seconds) it may take 20 minutes. Once you do it and save it, you're looking at the time it takes to load what you saved and you're good to go.
 
Let me know if you're interested and I'll make something for you. Honest when I tell ya man, if I'm understanding you correctly, we can do everything you're doing in real time without exporting your current kit and then importing your wave files. You can process in the Sonar tracks just like you recorded the drums....just the wave files will not be there because they are not needed. Let me know, ok?
 
If I've totally misunderstood you, please disregard this and forgive me.
 
-Danny

danny
 

bats, I'm just curious why you feel the need to export the audio like that? Did you know you could route Superior right into Sonar's tracks (without physical audio, yet it would show up like audio was there and you could engage waveform preview and see waves) and treat it exactly the way you are with the wave files?
 

i have too little ram.
i'm running into issues with having the active midi triggering the audio samples, and found that bouncing the samples directly to audio seemed to sound so much better.
 
 

danny-
 
some more reply:
 
if i update my machine, i'll move back to doing it exactly as you suggest.
 
but i do believe, that the 24 bit samples, sound better as wav files, than running thru the SD's mixer.
 
and routing them (the individual drum tracks) to their individual channels, and routing them inside sonar's layout instead of the SD's mixer, is much more intuitive to me anyway.
 
 
 

Ah I understand. Ok, so you did know about the way I was talking about. Yeah, if you're having issues, the way you're doing it is the only way to go. Your stuff sounds amazing, so it doesn't matter how you end up getting there. LOL! I was just hoping to save you some time. :)
 
It's funny man, I'm on the fence with the whole 24 bit wave files thing with these drum modules. I think I got pretty decent ears, but honest when I tell ya, I sure can't tell a difference that makes a REAL difference. I work for FxPansion and one of the things we all seem to do is set BFD 2 or 3 to 16 bit to take the wave load off of it. When we do leave it at 24 bit, I can't hear a difference. The same when I've worked with Superior. But hey, I believe you if you say you hear it....I just wish I could. I can usually hear two gnats screwing in the next room over here...lol...but these drum programs don't seem to lash out at me like "wow, now that's a HUGE difference!" Hahaha!
 
Just curious, when you say "problems triggering the samples" are you getting random samples dropping out? If so, it could just be your midi buffer needs to be set to a larger number. I had a problem with samples dropping on me...but they were always random.
 
Like one time a kick would be gone...so I would rewind to that spot and play it again, and bang, the kick was there...then 20 seconds later, a hat would be gone....rewind and play in that spot, the hat is there. Man, it drove me nuts! I posted a message on here years ago and this guy (I always refer to him as my Sonar angel lol) who always seems to come around and bail my sorry butt out, comes out of nowhere and says "adjust your midi playback buffers to 800. If that fails, try 1000, 1500, 2000."
 
That totally fixed me and most of my machines are set to 800 or 1000. I got one set for 2000...and no more dropped notes. So if that's the sort of thing you may be experiencing, try the midi playback buffer. I think it defaults to like 250 or 500. Try 800 or 1000 and see if it still does it.
 
If you know for sure it's a RAM problem, the above probably won't make a difference. But honest when I tell ya, even on my slower boxes and my test machines, I don't have any problems. One of my main dinosaur boxes is a pent 900 mHz cpu with 1 gig of RAM. I can't run loads of stuff on it but it always seems to work with things in moderation. I could probably shoot that thing and it wouldn't die. It has Sonar 5 and 6 on it currently.
 
-Danny

what I hear... between 16 bit and 24 bit...
 
it's hard to describe....
 
but it's more "3-D"
 
i hear more......depth.
 
maybe it doesn't translate to everybody.
and lord knows, my ears are partially shot, and i have tinitus pretty bad...
 
but i still can hear an obvious difference in the quality of the sound.
 
it's almost like i can hear the  room dimensions in the 24 bit files, and lose some of that depth going to 16 bit.
 
 
or i'm nuts.

i will actually get fatal errors, and the program will shut down.
 
LOL
 
i need an update, i'm still on my original build, winxp SP3, with only 4 gb of ram, only 3.2 of that is seen, and using about 1.7gb of samples!
LOL again...
 
but my system is stable and sounds good, until i pile on superior tracks/superior mixer, AND a bunch of waves limiter plugins on individual tracks!!
 

3-D does make sense actually. I'm going to try and listen for that now that you told me what to listen for. Maybe that's where I was missing the boat. I definitely don't think you're nuts. There has to be a reason the drum program manufacturers gave us 16 and 24 bit samples and they must make some sort of difference in sound.
 
I guess I was thinking I'd hear the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit like I do when I record at those bit rates. I notice that 24 bit is a bit bigger in sound size to my ears and of course is a bit clearer. Like if you were to record a mono guitar at 16/44 and pan the guitar all the way to the left and listen to it, then do the same thing at 24/48....the 24/48 seems to have more sound size to me on my stuff...if that makes any sense? I don't know if that's due to 24 bit or 48k sample rate to be honest....but something literally makes the size of the sound a little bigger. I guess I was hoping to hear that kind of difference in the drum modules, but they sound the same to me at 16 as they do 24.
 
I'm starting to wonder if all of it isn't hype anymore, bats. LOL! If we got decent ears, decent gear and get good sounds and deliver good material, nothing else matters really. I remember talking to a guy (I think it was bitflipper) years ago about dithering and he told me that he doesn't worry about it and doesn't notice a difference. He would even down sample without using any dither.
 
I happened to try it in a Sonar project that was recorded at 24/48. I set the export options to 16/44 without using dither...and honest, I couldn't hear anything that sounded wrong to me. When people ask me why I dither, I try to be honest and say "I do it because I've been taught to." When I am BRUTALLY honest with them and get asked that question, I simply say "I really don't know and hear no audible difference in spite of what the math may tell me." I'm not ashamed of being clueless or not being able to hear math. :)
 
-Danny

Bat,
 
That is how I do it too, as of about 3 months ago when I ran across this Toontrack Video below.   Previously I was using the Multi-Channel output method to individual channels in Sonar for treatment.....and only bouncing at mixdown.
 
However, I like bypassing the Superior Mixer altogether and going with completely dry and direct mike outputs - without bleed.   When using the Superior Drummer mixer, you are given various levels of bleed through the different channels.  You can alter the bleed levels or turn bleed off in the mixer but I  like the flexibility of adding in the type of bleed I want later.     After bouncing I typically use the OH Bleed, Ambient Room and Comp Room, blending to taste.       I use the "Split Direct from Bleeding Option" and turn the "All Bleed Option" off.   This option will still give you some nice bleed outputs in separate Wave files, Stereo and Mono......
 
This Toontrack video does a nice job outlining the different bounce options.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sAGwBQg2BA
 
 
 
Regards

danny
yea, dither is another mind tweak.
LOL
 
 
markno999
yep, i saw that vid very early on, and didn't pay enough attention to it!
LOL
 
i've got two projects i'm experimenting on now...
the TABRIZ song (in song forum) and another, similar setup...
so, i'm doing the bounce with bleed on on one of them, and the bleed off on the other..
i'll play with both mixes, and eventually decide which one makes more sense for me, and use that as my template for future projects.
 
 
this is the vid i watched to learn how to do it most recently...
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWTsHB7RaZk