Just curious....when using a drum VST such as Addictive Drums or Superior / Easy Drummer...do you use the separate outs of the kit pieces to Sonar or do you do the drum mix within the VST mixer?
 
Using the individual outs can give you more control over the kit pieces...but the kit mixers within the VST are pretty powerful too.
 
I normally use individual outs...but was curious if most others do also.

I asked the same question a few days ago.
 
It really depends if if you need the flexability.
 
Sounds from a VST drum machine are more likley to have been processed so the way I did it recently was to only seperate out the bits of the kit that needed any additional processing and just used to premixed output of AD to a stereo audio track...
 
Dont know if it's technically correct but it worked for me !

I use mostly Superior Drummer 2. I have used both ways but I found over time that I can get what I need just using the FX and features in the VST. Most all of my projects end up with just a stereo mix out of SD 2. If I know the project is going to be mixed by someone else on another DAW then I break it out into separate DRY tracks. I recently bought Mixbus 2 and I am looking forward to breaking out separate tracks to import in to Mixbus so I can see what all the hoopla is about. I am skeptical about Mixbus 2 sounding better than X3. It should be fun finding out. 
BTW, I break my midi drum tracks out to separate tracks for each drum. For me, it is easier to deal with fine tuning the velocity for each piece of the kit. I create a folder with the name of the kit and put all the midi tracks for the kit in there. There is a CAL file that allows you to separate notes to tracks. It's a little more work in the beginning but come mix time it is very easy to zero in on that one cymbal crash or rimshot that's a little too hot or not hot enough.
I also do the same process for any percussion tracks. Separate midi tracks in a percussion folder.

AGBFunkyBassman
I asked the same question a few days ago.
 
It really depends if if you need the flexability.

 
No argument there
 

Sounds from a VST drum machine are more likley to have been processed

 
Some more than others.
There is almost 0 processing in any of the fxpansion range from BFD Eco to BFD3 they are as raw and unprocessed as you can get which is great if you want to spend time on learning how to mix drums but perhaps not so great if you just want something that sounds vaguely decent and usable.
 
Steve
 

Teds_Studio
Just curious....when using a drum VST such as Addictive Drums or Superior / Easy Drummer...do you use the separate outs of the kit pieces to Sonar or do you do the drum mix within the VST mixer?
 
Using the individual outs can give you more control over the kit pieces...but the kit mixers within the VST are pretty powerful too.
 
I normally use individual outs...but was curious if most others do also.

I use BFD3 which comes with 36 very good high quality effects.

Despite that my starting template is still routed out to individual channels just on the off chance I may want to use some effect that isn't covered in BFD3.

That hasn't happened yet though

I think if I were using EZdrummer, AD or Session Drummer and even Superior Drummer I would definitely want to use third party effects, EZdrummer 1 has no effects built in anyway and I found the effects in AD to be quite poor.

Not sure what the quality of effects in EZdrummer 2 is but the pictures of the gui looked liked they'd got some free ones off the net somewhere. Hopefully they sound better than they appear.

I just wish cakewalk would give us the option to create folders in the mixer as routing to separate tracks can take up an awful lot of the mixer especially if you have routed all to mono and you have 32 tracks of drums, a collapsible drum folder would be so useful.

Steve

Sidroe
 
BTW, I break my midi drum tracks out to separate tracks for each drum. For me, it is easier to deal with fine tuning the velocity for each piece of the kit. I create a folder with the name of the kit and put all the midi tracks for the kit in there. There is a CAL file that allows you to separate notes to tracks. It's a little more work in the beginning but come mix time it is very easy to zero in on that one cymbal crash or rimshot that's a little too hot or not hot enough.
I also do the same process for any percussion tracks. Separate midi tracks in a percussion folder.

 
 
I used to do that back when I was using sound fonts many moons ago but as I write my own drums in the piano roll I find the grid view really helps me visualise where the notes need to go in relation to each other. I lost that when I started splitting up my tracks so went back to having all kit pieces on the one track so I get a clear view of where everything is in relation to each other.
Editing velocities for each kit piece is no more difficult since you can just set it to, 'show velocity on selected notes' which I think was introduced in Sonar 3 or something which made it really easy.
 
Still, each to their own
 
 
Steve

@Twaddle you can show & edit multiple tracks on one PRV view, I use that all the time not just for drums.
 
@Steve I create additional busses to act as folders in the console view, e.g. send all the drum tracks to a 'drums' buss, mix them into that to get the right balance between individual drum tracks, then hide the individual tracks and complete the overall mix with just the drum buss visible.

I probably take a middle of the road approach... that is, I use separate tracks in SONAR for my drum kits but I compress (not audio) this down a bit.  I only use one stereo pair for the RACK toms.  As you all probably already know, close mics on drum kit pieces only serve as a way to place them in the soundstage and most of my mix of drums comes from the OH mic's.  So I do a premix of the OHs in the VST but process the OHs separately in SONAR.  I do the same for ROOM mics.  My template is pretty much:
 
Stereo OHs
Stereo Room
MONO Kick
MONO Snare
Stereo RACK Toms
MONO Floor Tom
MONO Hats
 
Pretty much the OHs are the main drum mix.  But I send these tracks to a master DRUM BUSS (except the KICK, which goes direct to the MASTER buss (in case I want to add a little air to drum buss, don't want the KICK to be included)
 
Jim
 

lbk3918
@Twaddle you can show & edit multiple tracks on one PRV view, I use that all the time not just for drums.

 
Good point, I had forgotten about that but I know I did use it for a while but didn't adopt it as I like to have as few tracks as possible and didn't feel there was any great benefit.
 

@Steve I create additional busses to act as folders in the console view, e.g. send all the drum tracks to a 'drums' buss, mix them into that to get the right balance between individual drum tracks, then hide the individual tracks and complete the overall mix with just the drum buss visible.

I do that too and although I'd never thought about using the 'hide tracks' feature I'd still prefer to have an expandable group/folder in the console. BFD3 has this and a few other features I'd love to see adopted in sonar.
 
If you could hide tracks as a group that would speed things up but when you have 32 tracks you want to hide and you have to click each one individually to hide and un-hide them that's not the best solution for me as haveing an expandable folder/group in the console view takes a fraction of second to reveal.
 
Steve

Steve, I get around this by using different Screensets - I have one that is just for drums with all 32 audio tracks + the 1 Midi track visible Which I'll use when editing/mixing drums.
I then switch back to a different screenset which has all the drum tracks hidden apart from the busses.