Toontrack Kicks and Snares EZX

[Whitten]

I think SD3 might be better sounding than SD2.
My personal claim was that there are kicks and snares in....EZX Kicks and Snares that could very closely match some of the kicks and snares in your audio montage.
Whether I can be bothered to try and match the playing with some midi, then load up the matching kicks and snares, record them, then post it here is another matter - with my busy schedule.
Also bear in mind Mixosaurus was so deeply sampled they could only fit one kit (maybe 2?) into the product. It was crazy expensive and you had to buy the harddrive to have it delivered. It was a financial failure and never progressed beyond the original release.
I think the kit was a DW? Not my favourite brand.
So, all drum software is a compromise. With Mixosaurus you compromised on kit pieces and different sounding studio spaces, but gained an n’th degree of sampling detail.
Personally I’d rather have more choice in kit pieces and different sounding rooms.

[Piet De Ridder]

Yes, it’s true there aren’t too many of us Mixosaurus-owners. And yes, it’s only the one kit. 120 gigabytes of it. (Which explains why it shipped on a hard drive, because downloads of that size weren’t really feasible at the time and would still have people scratching their heads today, I imagine.)
Uwe (the developer/drummer) did sample a second snare drum later on, but I always liked the original snare best.

The reason why it never went beyond v1, is two-fold, I believe: first of all, because Mixosaurus was pretty much perfect right from the start, especially considering what Kontakt was capable of in those years anyway. (To this day I still wouldn’t know how to improve upon it in areas other than the GUI and overal user-friendliness. The content itself is as ageing-proof, timeless and perfect as samples could ever be, in my opinion.)

And the second and far more sadder reason is that Uwe got ill, which meant the end of Mixosaurus. Apparently, the content was then sold to ‘a big developer’ — some whispers suggested it might even have been Toontrack — but it’s many years since that rumour and nothing has materialized since, so I don’t know.

- - -

I wasn’t suggesting either you or Guy should go to the time-consuming trouble of trying to emulate some of those drums I posted, you know. I readily accept that several of those examples — particularly the more ‘produced’ ones — fall well within the capabilities of Toontrack, if perhaps not always by the software on its isolated, naked own, then certainly with the aid of additional processing.

- - -

I’m so close now that I can see the whites of the eyes of the SD3-upgrade purchase-button.

_

[Whitten]

The content in ‘Kicks and Snares’ is not really ‘produced’.
It’s more raw than that. I could replicate the flappy bass drums and dry/fat snare drums in your audio examples.
Actually harder to reproduce the more modern cracky snares without adding eq.
I honestly followed the Mixosaurus story from the very start.
The two biggest issues mentioned by potential purchases all along was the single kit, lack of choice... and the price.
The drum sample scene is extremely competitive and 99.99% of buyers are after lots of choice at a low price point.

[Guy Rowland]

Actually harder to reproduce the more modern cracky snares without adding eq.

This is an ignorant question from a non-drummer, but I remember that the drummer I used to play with decades ago always said that the way he got the very cracky snare was the playing technique where you hit the stick almost sideways onto the drum, essentially hitting the centre (or was it nearer the far edge?) but also getting the rim with it too. Is that crazy talk? Is that an established way of playing? Have I remembered it all wrong?

[Whitten]

Yes, a rimshot.
In all Toontrack products you get rimshots and separate centre hits.
As I said, the Toontrack midi tends to be high velocity 120-127. You can select a different midi note for either rimshot or centre hit.
I think if people hear a lot of high velocity rimshots in the Toontrack audio demos they assume the drum sounds are all the same (modern and ‘produced’), but all the user has to do is reduce the midi grooves velocity overall by about 20. Then you start to hear warmer, more organic tones.

[Whitten]

In the 70’s drummers played a lot more centre hits - fatter, warmer sounds. Since the 80’s until now many drummers play as hard as they can, and every snare beat is s rimshot (very sharp).
The samples are all there in Toontrack products to achieve any snare sound. To get a warmer, fatter snare sound, make sure the midi isn’t triggering all rimshots, and bring the velocity values down to 100-115 (from 120-127).

[Guy Rowland]

Huh - I thought the rim shot was just when you hit the rim? This was a combined move, and I thought my drummer said it sounded different to either on its own. Probably remember it all wrong though.

[Whitten]

That is a cross stick.
In truth there is s lot of confusion in musical terms, but I think the majority of drummers know ... centre hit, rimshot and xstick.
Centre hit, self explanatory. Rimshot, combined centre hit while the shank of the stick simultaneously strikes the rim.
Xstick - stick rests on the head and strikes the rim only.
In ballads and reggae grooves for example.

[Guy Rowland]

Ah thanks Chris, that must be it.

[wst3]

I will endeavor to skip over the fanboy stuff myself...

I've been using Toontrack drum libraries since the days of DKFH. Superior the first blew my mind, and the expansions, especially Custom and Vintage, just kept getting better and better. Decades, a recent addition, continues that thread.

I own most of the expansions, including the two based on C&V, and I wasn't planning on checking out Kicks and Snares - I already have "too many" drum libraries. Learning the lineage of the new expansion means I suppose I need to at least check it out. If I do not add it to the collection it will be more about having too many drums already!

Oh and yeah, I'm a fan of your musical adventures as well. Thanks for popping in.

[Whitten]

Thanks

[Piet De Ridder]

In the meantime, I've become an ecstatic owner of SD3. And 'Decades'.
SD3 has been a revelation. Only an incorrigible sourpuss could have something negative to say about it. So I hereby retract quite a lot of what I've been saying earlier on in this thread about the 'Toontrack sound'.

_

[Guy Rowland]

This is great to hear Piet, glad you got it up and running and you're in love.

I should put this in my lonely-if-passionate Jeff Russo thread in music appreciation, but if we're talking about fabulous drum sounds (and playing), this from Fargo Season one (and reprised in three) is up there for me. Love the sheer balls of it, both the sound and going all out on a cue with drums and nothing else. And not a bloody drum solo either, thank the lord. Some of the hi-hat sounds here - not the cymbals but the pedal and mechanics of it - are striking. This is a human smashing things.

[Whitten]

A ton of compression.

[Guy Rowland]

A ton of compression.

Of course - and distortion too. But a fantastic sound and performance you agree surely?

[Guy Rowland]

Well it's time for a thread revival. This is a classic, so good to have Chris Whitten contribute here.

Anyway, Kicks And Snares is now 70% in the Black Friday sale, and I think I should probably do the decent thing after all this time. I'd forgotten about the extra layers of electronic elements which looks fun.

[Guy Rowland]

An enthusiastic thumbs up here. Those extra 4 kick and snare faders are great for dialling in just what you need. There's a huge variety in there as you'd hope, my personal fave is the popcorn snare. The basic kit is a good solid one, and there's a few hi hat choices (though I think they're all tweaked samples, they do produce different effects). Two ambience mics - I found I needed to drag the far one forward to time align (fortunately easy in SD3).

For £23, a steal.