Steven Slate Drums version 4 - questions and suggestions

[Skaldir]

.the Kontakt player is quite easy....very easy actually..... it's not rocket science

I say +1 to that, but the service center thing is quite annoying.
iLok protection would be nice in my case

 

[Fragle]

just wanted to chime in regarding the kontakt player.

- first off, registration at NI was a HUGE pita. my studio pc isn't connected to the internet, therefore i went with the offline activation. i could not get through with it, though, thanks to a problem over at NI. i called their support (several times actually), but all they said was that they know about the issue, but it'll take several days to get it sorted out and there's nothing they can do until then thanks to staff limitation....kinda sucks if you have a band scheduled for the next day, and your drum sampler isn't working! i actually went as far as connecting my studio PC to the internet to do the online activation (sth i wanted to avoid like the plague), but even then the process always stopped at some point.
my point is, the activation is a real pita as far as the process goes, and NI support sucks too.
- my daw (reaper) gets really slow whenever the kontakt player is running. stuff like inserting tracks etc which usually happens instantly takes like 2-3 seconds until the track actually shows up. loading times are also HUGE in comparison to e.g. addictive drums.
- i've also experienced some bugs, e.g. if you're fiddling with the panning etc in the player it won't show you the current pan position when stopped, only when playing back the session the player reacts and shows what you're doing.

overall, i feel the kontakt player is the worst part of the SSD package. otherwise it's great!

apart from that, i think it would be cool if you had more options to customize the kit. i'm doing most of my songwriting/programming in guitar pro & then import the drum midi, and well, GP has 6 toms i think, so being limited to 4 toms narrows down your options somewhat.

 

[Slate]

I will agree. If your DAW is not hooked up to the internet, SERVICE CENTER can be a bitch. But luckily most people's DAWs are hooked up so we rarely hear about what FRAGL is referring to. We are in discussions with NI about making offline registering easier, and we'll include a new tutorial for offline registering.

Having said that, most other drum instruments also require lots of online time and not having the DAW hooked up will probably be equally as annoying.

As for load times, on my quadcore with 4GB of RAM my load times are fine... there is a lot of samples that have to load so I can deal with 10 seconds. Reaper slowing down, I'll have to check in to that. What other CPU intensive libraries have you tried in Reaper? Joshua is a reaper guy, you having the same sluggishness? Because my first suspicions are interface and system specs. SSD is more CPU intensive then Addictive Drums.

For 6 toms, you can do this with 3.5, just remap two toms and tune them. Deluxe will have 5 tom sets.

Overall, I still find the 3.5 Kontakt Player really easy to use and its been 100% problem free for me on both my Mac/PT HD machine and Cubase/Sonar PC machine. No sluggish play, no errors, no crashes, nothing. Just sweet ass drums like grandma used to play.

BTW I'm listening to Unearth's latest album mixed by Andy.. if you haven't heard this, get it.

 

[Morgan C]

The only problem I have with Kontakt is that it'll often crash if you alt-tab, or do anything else while its loading a sample. More than 50% of the time, especially with high-sample instruments (ie. hihats) or when you've got a lot of instruments loaded already, then its practically a deathwish. My computer isn't great though.

 

[Ermz]

Fragle, that's why I didn't bother with the Kontakt player. My DAW is offline of course, and I couldn't afford the down time. Fortunately the current pack is provided in gog and wav format so I was able to just continue using it as I had in the past. So I'm grateful to Steven for continuing with that courtesy in the future version, because when I buy a Yellow Matter product I'd rather deal with Yellow Matter, and not IK.

While we're on the topic Steven, feel free to check out the latest Untruth record, mixed by me: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/285689/Music/Untruth - Drones.mp3

I recall Kick15Z3 made it on there, but I think everything else is Superior. Highlights to me how great it would be to be able to mix the two within Toontrack's host.

 

[Fragle]

thank's steven for the reply!

well, system specs, let me think.....4GB ram, intel core 2 duo e8400 dual core (3ghz), winXP, RME fireface so i doubt the interface driver is messing with me the machine is pretty fast for me, i have zero complains otherwise. it's not that the kontakt player eats a lot of cpu power or ram (performance meter in reaper doesn't do any weird jumps if i load the kontakt player, just like 5-10% max or something), but rather the whole session gets slowed down. shifting tracks around, inserting new tracks, everything is slowed down. also, if you delete a track (any, no SSD related ones) SSD will reload the whole library, but doesn't actually show the status. you can only see the loading window. i tend to stop that process and manually reload the mutli i'm using in that session.
i mean, it's not unworkable, and the ssd stuff, especially the vsti are getting a LOT of usage. it's a great piece of gear, but without the abovementioned issues it would be even better

loading times when starting a session....mh, i'd have to check, but i'd say around 25-30sec on the first start. later ones are like 20sec.
ah, another point that i just remembered, reaper supports having different project tabs....basically, one instance of reaper, 2 or 3 or whatever different projects that you can access on the fly. if there's only one project that has SSD vsti running, it's fine. as soon as i try to start another instance of the vsti in a different project, it's not loading correctly. this doesn't really bother me as i'm not using that feature a lot, just mentioning it

as for other libraries, well i have addictive drums too, and performance wise i don't experience any of these issues. the sound however.....

thanks for taking the time!

