Toontrack Superior Drummer 3

[EvilDragon]

I have AD... it's pretty good, but one has to be aware that they use compressed samples (not sure if lossless or not, I think I recall them mentioning somewhere it's variable bitrate compression of sorts). Toontrack doesn't do that in Superior (but does for EZD). Ditto BFD - uncompressed samples. Also, AD has limited number of kitpieces, whereas that doesn't seem to be the case in Superior. Also, cannot use your own samples in AD.

Feature-wise, I think Toontrack beats any others because of Tap2Find (AD has something similar but more clunky to use), the way you can compose the whole drum track within the plugin itself, changing the power hand, accent hand, etc... It's just on a whole other level.

[KyleJudkins]

whenever I get around I'll let you know.

I have addictive drums and a butt load of expansions.

I use an e kit.

I also have ssd4 and a butt load of expansions, and as it stood j generally used AD2 for almost everything except kick(and if I were doing more sophisticated hat work, SD2 for the hat).

But it'll be a while before I am able to hook up everything, let alone hooking up a 2 brained monster e kit.

[KyleJudkins]

I just couldn't stand not being able to pan ect with cymbals in SD

mapping was also really sketchy. and not all have cymbal mute samples, all in all just drove me nuts.

[Guy Rowland]

One nice new feature in SD2 is you can route any instrument - and it's bleeds - to anywhere you like. If you have one cymbal you want to pan, you just route it to a new output.

What is REALLY great - I can't remember if this was in SD2 and I never explored this far cos I hated it so much - is that you have really easy control of individual bleed instrument levels in the overheads, the room mics, the everything. So if you love the sound of the room but the kick or the cymbals are doing your head in, you can reduce just them or get rid of them altogether. It's a dream to feature the room but artificially control it completely. I love the basic setup which emulates real mics, room and mixer, but you can tighten up to the point of being a total control freak.

Could be cos it's a new toy, but I'm finding it a huge amount of fun to tweak and experiment. SD2 was about has much fun as root canal surgery.

[KyleJudkins]

you're right on that guy.

you had all the bleed controls on sd2, it's just that the ui was so awful you didn't want to spend time to find them.

One thing i love about AD2 is alot of rock solid ITB effects and processing, so I don't have to do much outside of the plugin... and from what I saw they completely revamped the itb processing in sd3, which is really nice

I'll probably use sd3 for cymbals, AD2 for snare and toms, and maybe a blend of sd3 and ssd4 for kicks.

Or I'll not use any sd3, or I'll use all sd3, who knows

[kpc]

Thanks Guy. For now, this will stay down near the bottom of my list.

[EvilDragon]

Aaaaaaaaaand... purchased the upgrade. Now to the download part...

[Guy Rowland]

Great gosh a mighty, this thing is incredible. This is my new favourite thing of any kind. Shoot me if I buy another acoustic drum program. Between the core library and this ridiculous number of expansions, I am definitively covered.

Did I mention it's fun? Oh my lord, those earlier SD2 expansions have come alive. So many fantastic room mic positions are in there - most are turned off by default. Fire 'em up and start playing - the control you have means it doesn't turn into a mess. Then all the effects are right there and sound great, from what I've found thus far. Just made fine Love Shack and Power Station kits, if I do say so myself.

[catsass]

I'm right there with you, Guy. One word review: "Wow!"

Question: Did you download the 5.1 and 11.1 Surround Room Mics?

[kpc]

Do I feel a new video coming on?

[Guy Rowland]

Question: Did you download the 5.1 and 11.1 Surround Room Mics?

I've started to download the 5.1, but I'm really not sure I'll need them - how about you? So many options as it is, and I'm only working in stereo. So far I have the main, room and bleed parts installed. I've just found out though that the all-important bleeds into the various ambient room mics are in the room mics part. I think the separate Bleed part is just the real minutiae details - kick drum bleed into tom 2 mic and so on. I think I'd rather keep the space, the library is on the NVMe drive.

Kayle - maaaaybe...

[playz123]

For those of you who purchased the upgrade from SD2 to SD3, did you uninstall SD2 first, or just leave it in place? I can see leaving it alone if it is perhaps locked into some old projects, but what if SD2 is no longer needed?

[Guy Rowland]

Frank - I didn't have SD2 installed but had SD2 libraries on an HDD from a previous incarnation, so maybe my experience isn't so useful but fwiw... I doubt you'd ever use SD2 again after SD3, but just as you suggest if you removed it you'd break older projects. The plugin itself is small beer size-wise, so I'd see no harm in leaving it on your system for that reason, but that is pretty much the only reason I can think of. The SD2 library will definitely stay useful though.

