Toontrack Kicks and Snares EZX

[Guy Rowland]

A slightly different concept to the usual EZXs:


https://www.toontrack.com/product/kicks-snares-ezx/

It's 130 new kicks and snares into the Toontrack ecosystem, which seem to have been recorded in many different locations. Perhaps of particular interest, one of these (and I think the largest in terms of number of instruments) is Air Studios.

One other thing of note, is that both kicks and snares have an optional 4 different elements from electronic sources that are designed to be layered to provide an alternative to EQing for some tasks. I've linked the following video at the time where this is demoed:



There's also a basic set of hats, cymbals and toms and midi included. More videos are on their site, including one for specific workflows relevant to Superior Drummer 3 owners.

Price is 69 euros.

[Piet De Ridder]

Great idea, and something I would buy instantly, if it weren’t for the fact that all those snares, even though clearly different from one another, all sound like they’re fruit from one and the same Toontrack-tree. Just like too many of the snares in previous TT-releases.

My eternal TT-problem in a nutshell.

In favouring and pursuing one ‘vision’ of what a snaredrum’s supposed to sound like, Toontrack keeps ignoring countless other possibilities of what snaredrums can sound like. (It’s not too difficult to post dozens and dozens of examples of snaredrum sounds that, despite Toontrack’s meanwhile huuuuge collection of sampled snares, just don’t figure in any of their libraries. And it’s not so much an instrument thing, it’s more of a sound thing.

And the same goes for the bassdrums. Which is just as big a pity, because, even though it might seem that the specific colour and contours of a kick has less influence on the overal sound of a kit, that’s not true at all. Kicks are every bit as kit-defining as snares.

It’s a very strange thing. Despite all these different studios they record in, and using all these different engineers and different drummers (playing widely different instruments), there must be something happening during the production process of a Toontrack library that sort of unifies all their samples — almost as if they're marinated in Toontrack-liquid for several days —, after which they emerge as yet one more platoon of perfect carriers of the Toontrack idea(l) of how drums should sound.

I’ve grown meanwhile quite bored with that sound, I must say. It’s been ages since I kept a TT kit in a final mix. I often start with one to quickly have a decent working sound, but almost always I’ll replace the drums at a later stage with something else entirely.

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[Guy Rowland]

I honestly can't say I hear it, Piet. I sort of get it in, say, the Superior Drummer 3 core library with which I've never been enamoured and there does feel a slightly sterile blandness, but the differences between, say, Avatar, Decades, Jazz, Progressive, Claustrophobic, Funkmasters and countless others I just don't get any sense of sameness between them. In truth, logically I can't really think how there can be, epsecially with the curated sets.

[Piet De Ridder]

I’ll illustrate my point with a few audio examples but, unfortunately, I’ve got to run right now, so it won’t be until sometime tomorrow.
In the meantime, maybe listen (again) to the audio files that showcase the included snaredrums: though all different, most of them (not all, but most) are variations of just one type of snare sound.

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[Guy Rowland]

Thanks Piet.

I'd agree the selection within this EZX isn't as broad as everything in their range - missing some snappy piccolos for one thing - but looking forward to hearing what it can't do with any expansion.

[playz123]

I honestly can't say, that over the last few years, have I ever said to myself "I sure could use some better kick and snare drums". Having both EZD, Superior Drummer 3, Slate Drums, Battery and many of the extra packs has provided me whatever I need when I need it, and if I want to tweak any single drum at any time I can always do that. So, for me, the interest in this new release just isn't there. The price is right though and perhaps others may feel it would be a useful purchase.

[Guy Rowland]

I know what you mean, Frank. I'm on the laptop right now, and it has just a subset of my Toontrack libraries. I just counted 180 snares. And those are just the acoustic ones.

So sense has prevailed and I'm passing on this for now, awaiting some future sale when I'm weak and vulnerable.

[Piet De Ridder]

A little over 10 minutes of drumsounds — from the past 50 years of recorded music —, very few of which, if any, I think can be summoned from Toontrack. Now, I’m not familiar with all of TT’s expansions so there might be a few packs that cover some of the ground heard in this montage, but even so, I stick to my point that there’s a whole range of drumsounds — unhyped, natural drumsounds which I happen to like very much — that the various Toontrack crews don’t seem to be interested in capturing at all.

The focus here is on the snaredrums, but listen to the hi-hats and cymbals as well: those are two other drum-components on which Toontrack, to my ears, holds rather narrow views.

(Wanna add though that all of this doesn’t take anything away from the excellence of what the best Toontrack packs *do* contain. It’s just that there’s still an awful lot in the way of drum timbres which, despite its many expansions, it can’t do.)

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[Lawrence]

Great examples, though sometimes I wonder if I’m listening to a snare/kick or a compressor.

[Guy Rowland]

Well what a fabulous and diverse collection they are, and a thoroughly entertaining jaunt through musical history. I think maybe Toontrack can pull off the 43rd example, Piet?

So not sure quite how to counter. By and large I felt these were attainable, thereabouts with some time and care. Is there any one or two that you feel are especially out of reach?