 

[3holeface]

My one complaint with SSD and Kontakt is when changing individual drums the Pan, Room, and Volume of the new instrument defaults back to original value. Just adds more steps that seems pointless, anyone know of a way to change this?

 

[SickBoy]

In order to use Slate samples for replacement, you'll have to use our new TRIGGER plugin.

I suppose KTDrumTrigger could be routed to activate desired samples through Slate Drums sampler, so your statement isn't entirely true

 

[Slate]

My one complaint with SSD and Kontakt is when changing individual drums the Pan, Room, and Volume of the new instrument defaults back to original value. Just adds more steps that seems pointless, anyone know of a way to change this?

When you load a new drum, its up to you to figure out how you want it. If its default with NRG room, what if you want it to have SSD room? If it defaults panned right, what if you need it left? It makes a lot more sense to have them come up default.

All you have to do to change this, is save each nki (instrument) as you want it, which will overwrite the default patch.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

Will trigger be able to open .gog files? That is a question most of us would like to know beforehand.

 

[[UEAK]Clowd]

Looks like I'm a little late to the party but I just had to say that I use the wavs all the time too. Pretty much in every project.

I hate the kontakt player and I never use it - it's clunky and counter-intuitive, and I don't want to deal with Native Instruments' service center nonsense. I do use the gogs but drumagog is pretty sub-par so I'm really looking forward to Trigger, I hope it does what it says it does.

 

[cobhc]

I haven't read all the posts for this, so forgive me everyone if this has already been answered, but will Trigger be able to use other .wav's as well as your samples Slate? Just thinking that if Trigger is a similar idea to Drumagog works as well as you're touting then it'd be great to be able to use other samples with it also, and you'd sell more copies of Trigger by itself rather than just along with your samples.

Edit: Basically I guess I'm asking will Trigger be available without SSD samples, and able to load other 3rd party samples?

 

[AdamWathan]

Yes you can load 3rd party samples but no it is not available without the SSD samples.

 

[cobhc]

Ahh, I see. Just thought that might have been a good idea to sell it stand-alone because it could very well compete with the likes of Drumagog and ApTrigga.

 

[avrinder]

With the intro price being pretty low ($149 he had stated), it still will be quite the competition.

 

[Zombietakeover]

Looks like I'm a little late to the party but I just had to say that I use the wavs all the time too. Pretty much in every project.

I hate the kontakt player and I never use it - it's clunky and counter-intuitive, and I don't want to deal with Native Instruments' service center nonsense. I do use the gogs but drumagog is pretty sub-par so I'm really looking forward to Trigger, I hope it does what it says it does.

Maybe your system is clunky.....3.5 works like a charm

 

[Slate]

Hi Clowd, if you're gonna say these things about Kontakt, I'd appreciate that you go in to detail. I just taught my 14 year old nephew how to use it on his macbook and he has already used the glen sobel grooves and his POD to record a song in Logic. Really its just a very easy, intuitive sampler and I've never had a problem with 3.5, ever. Since version 3.5, we also get VERY few support emails concerning Kontakt.. its mostly about other issue. If you do have problems, send us a message or post on the SSD forum where guys like Josh can help you.

 

[3holeface]

When you load a new drum, its up to you to figure out how you want it. If its default with NRG room, what if you want it to have SSD room? If it defaults panned right, what if you need it left? It makes a lot more sense to have them come up default.

All you have to do to change this, is save each nki (instrument) as you want it, which will overwrite the default patch.

I get all that its just when I have an entire kit panned and sounding the way I want including the room and levels Id like to be able to say "hey id like snare 10 instead of 12" and boom there it is with all of the previous settings.... only a minor complaint. Love, love, love everything else and your excellent customer support! SSD rules hands down.

 

[Josh Burgess]

I will agree. If your DAW is not hooked up to the internet, SERVICE CENTER can be a bitch. But luckily most people's DAWs are hooked up so we rarely hear about what FRAGL is referring to. We are in discussions with NI about making offline registering easier, and we'll include a new tutorial for offline registering.

Having said that, most other drum instruments also require lots of online time and not having the DAW hooked up will probably be equally as annoying.

As for load times, on my quadcore with 4GB of RAM my load times are fine... there is a lot of samples that have to load so I can deal with 10 seconds. Reaper slowing down, I'll have to check in to that. What other CPU intensive libraries have you tried in Reaper? Joshua is a reaper guy, you having the same sluggishness? Because my first suspicions are interface and system specs. SSD is more CPU intensive then Addictive Drums.

For 6 toms, you can do this with 3.5, just remap two toms and tune them. Deluxe will have 5 tom sets.

Overall, I still find the 3.5 Kontakt Player really easy to use and its been 100% problem free for me on both my Mac/PT HD machine and Cubase/Sonar PC machine. No sluggish play, no errors, no crashes, nothing. Just sweet ass drums like grandma used to play.

BTW I'm listening to Unearth's latest album mixed by Andy.. if you haven't heard this, get it.

Nah, it's not Reaper. Like you said, I use Reaper and I don't have the slow down problems. My pc also has 4 gigs of RAM and a quad core CPU though. I made sure to get a powerful system when I got into this so that I wouldn't have any problems like that, and I don't.... haven't really ever any problems like that with ANY plug-ins... haha

I'm glad there will be more toms in the new stuff. I think anything over 4 is just bonus, but I'm glad to have atleast 4.

 

[joeymusicguy]

hey slate, did you decide to include the wav files?

thanks!