[playz123]

Cheers, Guy. Yes, I had planned to leave the SD2 libraries in place, and if the SD2 program is small, might as well leave that there as well.
However, moot point for me right now since I just received this from Best Service re. my order:

"Superior Drummer 3 Upgrade
Upgrade** - Download
Serial-No.: Sorry, currently no serial available or technical problem. You will receive your serial number within a workday. Our team is informed."
Others who haven't purchased yet may wish to take note. Best Service currently seems to perhaps have the 'best' price on the upgrades at present.

[EvilDragon]

For those of you who purchased the upgrade from SD2 to SD3, did you uninstall SD2 first, or just leave it in place? I can see leaving it alone if it is perhaps locked into some old projects, but what if SD2 is no longer needed?

I left SD2 there, will go through all my projects and save all SD2 instances as Combined Presets (SD3 reads them just fine). Then replace those SD2 instances with SD3, resave projects, bye bye SD2.

[Guy Rowland]

Here we go, my slightly excitable overview:

[Phat Monkey]

Hi new to this forum, noticed one gentlemen mention that the upgrade from SD2 to 3 is a little expensive, I found it a little cheaper on Pluginboutique, around £10 cheaper in UK pounds, not much but it's something I have yet to try SD3 as it has been installing all day after the mammoth 236gig download lol....

[Scoredog]

Thanks Guy....saved me a lot of time.

[Guy Rowland]

Hello Phat Monkey - yes, seemed to me that for us in the UK, UK stores were cheapest. I bought from Time and Space, looks like it was the same price as Pluginboutique.

If you have other Toontrack stuff, you can start playing with the program itself while you wait (relatively tiny download). Then it seems pretty intelligent for installs, you do one at a time, though you have to do the Main part first.

[catsass]

I've started to download the 5.1, but I'm really not sure I'll need them - how about you? So many options as it is, and I'm only working in stereo. So far I have the main, room and bleed parts installed. I've just found out though that the all-important bleeds into the various ambient room mics are in the room mics part. I think the separate Bleed part is just the real minutiae details - kick drum bleed into tom 2 mic and so on. I think I'd rather keep the space, the library is on the NVMe drive.

I have not downloaded the surround mics. I thought i'd wait for the general consensus as to whether or not there is ANY value add to a stereo mix - doubtful, but not necessarily beyond the realms of possibility.

On another note, SD2 owners:
Was there a grid editor in SD2? What an incredibly helpful feature. A quick and easy method of tweaking parts without dragging the MIDI file in and out of your DAW.

[Guy Rowland]

No, there was no grid editor in SD2. Nothing fun or useful at all, in fact.

I have stopped my surround download for now, I just don't think it's worth the space given 4 ambient mic positions in the room pack. I've installed Additional Bleeds, but I'm trialing it without - I'll likely move their files off the NVMe drive but not delete them just in case.

[jtnyc]

Hey Guy. Thanks for the comments. I wonder if you have addictive drums and if so, how you think it compares? Another drum library is low on my list, but you never know.

Cheers

I'm a long time SD user. Much happier now with SD3. I tried AD a couple of years ago and it didn't really impress me. It sounds good. Some kits much better than others, but there was something about the overall sound that just didn't do it for me. It's such a subjective thing, but it sounded processed in a way that I don't like. Not warm, kinda hyped. I also didn't like GUI at all. It's set up to advertise for future purchases. It lists items you don't own. This is a total deal breaker for me (one of the reasons I abandoned IK Amplitube). Overall it didn't offer me any reason to use it in place of Superior. Superior is so flexible. For my taste, it mostly sounds natural and warm, but can be processed in so many ways. Many of the expansions are really great, although the 6 kits and all the kicks and snares that SD3 comes with should cover most users needs.

I've been playing around with SD3 for the past 2 days and I'm very happy. The new kits sound great. GUI is a total winner and is a huge improvement over SD2's. The other thing I've always liked about SD is the low cpu hit. NI Abbey Road series has some cool stuff, but it nearly pins the single core in Logic when sequencing. SD hits maybe 20% of the single core, and that's with a 3gb kit loaded. What can I say, after trying NI and AD, Superior is superior in my opinion.

[jtnyc]

I downloaded all of the surround mics. I just want to check them out and see. There are some sweet and different sounding channels there. It does add a feeling of OMG so many choices. It also makes it possible to have a kit that's in excess 6-7 gb's. Yikes! I can't tell yet if I will use them all that much. It will take some time to see which ones might be useful, but I have the HD space, so what the heck. I wonder if a can uninstall just those packages if I decide I don't want them?

[Guy Rowland]

Keen to hear how you get on jtnyc for a) if you find any gold in the surrounds for stereo use and b) if you find an uninstall button! I figured out which files were the bleeds - 114-150 - and just removed those files, so far to no apparent ill effects.

[jtnyc]

Sure thing Guy - are those additional bleeds? Meaning are there bleed files elsewhere or are all of the bleed files in that package. I'm just curious, it seems odd that they call it additional bleed.