Best drum software?

  • There are so many out today - what do you think is the best drum software for Rock / Blues / Metal?


    And why ;)

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  • I'm really enjoying EZ Drummer 2.


    The way you can put together a decent drum backing in minimal time and make it sound 'interesting' is amazing. Even if you do the same pattern for verse two and three, you can easily make the virtual drummer play a little harder or add a little complexity or hit the crash on the way in. It's all very intuitive.


    I am told that Superior Drummer is better in terms of working with the samples. I guess it depends what you want - I am not that guy!

  • me too EZ Drummer 2 - simply phenomenal... for my purposes it is more than enough - simple and easy to use, quick and really very interesting results... excellent sound...


    I was considering to extend also to Superior drummer but later realized that for me it is too "complicated"...I do not need those options... so I am still with EZ Drummer 2 and believe that I will not change..


    I love simple things... :)

  • Good question, I'm looking for new drum software at the minute aswell. I have SSD4 which is good for metal and heavier stuff. Looking for something a bit more natural for the more organic stuff. Good deals on Toontrack and BFD 3 right now. Anybody have any opinions on which is the most natural, unprocessed sounding of the 2? Also, What about Native Instruments? Anyone tried abbey road or studio drummer?

  • Yeah, EZ Drummer 2's "Tap2Find" feature is now essential for me when putting drum tracks together. That feature also works with your own midi drum files too which you can easily add to the official library.


    I have both EZ and Superior Drummer, EZ Drummer is better for song writing to put tracks together, but, if you put those midi parts into the daw, then, you can always use Superior Drummer aferwards to further fine-tune the sound.

  • Create Drums:
    1) play real drums
    2) play vdrums
    3) use drum loops (wav files created or sampled)
    4) use MIDI and a Drum Virtual Instrument that interprets MIDI, typically a plugin but can be standalone


    You are wanting to do 4) so you need MIDI libraries. All of the software companies that make Drum VI's have MIDI libraries but I find them rather scarce on variety of beats. So you can either purchase their extension packs or get third party (much cheaper)


    I could be wrong, but I think only EZ Drummer has the ability to search third party MIDI libraries, or even it's own MIDI libraries, and pattern match to an imported pattern or one made on the spot. Plus it can create MIDI parts from one pattern so that you can create a song. For both those reasons, many of us own EZ Drummer along with other Drum VI's that we use the better sounding libraries to "finish" the drum part. So you use EZ to peruse MIDI, create more patterns, arrange the entire song, then you can drop-n-drag that song to your track. AFTER that you can use any other drum VI you want.


    As said above, some are pre-processed so you can just get on with your song. Others are un-processed so that you can tweak to your hearts desire all the nuances of drumming that the software allows.


    I haven't used BFD3 but hear it's on par with Superior Drummer 2.0
    I have Superior, EZ and Slate's and typically either use EZ for a quickie or port that finished MIDI drum file to a new track and add Superior Drummer 2.0 for it's better sounding drums (I like NYC 3 and Music City) but like said, BFD3 comes with a variety, SD2 doesn't not and you have to purchase them separately (expensive but you can get them cheaper on sales)


    In the end, it has more to do with the patterns you put together than the software. They are ALL great software. EZ is easy. SD2 and others are a deeper learning curve.


    BTW, I recently got Neutron by iZotope and I use that to finish my drum tracks for Superior Drummer. I has Track Assistant that auto-analyzes and puts togethers some settings in it's suite of abilities (i.e. EQ, Comp, etc)


    So analyze your budget. I think in terms of money AND time, EZ Drummer is a good start, since you can use it even after upping to a more powerful plugin. And have money to purchase some third party libraries.


    Another alternative is you can get a cheap or free drumming plugin, create multi-tracks, purchase Slate Trigger, and have it auto replace the cheap sounding drums with much better wav file drum sounds which you can find free all over the place.


    Before all this I just got a bunch of drum wav files (loved Drums on Demand) and used Sony Acid (the free version) to loop together a song and dang if it didn't sound fantastic. But it's not very versatile (you will one day want to go back and be able to change that snare out or arrange the kit in mix space, etc)

  • Generous offering, db. Thanks man.


    Nobody's mentioned this yet so I wonder if I'm mistaken, but I always thought EZD was only 16 bit. If this is the case, one would want to seriously reconsider rendering it in a serious mixing situation. After all, we want dynamic drums, right? ***


    Of course, as others have said, it sounds like a cool tool for piecing things together.


    To the OP:
    Similar situation to you. Looking for an alternative to my TD module. Not entirely happy with my only drum-VI purchase ever, SSD4 (just a few niggles), and holding out to see what SSD5 offers. You might want to consider waiting too, but be aware it's way overdue already. By all accounts, it will appear 'though.


    Watched all the tute videos (by the company) for Superior, and that looks really nice IMHO. My guess is it'll be between SSD5 and Superior for me.


    *** ... so we can squash the living daylights out of their dynamic range... :S

  • Nobody's mentioned this yet so I wonder if I'm mistaken, but I always thought EZD was only 16 bit. If this is the case, one would want to seriously reconsider rendering it in a serious mixing situation.

    Hmmm. Yeah, maybe - but I think most drum software have their samples recorded pretty hot anyway, so it wouldn't necessarily be a problem?

