Is Superior Drummer worth it?

[tr3nt]

Hey guys, just wondering what you all think of Superior Drummer? I don't have a drummer, or the equipment to mic a kit so I was wondering if Superior Drummer would be good? I have EZdrummer but it's not always convincing, it's nice though.

I guess my question is, could Superior Drummer take the place of a real drummer in recording?

Also, when I write my midi drum parts I usually do it in Guitar Pro, is this a good way or are there others that maybe sound better? Peace and Godbless, my friends.

 

[AeternusEternus]

I like it. I just posted this in another thread, this is Superior 2.0 with the New York Volume 2 SDX.

http://www.myspoonistoobig.net/idea1memarcus.mp3

Superior 2.0 is the most appropriate for replacing a drummer, actually. Like, the sounds aren't supposed to be ultra-sexy right out of the box. They're unprocessed, just drums with microphones. The programming, the variation of hits and velocities, that's all up to you. You can drum it out with an electronic drumset or program it in by hand, and when you're done programming a song, you have to mix it the same way you have to mix a drummer in a studio. So it can be as brutally honest as you need it to, but since you can control bleed and stuff, you can make it sound WAY better right out of the box.

The beautiful thing is like.. you know how you write drums in Guitar Pro? Well, I write them the same way in TabIt. You can export JUST the drum MIDI track, and import it into your DAW, and create a drum map to route those drum MIDI signals to the appropriate drums in Superior 2.0. This way, if you've written a thirty-minute epic in Guitar Pro, you don't even have to re-program the drums. Export from GPro, import into Cubase, and begin mixing drums or recording guitars.

 

[tr3nt]

That sounds great man, is that a lot of work to do? Or is that the midi just straight out of TabIt? The software seems very confusing compared to EZdrummer, I've just started recording a couple months ago, but would like professional sounding drums for some possible solo releases to sell at school or something.

 

[Dylan S]

I think 2.0 is great. I've never used it but I've heard some amazing sounds from it.

If you're in the market for some high quality drum software though, you should check out SSD 3.0 as well. From what I've heard they are absolutely incredible.

I've also read that 2.0 is coming out with some kind of awesome metal expansion pack with presents from Fredrik Thordendal and Devin Townsend to name a few, and it looks exciting.

 

[AeternusEternus]

It's not hard to load it up, select a preset, and go to town. But if you want it to be, there's a LOT you can tweak, and it CAN be a lot of work. I make it a lot of work for myself, because I get complete control. I built the drum maps to accommodate for TabIt drums AND to accommodate for my electronic drumset, so I can import from TabIt or play on my TD3, and everything lines up. I bought both S2.0 and the SDX, and there's a new SDX that I'm going to buy too, but I use stuff from all of the different recordings. Like, I use the kick and toms from one of the SDX kits, two snares from S2.0, and cymbals from all three studios. I built one HUGE kit so I only have to load up one project and one drum map, and I can make any kind of song I want. Here's what my project looks like:

So, after the kit was built and the drum maps were created, I mixed the drums with the internal mixer and bleed selection to isolate drums in different microphones to a certain extent, and then saved the project. So now, I load one project, one drum map, and it sounds great to track, and it's fun to mix. It's a lot of work, but at NO point is the control uncompromised.

That track up there, it's all at 127 velocity with some randomization on in Superior 2.0 itself, so it COULD be from TabIt. But, if it were from TabIt, all of the hits would be perfectly snapped to the bar grid lines, and I don't like how that sounds. I punch mine in freehand to imitate timing mistakes. This recording was done freehand and all at 127 just to save time.

The software's pretty much the same as EZDrummer in that it's a brain module that reacts to MIDI. If you can do that with EZD, then S2.0 is 1-3 days of toying and tampering before you get it totally figured out.

 

[Shredfiend]

do you do your sequncing on the piano roll or is there a sequencer in Superior 2.0.

Looked like BFD had a sequncer buily in. A few people told me Addictive was the way to go but I liked the sounds on Superior, esp the new Metal Foundry coming out. Someone else mention S.Slate.

 

[tr3nt]

Seems crazy..

I'll have to see if I can spend $300 for it. How much will 3.0 be?

