Beating a dead horse: Steven Slate vs Superior 2.0

I know what you're talking about with the room sounds. Yeah, I haven't heard about it unfortunately. I'm going to SUNY Farmingdale University in New York for professional communications. My parents said I can't live in their house unless I go to college for SOMETHING, so I figured I'd shoot for a pretty broad-spectrum major (I'm turning 21 on the 9th), so this will be my Junior Year second semester (I took off one to do music recording and relax).

Anyhows, I have always stuck with S2.0 (I own all the expansions) despite the fact of me owning Slate Drums for the following reason:

They seem to process better, people have mentioned it. I have issues with Slate's snares getting "diesel" enough to REALLY dominate a guitar/bass heavy metal mix without sounding over-compressed or splatty. They should be cracky and full-bodied and I've acheived this more easily with the S2.0 snares. I figure that having a snare track with a bit of eq, a compressor and then sending it to a snare buss with two instances of GClip @3.0db of clipping and a brickwall limiter at 2.0 in gain should be enough (these were Slates recommendations, give or take). It worked better for the Superior stuff IMHO.

Also, the Kontakt player is shitty, PERIOD. Everyone has mentioned it to Slate at some point. It was a big disappointment to me to be like AWESOME, I CAN PROGRAM MIDI DRUMS WITH SLATE NOW... oh wait... the player doesn't route properly or has issues, blah blah....

I will admit I like Slate's kicks better, no doubt about it. I use them as often as I can. I just don't get why I'm having such an issue with the Snares. I don't think I'm AE retarded nor have too little experience or know how to do this kind of thing correctly.

Steven, all the "big-boys" rave about your drum samples and from the results of their mixes, I know why. Why not clue us in on the secret to making them as huge as the pros make them? We all know its not out of the box and wham. Without some strong clipping and limiting, your drums wouldn't pound through a Devildriver or Metalcore mix, so what are we missing?
 
Slate said:
Opeth the Hands of Despair stuff is wicked! Really great mixing, guitars, drum programming.. and the drums sound killer. I'd love to use some of that stuff on my site... There are a few guys on here who have trouble with the SSD3 cymbals which I don't understand... they certainly sound fantastic on your mixes.

The S2.0 vs SSD will be very fair, because whoever does the S2.0 mixes should tweak and process the sounds in the mix... Thats the idea with Superior, it lets the mixer tweak it.. So lets do it.

Back to Hands of Despair myspace... great fucking tunes man!
Click to expand...

Thanks man! I just tried answering your pm but looks like your box is full :p. I have no problems if you want to problem if you use my songs for your site as long as you credit me :p. And I wanted to specify too that it's not me who mixed the songs, all the songs were mixed by Hoeglund from this forum. I know Athena will sing is still uploaded there : http://duskaudioproductions.com/upload/other/Hands of Despair - Epic (Hoeglund Mix).mp3 . Just ask if you want other songs where SSD was used.
 
I personally think its so easy to use Kontakt Player. Lets be honest here, there's not much to it. Choose a kit. Customize it. Route it. Program it. Done.

I actually think the SSD snares are too cracky and punchy and need more compression to sit better... Its all really a matter of taste. At this point, I'll say to check out Opeth's band for solid evidence that the SSD stuff can do extremely well. Of course I can say check out Trivium, Slipknot, Devil Driver, and Ramstein....

I have never spent more then a few minutes on any SSD kit to make it cut the way I want, again a quick example that I always use:

www.stevenslatedrums.com/demo2/ssdmetal.mp3

I think some people are scared of Kontakt Player, but its really super easy, and with the new 3.5 kits (which I've tweaked even more for metal) you can't go wrong.
 
I think some of the stuff people have being saying about stevens drums has been really harsh recently (although people are entitled to their opinions).

The thing I'd bear in mind with the big name guys using these samples is that they are using them for sound replacing/augmenting and not programming. I also very rarely program drums, and I love the slate samples for replacing purposes, and that for me is their selling point.

If I am programming, I want the drums to seem as if they had been recorded - this is why toontrack is still leagues ahead of the kontakt player. the superior 2 sampler has all the faders in the mixer as if you had the kit mic'ed up yourself - as well as this, you can bounce the files off into individual wav files and load them into your project and mix them as you would with real tracks.

even if the result is the same as routing the sampler to new tracks, i want to feel like im playing with the real thing, it definitely helps if im thinking its real tracks im playing with. I dont think the kontakt player is particularly bad, but toontrack really nailed the concept on theirs, and I think there is a lot to learn from their sampler (they have been in the game for quite a few years now, and used various samplers). that said the kontakt player does seem a bit unpredicatble and buggy compared to other samplers i have used.

steven - dont take this as a criticism as i love your samples and have used them on a ton of releases, merely take it as feedback from a customer as I know you like to get feedback on all of your work.

i think ideally i would have liked to have seen your samples for drum replacement kept seperate from your midi creation side of things - i think the 2 kind of blended together and confused the issue slightly. I'd personally love to see you colaborate with toontrack with some samples: have them supply some of your favourite drums, and hire a room that you both love, sample the drums as toontrack do by having the whole kit set up in the room (with cymbals mic'ed with the kit, not spot mic'ed) with the drums tuned by you and recording the kit samples with bleed etc , and then have you do your processing and released as a toontrack expansion.

i know you already have put so much effort into the kontakt player, and also have affiliations with bfd which makes this seem unlikely but you have already said that making your own sampler is out of the question and myself (and a ton of other people here) really think toontrack are running the show with their sampler.

