Ok well there are about a thousand routes to go down. The one I recommend, and I'm sure others will agree, is to get DDrum Pro series triggers, and Drumagog. Drumagog is a sound replacement plugin that is catered for drum sound replacement. Andy Sneap has a few samples you can import as soon as you get and I must say they kick mucho arse, the kick is super thick and cuts through like nobody's business all while having that thud that gets you in the gut everytime it triggers.
For more technical explanation, you need a preamp of some kind (any microphone preamp will work) to run your DDrum Pro trigger(s) into. You record the blips from those triggers to each of their own tracks, then you run Drumagog with the respective samples on the respective tracks, i.e. the snare trigger track has Drumagog with a snare sample, kick trigger track has Drumagog with the kick sample, and so on. You can then treat the track as if you had recorded an actual kick, placing compression, limiting, equalization, band compression, reverb, whatever you want to the audio that will now be playing on that track.
As far as less machine-like quality goes, it all depends on how many "layers" of the sample there are. For instance, the Andy Sneap Kick Sample™ has l think about 8 layers, or in other words is
multisampled, so when you apply it to a triggered kick track or even a kick track that was recorded with a mic, it has 8 different sounds that will play randomly each time the sample is triggered. So say you have 8 kick drum hits on the track, and 8 samples that Drumagog has to choose from with Andy's sample, then it might go 3, 4, 1, 7, 2, 6, 8, 5 (numbers assigned to each sample for Andy Sneap's Kick Sample™
, and be completely random so that you don't have the same hit each time it gets triggered. This is much more important for snares and, depending on the music, the toms. Toms are a bit more tricky to use replacement on, in my opinion, because they typically have a lot more dynamic range that's actually being
used than anything else on the kit except cymbals. For instance when a drummer does a fill, not every hit is the exact same velocity, it's nearly impossible for anyone to be able to deliver the same power behind each hit during a fill involving say 3 hits per tom at a high bpm and 5 toms to roll down...which is very common for metal. So, unless you want like 4 different sounds per tom, then go for sound replacement, otherwise, I'd try to get the best possible sound I could out of the toms to begin with just to be safe.
I have a whole set of GOG files (Drumagog's format for presets and such) that I made for Drumkit From Hell Superior toms, kicks, and snares with at least 18 different samples per kit peice. So for tom1 in the DW kit GOG, I have at least 10 different samples for that one tom, typically I have 2-4 samples per velocity that I used, and about 4-5 different velocities in the GOG for each tom specifically. For the kicks I have 2 samples for all 5 velocities I made into GOG files. Snares are more robust, with 3 samples per velocity at around 15 velocities. So the library I already have from DFHS alone to use with Drumagog for replacing/triggering drums is very large and more than adequate. It's a very useful tool to have. BTW, it took me about a week to do all those GOG files, but well worth the effort in the end, now I realistically could just trigger the snare, kick, and all the toms, and only mic up the overheads, ride and hats and just hit record and trigger all the other peices and save a ton of time. Let me emphasize the
could in that line, as I still mic everything, but always run triggers as well as a backup option.
Fun stuff.
~e.a