 

[mintcheerios]

Hey AeternusEternus, is there really a velocity randomizer in Superior 2.0 itself? I've always wanted to have different randomization parameters for each kit piece. That would be useful since I'm using Cubase's midi velocity randomizer and it's limiting because I can only randomize the whole midi sheet or nothing.

I like Superior 2.0 because you get the raw samples which is good for practicing mixing drums. You also get some nice plugins (people talk shit about the built in plugs, but Bulb apparently exclusively uses the built in plugs and his shit sounds awesome: http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7680682). People also forget to mention that you get the nice room sound of Avatar Studios where many top bands have recorded at. There are also many 4 different ambient mic configurations to choose from and an overhead set so you can get all kinds of different sounds from the same drums.

I also have Slate 3.0 LE which has some great sounds with almost no tweaking. You also get the individual wav files so you can put them in the sampler of your choice or simply replace existing drums with Aptrigga or drumagog. Slate is apparently thinking about releasing some raw samples which would be awesome. His samples often end up on some top records (usually the kick and snare).

I just use Cubase's drum editor to edit my drums. I've had no complaints with it.

I also have AD (got it after the huge price drop), but I haven't used it too much ever since I got Slate and Superior. You can probably tell I like drum software hehe.

 

[JeffTD]

Fuck yeah it's worth it.

 

[Ronnie_Rocker]

its so worth it man. the new series (Hit Factory, Allaire, Metal Foudary) sounds incredible, and its easy to use as well. have anyone else tried Drumtracker? i got it, its cool to convert the drum audio files and into midi and run them through S2.0.

 

[AeternusEternus]

Hey AeternusEternus, is there really a velocity randomizer in Superior 2.0 itself? I've always wanted to have different randomization parameters for each kit piece. That would be useful since I'm using Cubase's midi velocity randomizer and it's limiting because I can only randomize the whole midi sheet or nothing.

I'm not sure TOO much about it, but it's designed to give you non-linear play by randomizing between samples. They're all played by the human hand anyhow, so it's sorta like a randomizer. But I don't think it will randomize velocities since that's all controlled by Cubase. S2.0 just interprets them, as far as I understand.

Honestly, when I do a piece, I'm very painstakingly adjusting every single velocity one at a time, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[JeffTD]

have anyone else tried Drumtracker?

I've used it on literally every mix I've done since it came out. Whether it's creating a midi track to sidechain a gate from for triggering a sample more reliably via drumagog, it's come in handy more than I can say!

 

[tr3nt]

I want to buy it but all I really do is write my midi file in Guitar Pro then run it through superior drummer or ez drummer, doing that alone would superior drummer still be worth it to get a top notch drum sound without a human playing?

 

[JonWormwood]

its so worth it man. the new series (Hit Factory, Allaire, Metal Foudary) sounds incredible, and its easy to use as well. have anyone else tried Drumtracker? i got it, its cool to convert the drum audio files and into midi and run them through S2.0.

gahhhhh can't wait to get metal foundary

and yeah, make sure you have vels at 127, sounds so much better.

 

[Shredfiend]

so far drum programming in Logic has sucked-it was way easier in Cubase. I like everything else better in logic so far. this is really gaye.

 

[devouredremains]

so far drum programming in Logic has sucked-it was way easier in Cubase. I like everything else better in logic so far. this is really gaye.

Marvin Gaye?

 

[lolzgreg]

It's 300 dollars for the cheapest cymbal sampled in Superior 2.0! I would say that 30 cymbals and some top notch drums, as well as an excuse to get people to play on electronic sets and not have to edit their shitty takes for years only adds to the reasons to get it. I have every expansion and will continue to buy Toontrack products.

 

[Everybody]

if your worried about spending $300..like you said before you have EZDrummer, just buy the Superior 2.0 Crossgrade for like $100 and bam you have both!

Im glad you asked this question because I was wondering the same thing, and I think im about to purchase the crossgrade this week.

 

[Djabthrash]

Sorry for the thread resurrection. Just bought S2.0 and played with it for the first time this weekend and i gotta say it's amazing.

I got to tweak the kit a bit and find a killer drums sound quickly. Then i tested it with some drums part i wrote in guitar pro, some other i wrote in Fruity Loops (using some various samples with FL) and some MIDI drums parts from Goddamn's guitar song mixing threads, and it sounds AMAZING !
And those midi grooves are awesome as well.

Props to the TT guys for releasing this awesome product !