im not sure if you have access to it, but you should definitely have a play around with it and see what its capable of. the stock sounds are certainly different to what you do, but thats entirely the point of the expansions - they are all recorded by different people in different studios with different drums.
 
sorry guys, i went to sleep! (it was 3am like.. haha)

alright, let me retrack guitars, and make the project files not look like a mess.

the kick is replaced on that track, but i'll do something with S2's kick before i get it ready to go.

thanks,

EDIT: a bit more info about the kit in that track, all S2, except for the kick. i can't remember what snare it is, but it's *not* the nir-z snare (i never use it). Some free mac reverb plugin is used on reverb (KS-reverb or something?).
 
righty-o slate, firing you off a private message now!

i'm kind of excited to hear this! haha.

thanks,
 
There have been so many excellent demos posted here using Slate midi programmed 100%. Everyone go now to Opeth's myspace for a fine example and great music too... All but one of his songs is all SSD 3, and sounds amazing. SSD cymbals are extremely praised by most pros, they are recorded with an overhead (Vintage AKG C12) when you engage the OVERHEAD button... For metal they need a bit of eq because metal cymbals have less lows then most genres... But if you know your way around an eq, then you should be quite ok. For 3.5 the metal presets have eq'd cymbals from default. There was one or two guys here a while back who had issues with cymbals due to user issues, one of them who I PM'd with didn't have the OVERHEAD button engaged and also didn't realize that he didn't have the room mic on, hence the cymbal didn't "fit" in.. So user error plays a part.

But as I've proven time and time again, programming 100% with SSD is easy and sounds great. In the last week I've posted quite a few demos as well, check em out. For 3.5, we'll be posting metal tutorial's with Ken Susi from UNEARTH on guitar.

So now lets get to the Kontakt Player... The difference between S2.0 and Kontakt Player is that one is a drum sampler AND a sequencer, and the other is just a drum sampler. To me when I program drums, I'll play the parts on a pad or keyboard, and then tweak it in the workstation. In this use, I can't find any reason why the K Player is not sufficient to make killer drums, easily. You can make hybrid kits by adding two or even three snares, easily adjust rooms, overheads, levels, envelopes. Most people don't even scratch the surface of its capabilities.

So in conclusion.. to those who claim that SSD is better for JUST replacement, check out stuff by Mark Moore, Zombie Takeover, Opeth, and other talented guys here who simply make amazing tracks time and time again by using SSD's midi program, just as thousands of others do.

But I'll say, Superior is a GREAT tool and I really dig it. Its very different then SSD because of the SOUNDs and the way it has a full multitracked kit, and SSD has "built" in mics to each kit piece... the Superior built in sequencer and effects are great, but they were never a big deal for me since I use Pro Tools/Nuendo and my own plugins when tweaking... but thats just me. So lets get these comparisons up. I don't think of this as a contest either, its just showing off two great tools so people get a better idea of what each is capable of.

Dcdanman, make sure when you print the Superior stuff that its 100% superior, even the kick. For ambience, can you JUST use the ambience mics? I'll do the same with SSD..
 
DSS3 said:
That, and I would kill many, many homeless people and mimes to see a Slate expansion for S2.0.
Click to expand...

:heh:

Slate, if you did this, I'm sure it would be the 9th wonder of the world. I'm sure your product would sell even more like hotcakes and a collaboration between Yellow Matter and Toontrack would possibly be the most amazing, convenient and inexpensive replacement for our world full of terrible wooden-stick yielding neanderthals we call drummers :rolleyes:

Have you ever considered it?
 
Slate said:
So now lets get to the Kontakt Player... The difference between S2.0 and Kontakt Player is that one is a drum sampler AND a sequencer, and the other is just a drum sampler. To me when I program drums, I'll play the parts on a pad or keyboard, and then tweak it in the workstation.
Click to expand...

Ah, Steven, you're mixing up EZdrummer with Superior 2.0, which don't have a sequencer. That's another program called EZPlayer.

I'm, really looking forward to hearing this comparison too.
 
I sold S2.0 to get SSD3.0, and the only thing I regret is selling S2.0. Having all the options would be nice, especially with Metal Foundry out now. That said, I'm very happy with SSD 3.0, adding in some DFH 1.0 cymbals (since I still have that) and I've been working on some stuff that sounds substantially better than "Arrival."

Sadly, even though I was the 32nd customer of ToonTrack EVER, they won't offer me a discount on S2.0, since I sold my copy, so I have to buy it full price again if I want it. My general feeling is that Slate's kits sound much better, but that ToonTrack's cymbals sound better - so the combination of both would really be the ultimate.
 
can't comment on the subject itself as i only own SSD3.0, but this one got me curious:

"You can make hybrid kits by adding two or even three snares"

i always wondered how to do this?? i mean, there are loads of options like added cymbals etc in the "16-32 page" (can't remember what it's exactly called), but how do i actually play them back using midi notes?
to me, it sounds as if there should be a way to blend snares or kicks in the kontakt player itself, which would naturally be free of any mistriggers etc like you'd get when just using aptrigga/drumagog on the individial kick/snare outs.

i'd REALLY love to blend kicks/snares etc on the fly in the kontakt player, and also would like to have two rides in the kit.
the thing is however, when adding a second ride to the additional cymbals on the second page, i can't find a corresponding midi note in the piano roll that i could use to actually program it with.
 
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