  • 'Cause ghost notes and other "light" hits, if rendered at 16 bit along with the rest of the kit (loud hits), will be stair-stepped to the point of its being noticeable.


    You can hear this quite-easily on snare decays, for instance.


    As I implied, if the EZ engine itself mixes all the various 16-bit hits at a 24-bit resolution, this won't be a problem. If not, as I've just "explained", the dynamic range from those quiet taps through to full-on hits would have to be squeezed into 16 bits, which to my ears has never sounded pretty.


    Back in the day when the ADAT XTs came out, superseding the ADAT black-faced units and upping the ante from 16 to 20-bit sample depth, I can't tell you how excited folks were upon first listen... especially on mic'd drum kits. The difference in apparent dynamic range and smoothness of those quietly-decaying tails was phenomenal, and that was "only" jumping from 16 to 20.

  • There are no stair steps in digital audio :) bit depth is only a matter of noise floor. If the samples have been recorded at suitable level, then the noise shouldn't be a problem.


    We record in 24 bits to avoid the compromise between SNR and risk of digital clipping in the recording stage.


    The unit you speak of may have had other stuff going on. Possibly the ACTUAL bit depth was limited by the converter quality. Even today, what we think of as 24 bits is more like 21 bits.

  • I tried nearly every single Drum Library on the market and exported all the sounds for the 2Box Drum Module.


    My recommendations:
    Blues and Jazz: Toontrack Roots, NY Studios, Custom and Vintage and Music City SDX Expansion for Superior as well as BFD2 and BFD3


    Rock: Toontrack Avatar Default Kit, Rock Warehouse and Barresi Evil Drums SDX Expansions. Also some Steven Slate 4.0 Kits though there is a lot of Preprocessing there.


    Metal: Metal Machinery SDX (by far the best Library for modern Metal including Andy Sneaps trademark samples), Progressive Foundry SDX has also has some nice sounds. There are other good smaller libraries with less sample layers and more preprocessing like metal machine EZX, made of Metal EZX, Matt Halpern Drums, Stigmatized Drummer and Eyal Levi Drumforge.

  • The stair steps I spoke of were real, Michael; dithering was introduced in order to smooth these things out, after all. I heard them on countless occasions, as well as the phenomenal difference the 20-bit machines made. Heck, I tracked and mixed 6 songs of my own on my back-faced unit, along with a 5-song demo for a band called Augie March (went on to some success - very-good band and great guys), and heard it on every playback. These had nothing to do with SR, of course; they were literally the increments of discreet volumes brought about by 16 bit's much-larger stair-step size at low levels. Those 32 thousand steps became easily-large-enough to hear on reverb tails as well, for instance; the more they decayed further into ever-larger-stepped regions, the more-audible they were.


    You're correct about actual vs theoretical depths, of course, so those 16-bit machines might've only be been giving us 14 or 15 in the real world. Nevertheless, this phenomenon manifested itself on CDs, and dithering was the cure. If the engine in EZD uses 16-bit samples (shouldn't matter, we agree, unless low-level hits and taps are recorded without the gain's being cranked for, say, reasons of "authenticity"), but mixes them at 16-bit depth, then there's potentially a problem IMHO. Sure, the DAW would tack the extra 8 bits (or 16 in the case of 32-bit engines) on after the fact, but that'd mean nothing, as you know.


    We agree. Irrelevant in the 24-bit world, but it all comes down to EZ's mixing engine - is that "compromised" in the same way (16-bit) as the sample library? It'd be interesting to know I reckon.

  • The stair steps I spoke of were real, Michael; dithering was introduced in order to smooth these things out, after all. I heard them on countless occasions, as well as the phenomenal difference the 20-bit machines made. Heck, I tracked and mixed 6 songs of my own on my back-faced unit, along with a 5-song demo for a band called Augie March (went on to some success - very-good band and great guys), and heard it on every playback. These had nothing to do with SR, of course; they were literally the increments of discreet volumes brought about by 16 bit's much-larger stair-step size at low levels. Those 32 thousand steps became easily-large-enough to hear on reverb tails as well, for instance; the more they decayed further into ever-larger-stepped regions, the more-audible they were.


    You're correct about actual vs theoretical depths, of course, so those 16-bit machines might've only be been giving us 14 or 15 in the real world. Nevertheless, this phenomenon manifested itself on CDs, and dithering was the cure. If the engine in EZD uses 16-bit samples (shouldn't matter, we agree, unless low-level hits and taps are recorded without the gain's being cranked for, say, reasons of "authenticity"), but mixes them at 16-bit depth, then there's potentially a problem IMHO. Sure, the DAW would tack the extra 8 bits (or 16 in the case of 32-bit engines) on after the fact, but that'd mean nothing, as you know.


    We agree. Irrelevant in the 24-bit world, but it all comes down to EZ's mixing engine - is that "compromised" in the same way (16-bit) as the sample library? It'd be interesting to know I reckon.

    I think I mistook your meaning - all I meant to say was that it's not stair-steps, but sample points (just because people (including myself in the past) think that the stair-stepped display is representative of what is actually happening). yeah, quantization errors, and dithering as the cure.


    I guess what you're saying is that for eg. ghost notes, they are low enough in volume that they get closer to the noise floor (which is the effect of quantization), so thar the SNR is low enough as to be audible?