In the meantime I did a slightly pointless exercise of scrolling through some of the snares I have on my install, including Decades, Indiependant, NY Allaire, NY Avatar, SD3, Progressive Foundry, EZD, Americana, Funkmasters, Hip Hop, Jazz, Metal!, Metalheads, Nashville, Pop!, Reggae, Rock Solid, Rock! The Classic, Twisted and Vintage Rock expansions. It's a gruelling listen of course, just an 8 bar snare pattern looped and cylcing through the options with undue haste. Warning, some are much hotter than others, but I went through in library order - not as listed above, but all of one library before moving to the next, so if you skip forward through utter boredom you'll land on a different library. For some there are gazillions of snares, others only a couple, for some they have a huge range of nuance in velocity response while others are much more basic, some libraries are very diverse, others are much more samey.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b2fff66781yny ... s.mp3?dl=0

All of these, of course, are the dry unprocessed raw samples of just the hitting the centre articulation, the same mix with some bleeds, basic room and overheads too. Needless to say with transient processing, EQ, compression and mixing between all the mic options, there are many other colours - it struck me listening to your montage Piet how much processing some of them have, while others feel more natural and raw. Perhaps the most diffcult are some of the older ones where the specific room and the mic and recording technology are from a vintage era, espeiclaly the 60s.

[Piet De Ridder]

Thanks very much or that snaredrums catwalk, Guy. Very nice. And I must admit: there were a couple of surprises and also a number of snares I quite like. I don’t know if it’s easy for you to retrace what you used, but if it's possible: from which collection are the snares between 4’00 and 4’10”? And those between 4’34 and 4’45?

The snaresound I associate most with Toontrack, and variations of which also feature most frequently in your round-up, is what I would call the ‘composite snaresound’. Composite in the sense that the bottom and top are distinct layers or, if you like, where the snare-element and the body-element of the drumsound somehow remain separate.
There are very few snares in my montage which belong to that category (because that’s not the kind of snaresound I usually like, although it depends on the music as well of course). I prefer a snaresound where that distinction between top and bottom is almost non-existent and the two have fused into a single, inseparable sound. I quite like dry snares as well (unless in a retro context).

Of course, the production has a huge influence on the way things sound. (Not to mention the drummer.) The drumsound in ‘Love Is the Drug’, to pick just one example, is as much the result of production as anything else. But again, Toontrack never omits to draw much attention to their production (the studios used, the equipment, the engineers, the producer), and entirely justifiably so cause it’s usually top-notch, but given the widely different situations, hardware and people involved in their projects, I’m often surprised by a returning similar flavour in the sound of many of their drums.

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[Guy Rowland]

Snare micing is interesting. I remember when I worked for the BBC starting in the 80s when we miced bands it was just snare top which also did for the hi hat very often, then within a few years, into the 90s, separate snare top / bottom / hat all became the norm. I don't know if that reflected a wider industry shift as more multitrack channels became the norm, or if the BBC were just behind the curve as usual. I wonder if some of the older recordings on your montage had that composite feel because they used less mics and therefore had them in slightly different positions to cover more instruments, hence a subtle difference in timbre? I remember in my band days it was normal to keep the snare mic back a shade to get more hat and, likely snare rattle. That was usually a 57, which is sort of heresy for hi-hat pickup, but a) a bit of top end zing splashes in on the overheads, and b) oh well.

There is at least one Toontrack library recorded with different mic setups. The Classic has a whole 4 mic section, which is just Kick, Snare, OH L and OH R (plus one ambience pair). It also has alternatives that are more conventionally miced. Here's those 5 snares:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/517bs5xuxreu9 ... c.mp3?dl=0

In the meantime your chosen snares all turn out to be from the SD3 core library. From 4'00 - 4'10, starting (after the one with the cymbal) with the Yamaha Copper Nouveau, Ayotte Maple Classic, Gretsch Solid Aluminum, Leedy Broadway Standard 30s, Ludwig 400 COB 1959, then two Slingerland Radio King 50s. Still there at 4'34 (after the snares off drum) it's the 5x14" Slingerland Radio King 50s, Ayotte Maple Classic (again), Ludwig Black Beauty, Pearl Masters Custom, Ludwig Black Beauty 20s, another Ayotte Maple Classic, Leedy Broadway Standard 30s again and a Gretsch Solid Aluminium.

[Piet De Ridder]

(...) your chosen snares all turn out to be from the SD3 core library. (...)

Thanks again, Guy. Very much.
SD3, you say? That explains it. I haven't updated yet and none of the kits (of the ones I own anyway) for SD2 contain snares that sound like those.
Big update strikes again.

