Rain


Update - A big thank you to Rail @ Platinum Samples who went the extra mile to quickly provide an updated installer that fixed my little issue. :)

Amazing samples, top notch service.

YAY!

That's another good reason to have these guys in here on the forum..

They see our issues and they help to resolve them....

IK Obi and Rail....
Those of us who ROCK...SALUTE YOU!!!

Yeah, Rail is awesome. He's pulled my dummy butt out of the pits of despair and ignorance many times now. *salutes*

I listened to the demo. Sounds good, but I just don't hear anything there that I don't already have with SD3 (and the added kits). It is a good deal for $50, though.

konradh


I listened to the demo. Sounds good, but I just don't hear anything there that I don't already have with SD3 (and the added kits). It is a good deal for $50, though.

Just curious konradh, what do you hear in EZdrummer or Superior that you don't have in SD3 and that you would be happy to spend 3 times the cost of Eco on?

You said you may pick up either EZdrummer or superior. You also said you can never have too many drums.

As Rail pointed out, the demo's don't really do it justice. Did you listen to the Eco demo or the rock legends demo or both?
I guess if you have the rock legends kit with SD3 you might get close to it but the level and ease of control you have with Eco over session drummer just doesn't compare.
Not meaning to be disrespectful but to my mind session drummer is a toy in comparison.

Steve

Hey, Steve. I could be wrong and maybe the demo does not do Eco justice. I thought the cymbals were really good. (I sometimes add PC2R and Fantom cymbals because I think SD3 is a tad deficient there. The old Kurzweil PC2R has really good cymbal sounds.) The Eco toms and kick were good but didn't sound very different from what I have with SD3 and my external synths. I did not care for the snares that were on display, but that is just as it relates to the style of music I do right now. And you have pointed out that the demo is not really a fair representation. If Superior has a lot of different sounds I do not have, it might be worth picking up on my "never too many drums" principle, but I don't know yet—I would need to check it out more. Another contender in my book would be the Abbey Road drum sets. I was not intending to make a big statement here. Just discussing and responding to someone's suggestion I buy Eco. I am sure it is really a good deal but the demo just didn't make me want to jump and grab it. I should have said, "One can never have too many different drum sounds." Thanks.

@konradh... I find the included Eco sounds not really to be to my taste either (although they are usable for what they seem to be designed for) but check out the demo for the Rock Legends kit over at Platinum Samples. It is quite amazing even just as is. However the RL kit seems to be ultra versatile within Eco as well. I tried out a bunch of the main presets for RL and they were all over the place and all very usable for various styles. Then I cleared out the main Preset menu, loaded the RL kit on it's own (dry which actually sounds darned good as it is even though it is meant to be tweaked from there) and then stated scrolling through the Mixer menu settings. I got metal,rock, jazz, techno, hip hop, country, whatever... all extremely usable right off the bat. Keep in mind from there you can go in and add effects, screw around with mic positions on the kick and snares, blend and adjust overhead and room mics. TONS of stuff to just tweak things a little more to your taste if need be or go absolutely nuts and turn it into something outrageous. Check out the list of effects that are included with Eco. There's phasing and bitcrushing and delays and compressors and yadda yadda. It's crazy dude... really really crazy. I know I have been gushing since I snagged it but I don't normally do that. I tend to be very objective when it comes to gear and software but it really is that good. At fifty bucks you cannot go wrong with the Eco+RL pack. Also the plethora of usable grooves really surprised me. I usually hate preprogrammed stuff but it's all usable and organized in such a way that it makes putting together even complex drum tracks easy peasy. I cannot say enough about this software. It's a beauty and I can pretty much guarantee you'll get $50 worth of usage out of it no matter what you're style is. Cheers.

Oh and I actually do like SD3 very much (after I installed the Andy John's Kit for SD3... another Platinum Samples offering). It's a great and simple tool and is one of the reasons I bought X1. One other option I recommend anyone take a look at is Addictive Drums. Before I heard about BFD that was going to be my drum software. It has many of the similar features and tweakability and the Adpacks do sound great. I'm still considering adding it to my collection in the future just because I liked it so much (check out their free demo). Also their support is pretty top notch as well. They have a forum and the dudes answer any questions very quickly. However the raw sounds are a little more processed which will work for many people but for me, especially as someone who is trying to learn about all aspects of production, having something that essentially gives me the purest samples like BFD was the right choice. Also AD costs a lot more than $50 and to do what I want I'd NEED to buy some adpacks (although they do sometimes put on specials where they throw a couple in for free). Also they have JUST moved to 64 bit but apparently their Beta 64 version was working well and was going to end up being the full release. I can no longer play drums properly due to physical limitations and I don't even have a kit, a proper sound room or high end microphones (I do have a set of drum mics but they are Samsons so... nice but not exactly pro) and even if I did go through all the work of getting everything mic'd, inputted and recorded properly it would be MASSIVELY time consuming (I have indeed done it before... what a pain!) and would not get the results that the BFD and PS samples offer. It's like having your favorite drummer(s) in the perfect studio environment playing EXACTLY what you want tossed directly on to tape for you to produce without the extra nonsense and expense. I cannot say it enough... I am one of the brokest (and cheapest) dudes you'll probably see attempting music production and to me $50 was like PENNIES compared to what it is worth to me. It's like having a $2000 + kit, thousands of dollars of mics, god knows how much for the console and an extremely high end pro engineer setting up your inputs. Not to mention all the processors, effects, tunings, grooves, etc... I would have starved myself or panhandled just to make it happen if I needed to. Fortunately I happened to have fifty bucks so I didn't need to do either of those things. I'll stop ranting now. ;-)

Thanks, Beepster. Great info. BTW, I have the Andy John kit as well. Pretty good stuff there.

twaddle

BFD Eco was created for slower machines with less ram so the 64 bit thing is no big deal. It runs perfectly for me on windows 7 32 bit and has no issues with bitbridge. 

To be clear though..... BFD Eco does have a 64bit version too. As does EZDrummer. About the only Drompler I own that is not (yet) 64bit is Jamstix (but there is a 64bit beta).