Steven Slate Drums 4.0 Teasers

[Slate]

Here's a demo made at last year's Music Messe in Frankfurt.. its an amazing Roland endorsed artist (I'll get his name asap) playing on a TD-20. I didn't get a chance to tweak all the dynamics (floor tom dynamics are a tad off).. but you can get an idea.

I'll be posting more teaser kits in this thread if you'd like.

This demo has NO processing except some minor compression on room mics and mixbuss, plus some FG-X to bring it up in level:

www.stevenslatedrums.com/four/demo1.mp3

Here is the same kit, less room, little bit of eq for some more edge:

www.stevenslatedrums.com/four/demo2.mp3

 

[Dollarosa]

sounds good, very natural.

 

[SentencedToBurn]

sounding good. especially the cymbals.

 

[Morgan C]

Disappointed. I'll reserve judgment until I hear some more clips, maybe with a more realistic room mic level (no-one would have the room mics this loud) and with hand-programmed drums rather than MIDI drums (which tend to sound ironically less natural), but so far it seems more of the same

 

[MindMunch]

Hated the ride, everything else sounds great. Is there going to be a discount/upgrade deal for old time costumers? : )

 

[AllanD]

Doesn't sound too different to me honestly, it's okay. Sounds like Slate for sure.

 

[Slate]

This kit sounds absolutely nothing like the SSD Classic kits! There is no way it can be reproduced with any SSD 3.5! Hell I'll post the midi and you can try! This kit is faaaar more of a natural tone. There are many cymbal choices from the new Soultone cymbal series. These cymbals, as you should hear, decay like butter. We sampled them with extreme precision paying attention to the subtle nuances. This natural sounding rock kit isn't very good for metal, so I'll make a new metal preset from one of the other kits and post it.

SSD4 has completely independent overheads and room, bottom snare mics, and no compression on any drums at all.. the tones are pretty rich and organic and its extremely tweakable. The new interface and SSD4 player are very slick and easy to use. Tons of new grooves as well.

And as drums are subjective, this is one of dozens of new kits and isn't gonna be everyone's flavor (although I freaking love this kit).. and one of hundreds of new presets! I'm excited to post more.

Make sure you don't listen on laptop speakers.. The depth and 3 dimension and width is very unique.. the low end on the kick needs to be heard with a nice sub.. completely different world than SSD 3.5 Classic kits.

 

[Wisheraser]

Sounds great Steven! Looking forward to hearing more.

 

[Boerboel666]

Been holding back on purchasing ssd for this release , any rough idea when it will be available , thanks ?

 

[guitarguru777]

I love it. Not a huge fan of the mix on the cymbals but I am sure you can get a bit closer sounding mic's with less room. Love the kick ALOT

 

[Slate]

Thanks guys! When I printed this kit I was hanging with a funk drummer pal of mine so I went with a bit of a chili peppers vibe with some nice heavy room compression and a decent amount of room mix. What's cool about SSD4 is I can take this same kit, and process it differently and make it really metal. Little more bottom snare for some crispness, take down the room, more top on snare and kick, and a bit more buss compression... I'll post a bunch more with this kit and some others this week.

I'd expect SSD4 in September. BTW, if you have electronic drums, these kits will play with extreme precision and are a lot of fun... so start dusting off those pads.

 

[Skaldir]

Demo sounds really great, Steven!
I was really missing natural sounds like these in 3.5. I hope SSD 3.5 Platinum users get a good discount when switching to SSD 4

 

[guitarguru777]

Steven any idea on pricing for current customers? Cross grade? Upgrade pricing?

General idea only as we all know nothing is ever set in stone

Also iLok 2 only? just wondering if I am going to need to upgrade

 

[jeid]

Toms sound very Slatey. I think the snare sounds better than the 3.5 stuff though.

Are these samples going to be made available for Trigger users as an upgrade bundle? I don't use SSD that often, but if there was an option to get these samples for Trigger, I'd jump on that.

 

[Slate]

Wait till you hear the 16" toms (not in this demo)... it goes waaay deeper and lower than any SSD 3.5 floor toms! There is also a set of new toms where I tuned the resonant heads very tightly and kept the top heads very lose. This results in a very quick and smacky sound with very little decay.. perfect for metal with a bit of top end eq. Altogether, there are 4 new tom sets.

My intention was not to make the Deluxe kits sound better than 3.5.. I think the 3.5 and previous samples have proven themselves as valuable mix tools over the past 6 years.. But the new Deluxe kits certainly sound different because of how they were recorded.. they are far more tweakable since there is no processing. Plus, having the bottom snare mic in a separate track makes the snare sounds much more versatile for each snare.

Combing classic SSD sounds with these new kits is very cool sounding and offers a ton of new hybrid sounds.

The new Deluxe Samples will be available for TRIGGER via two expansion packs.

 

[Skaldir]

If I remember right there will be a new sampler that replaces the kontakt player.
Will it be possible to load the 3.5 kits in the new sampler?

 

[Slate]

Yes there is a new sampler.. and it will have all the older 3.5 kits, paired with the new cymbals.

BTW, no idea about pricing just yet, or crossgrade pricing.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

The cymbals sound way better than 3.5, they ring out very naturally. I'm not too keen on using programmed drums, but I've used SSD 3.5 on some commercial releases, and with some creative compression on the cymbals and room tracks no-one has said a word about the drums sounding artificial. That being said, I'm sure I'll end up buying this one!

 

[Internity]

nice sounds slate , tho the rooms mic are distracting , hope you'll post something with a bit more clarity in the overheads

by the way , can you post the midi so I can compare with other drums samples ?

 

[Ermz]

I dig the sounds!