Is it just me...(toontrack rides)

[Mattayus]

.. or are the ride cymbals in a lot of Toontrack libraries not very good? The actual ride tip/shank hits are too quiet and quite plastic-sounding, not very bright and lack articulation, and the bell always seems unbalanced in comparison (i.e. almost too bright and pokes out of the mix).

Anybody else find this?

 

[DavePiatek]

Agreed

 

[Mattayus]

Whenever I record real drums it always seems to come out so much more balanced, articulate, and sits in the mix better, and I'm using really rudimentary pro-sumer equipment and have only about 1% of the experience of the guys at Toontrack, so what gives? I take it it's not the recording quality, just an inherent factor of multi-sampling rides?

 

[Wrecknine]

On most of their libraries, the rides aren't individually mic'ed. Or at least they don't have their own mixer channel. Metal Machine is a great sounding exception. Evil Drums, which was ported from BFD, might be another.

If you have Superior, instead of just EZDrummer, you might be able to go into the deep mixer options and raise the volume for the specific hit type you want and lower the ride in the overheads and room. That might bring it out some more.

This just helps your volume balance issues. As for the SOUND.. maybe you could try layering? Who knows?

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

Definitely found this too (I just have S2.0 though)

 

[Mattayus]

Yeah, I mean, on the construct panel there's a fader for every drum/cymbal to increase its individual volume, and that does help a lot, but there's still something about the articulation that's so stiff. Turning it up only helps it in a mix-sense (and it has helped, definitely) but there's still something that bothers me about these rides and I can't put my finger on it

 

[LeSedna]

Found this as well. Especially for rides (I don't write a lot with bells though but I'm not surprised it's similar). So far I have blamed myself more than the libraries, I think with deep programming it should sound somewhat good considering the effort put into the recording itself as you mentionned.

I don't know though if the difference might be coming from the non-linearities of actual life, where hitting twice is not equivalent to adding one solo hit after the other (especially on crash/china hits imo).

 

[ulverine]

I agree on the rides in Metal Foundry. Have to do a lot of individual volume changes between the Ride Bell, Shank, Tip, Edge hits and using more of the ride in the room mics and less in the OH channel.

However, I've been using the Custom & Vintage cymbals lately and the rides in that expansion sit better in the mix for me.

 

[MIAnn]

rides>barresi evil drums = win

 

[Teddyboy]

When I have problems with the rides, especially on very intense mixes, I tend to enable the Overhead Drummer track inside Metal Foundry and open just the ride. So now I have my separate "Ride Track". I might lower the Ride from the stereo Overhead track.. It might not be the best solution,but it gives me another option

 

[lolzgreg]

Sneap =Drum Tacking Baws
Tempesta = Drum Ruling Monster

Well, that seems to justify why Metal Machine sounds beastly

I agree with you by the way, Matt!

 

[decoy205]

I have a hard time with the toontrack ovrheads in general. maybe just me but I can't get them to sound 'real' at all.

I gotta get metal machine though. Definitely on my list.

 

[LeSedna]

Metal Machine is ridiculous, on its own it already sounds way better than what I would ever do with real raw drum tracks

 

[Mattayus]

I might just have to purchase it!

 

[JeffTD]

For metal there's only one Avatar ride I like. Metal Machine has one or two good ones, Baressi has one IIRC. The rest I just absolutely hate. One of the biggest issues with the Toontrack setup IMO is not having a dedicated ride spot mic; at least the MM and Baressi packs have that included.

 

[Wookieslayer]

I love metal machine! but honestly the ride isn't that great in it either lol.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

The metal machine ride to me is good. My big issue with MM in general is just the overheads, they do not have enough cross bleed from the cymbals and sound like they are panned 100% L/R. The room mics seem too far out so they don't help getting that more narrow stereo field. Obviously you could move the pan faders in more towards zero but I am more talking about the phase smearing and lack of cohesiveness among the two channels, as they seem too clinical and isolated.

The avatar library is practically useless being overly processed in a bad way and Metal Foundry's drums where not tuned correctly or mic'd correctly. Even with massive processing you can only get Messhugah type DKFH type sounds from it. I think the big issue with any flaw from any toontrack product is not the whole drum machine aspect but rather poor micing techniques and/or poor post processing.

To be honest I have heard cheap home recording studios that have better and more usable raw tones than anything toontrack has put out tone-wise, MM excluded.

 

[AeternusEternus]

Just turn it down. Right click the ride on the main thinger, drop the volume by like 3 or 4 decibels. It turns awesome then. Don't be afraid of using the crashy ride articulation with light velocities.