Steven Slate Drums 5 - Finally! Was Due for Release Mid 2014

I almost can't believe it myself, after having followed this thread for God knows how long. Gonna drop on Tuesday apparently:

Any News on Stevens Slate Drums 5?

There's no news in any stores about it yet, but there will be soon.

I held off on buying Superior Drummer 3 'cause I love the character and vibe of Steven's offerings. Hopefully my patience is finally about to pay off!

This is huge for many here I'm sure...

EDIT 1

Nobody's asked this yet, but in anticipation of the inevitable questions about SSD4 expansion-library compatibilities:

1) Yes, the David Bendeth Drums, Chris Lord-Alge, Blackbird Studio Drums and Terry Date expansions will work.

2) IIRC you'll be issued links to download the "compatibilised" versions of the libraries you own; the original files you have won't load. Same goes for legacy factory libs, the updated versions of which will be included in SSD5.

3) They're apparently going to sound even-better due to the new playback engine.

Also, Slate's M.O. is to ensure the retention of existing libraries in new versions of the plugin, so all previous factory libraries will be included as legacy banks.

EDIT 2

There's a new built-in scripting engine that'll help kits play in a more-realistic fashion. I'm guessing that this'll be tremendously-helpful to those using MIDI keyboards as input devices.

OK, it's here, and Michael_dk has Kindly shared deets from his email:

• New Deluxe 2 drum library with more than 50 new instruments including 10 new kicks, 10 new snares, and even a few percussion instruments. All the drums are unique and have two stereo room layers each
• New SSD5 physically modeled drum playback algorithm ensures that each drum part sounds extremely natural, authentic, and real
• Classic Slate Drums, Deluxe 1 Drums, and ALL Expansion pack drums (CLA, Blackbird, etc) have been re-done using the new SSD5 physically modeled drum playback algorithm
• New GUI with a better layout and better functionality. Easy to understand and navigate, even without the manual.
• Using Drum Kit view, or Pads/Cells View you can now load up to 32 drum instruments simultaneously along with up to 32 user one-shots.
• Super powerful and easy routing to your DAW with AUX channels, routing manager, and routing presets.
• Group selection of mixer strips to adjust parameters of different mics simultaneously
• New solo/mute logic in Mixer with hotkeys for instant un-solo and unmute.
• Phase now can be flipped not only on selected mics but also on a whole instrument. Gives you the possibility to flip all mics in the instrument, but, for instance, subsequently flip the close mics
• Reworked mapping. Everything in the kit preset is easily mappable and remappable plus there is an input converter to load mapping presets for popular formats
• New groove library with more than 1000 new grooves. Grooves are unique and come in a lot of styles played by great drummers. New grooves are played by the new groove player, where you can adjust the dynamics and speed of grooves and ‘drag and drop’ modified grooves into your DAW
• Drums audition has been greatly improved. Audition just by clicking on a drum instrument
• Now you can change the balance of direct mics vs ambient mics for sample audition in the browser
• Master volume for plugin output added
• Resampling quality is improved
• Retina support added
• VERY BIG - new shaping section. ADSR, where you can adjust A, D and R curves and S volume. Allows you to emulate transient shapers and compressors. Also gives endless possibilities for sound design

Glad he made a new video and didn't just stick with the one he made early in the year:

EDIT 3

New release thread:

Steven Slate Drums 5 (SSD5) Now Available

Apparently there are 138 drum kit presets, 84 kicks, 77 snares, 58 toms, 11 hi-hats, 14 crashes, 6 rides, 4 splashes 3 chinas, 1 clap, 1 tambourine and 1 cowbell.

The physically-modeled drum playback algorithm mentioned above apparently "recreates the sound of real drum parts with realism that you'll have to hear to believe. Simple round robin is a thing of the past... now each drum dissolves into the next just like a real acoustic drum kit."

there's a demo version here:

Steven Slate Drums - World-Class Virtual Drum Instruments & Replacers

EDIT 4

MIDI-groove libraries:

From Baxterbrown over at GearSlutz:

Groove Monkee has an extensive library and they are in the process of making them SSD5 compatible. I bought the Hi-Octane groove pack Friday and their support team said they'd likely have the SSD5 compatible version ready by this Tuesday.

EDIT 5

MIDI-groove libraries:

Steven Slate said this at GS several hours ago:

We are working on more grooves and will be adding a large number of them free of charge in a near update.

EDIT 6 2019-04-04

Now on sale for $99. Upgrade from SSD4 Platinum to SSD5 $49, and SSD4 EX to SSD5 $79. Expansions 50%-off sale too.

https://stevenslatedrums.com/our-store/

I know Shawn. It will this time 'though.

Back in July they only had to finish creating the Mac installer when they became aware of a bug that slipped through the beta net. It appears that addressing it and any related issues took quite some time and effort.

Back then, it was a case of the release's being imminent, whereas now we have a firm date. If you examine the thread you'll see that Steven learned a valuable lesson from it and his new M.O. is not to make predictions unless they're "firm". Tuesday sounds pretty-firm to me, so I'm optimistic!

The velocity articulations (resolution) will be super-fine and a great step up, GJ. Never fear, brother.

Quote from Greg

Will go check out Slate - but will be super shocked if it has all the SD3 mic placement possibilities and easy mapping to Roland V-Drums (and not drums through Kontact)...

I don't know about mic-placement possibilities, Greg, but as you'd know the Slate approach is to mic and analogue-process everything so it sounds great off-the-bat. Apart from ambient mic'ing, which will be catered for, there shouldn't theoretically be a whole lot to do.

There's at least one innovative "mic selection" of sorts - the ability to dial in as much ring to the snare as desired.

Also, the mapping has been overhauled AFAICR and I suspect you will therefore be "super shocked".

Welcome back, Danny-boy!

Yeah, I think you'll be stoked with the upgrade price too, mate. It was projected to be around the $79->$89 mark a while back, so I think you could safely expect something below $100.

SD3 fans, did you hear that? Eighty bucks. The full library will likely require 10 times less space than the SD3 one too. Helps in this day and age.

Quote from GearJocke

Monkey-Man how do you know all this? Insight information?

It's my job to know about everything so I can keep my homies informed while I completely ignore my own career, GJ.

I've been participating in the BeerGutz thread I linked to for a very long time and Steven has shared random pieces of info occasionally along the way. I couldn't help remembering pretty much everything he said 'cause I'm putting all my eggs in the SSD5 basket and won't be buying anything else for drums... unless it's somehow crap, which I'm confident it won't be.

Actually, a couple more things just sprung to mind, so I've made a few edits to the OP for anyone who's interested...

Quote from 808illest

So, if I'm reading this correctly? If I buy SSD4 Platinum right now the upgrade will be free? I wonder what expansions you'd get or whatever? Guess we'll see, right!?

None, Shawn. Only your existing SSD4 expansions will be updated as I outlined in the OP.

Quote from 808illest

Knowing that Black Friday is right around the corner I think Superior3 will likely be on sale.

Perhaps, but even on sale (based on last year's offerings), it'll still be more expensive than SSD at full retail.

Quote from 808illest

I don't own either, or any of the expansion packs which gets very costly when you start diving into that rabbit hole!

In this case, it doesn't. Many bought all the expansion packs for $49 each on sale years ago. Not only this, but there were only four of them, so $200 max.

The Slate Digital VRS8 was released on September 6th, AJ; IIRC there may be supply issues due to demand. 127 (or was it 128?) dB dynamic range's gonna appeal to a lot of folks, but man, are they pricey. EDIT: Make that 124dB - thank you, Shawn.

The MOTUs I published the spec's for here last year offer 123dB, and at great prices.