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[Whitten]

Hi Guys.
I'm one of the creators of 'Kicks and Snares' and as such I think there have been just one or two unfair comments made.
First up - it's perfectly OK for people not to like the sound of this product.
The criticism that none of the drums sound like the drums on a mega mix of great drum performances.....
Well I'm a drummer who has played on quite a few records. I did nothing when recording drums for 'Kicks and Snares', that I wouldn't do on a proper album session. .
To claim there is no audible difference between a low tuned and heavily damped snare drum, recorded in a completely dead room, and an open sounding rock snare recorded in a very large room, or a high tuned piccolo snare is beyond me.
Likewise, there are very dead single headed bass drums, a 26" Ludwig orchestral bass drum with no damping whatsoever, and an 18" Gretsch jazz bass drum played with a soft beater. The differences are immediately apparent to me.
In order for my own head choice, touch and tuning tastes not to dominate the sessions, we used another two completely different drummers, and didn't tell them what to do.
Toontrack were not present at any of the recording sessions, my partner and I did the recordings and did them to our own agenda, nothing to do with Toontrack. And our agenda was to make as big and DIVERSE a collection of kicks and snares possible.
Of course, when you play audio from famous drum performances on record, you are getting every nuance of many different drummers.
When Toontrack make their demos, they tend to use the midi from the product, which is one drummer, and they tend to keep the demo drumming simple, so it is often a rimshot on every backbeat.
So I don't know if that's why some people think the snares sound the same - because they are all being effectively played by one drummer's midi and playing the same part of the snare (the rimshot), whereas rimshot, centre hit, and edge were all sampled.
A $50 virtual drum instrument is never going to replicate Steve Gadd or John Bonham. But I think there is plenty in this package to satisfy most people's taste in different sounding drums.

[Whitten]

I stick to my point that there’s a whole range of drumsounds — unhyped, natural drumsounds which I happen to like very much — that the various Toontrack crews don’t seem to be interested in capturing at all.

We actually went through every gamut of recording scenario. Vintage consoles, very small rooms and drum booths. Very large rooms. Multiple vintage mics, only two mics on the whole kit etc...
A lot of our favourite music is 60's and 70's. Peter the recording engineer worked on some legendary 70's recording sessions.
We (the same team) actually recorded The Classic EZX as mentioned above.

I don't think you can judge the variation and attention to all styles of music by listening to a few demos on the Toontrack webpage.

[Whitten]

Thanks Piet.

I'd agree the selection within this EZX isn't as broad as everything in their range - missing some snappy piccolos for one thing

Yeah, there are:
8×10” Pearl Maple Popcorn
3×13” Ludwig Jazz Combo
3×13” Ludwig Jazz Combo (alt. voice)
4×14” Ludwig Pioneer
5×10” Pansini Copper

[Guy Rowland]

Hello Whitten - and am I right in thinking this is the great Chris Whitten? I am an absurd Waterboys fan, so please excuse my embarrassing genuflecting.

I did wonder if some of the drums had already been recorded for other expansions, good to know its all unique.

Piet can speak for himself of course (and you won't find anyone with finer more musical ears I promise), but I think what he was saying is not that they literally sounded the same as very clearly they sound totally different from one another, but rather there is some underlying sonic signature that can be heard despite the huge variety. This, however, I honestly can't detect. For me the quick whizz through some of the 180 Toontrack snares that I already own is a good demonstration of the huge variety and I feel I want for nothing.

So that's my only issue - with such a huge variety already, I'm not sure I need another 130! That said Chris, if there are any you're particularly pleased with that feel quite distinct you could point me at, I'd certainly be interested.

BTW - am I right in thinking you were behind The Classic EZX? Interested to get your thoughts on whether or not the micing technique commonly used today - top / bottom / hats vs the older simpler one mic for all has a profound difference, and if the older technique can help create a kind of sound not possible with modern micing.

EDIT - oh yes I see you were behind the Classic, and sorry for me missing the piccolos!

[Whitten]

Hi,
Yes, Peter Henderson and I did EZX The Classic for Toontrack. And yes I played with The Waterboys.
As for the signature sound? Toontrack did mix our original recordings, but the recordings are incredibly diverse, as I say, sometimes just two ribbon mics in an untreated room, all the way up to the top of the range Air Studios with multiple expensive mics. We recorded a couple of drums in my abandoned grain silo in rural Australia.
I feel they show a great diversity.
If there is one thing I can point to which might create a sonic signature, it's the midi Toontrack use to make their online demos.
Their kicks and snare backbeats tend peak at 125-127, which is maximum velocity in midi. I always drop my midi drum tracks by at least 20, so the snare is hitting at 110-120. This brings out more natural warmth in the samples. Maybe in the demos people are just hearing the hard crack of a rimshot?
Hard for me to point to specific drums. I do feel Peter and I try to work differently to mainstream modern rock sessions. So we do seek out smaller studios, with fantastic old consoles. We do use two or three mics sometimes instead of multi-micing.
I have a lot of quite unusual drums, like Noble & Cooley, Craviotto and Drouyn (vintage Australian).
I mean these days we are overwhelmed with choice in sample products and software instruments. So I wouldn't ask you to buy yet more.
At the same time, I think it's quite a cheap way (£59/€59) for other users to add a lot of different flavours in kick and snare - 130 different flavours.

[Whitten]

A little over 10 minutes of drumsounds — from the past 50 years of recorded music —, very few of which, if any, I think can be summoned from Toontrack.

Definitely several of those sounds can be found in Kicks and Snares.
A lot of the 70's stuff in your audio mix is played (by the drummers) very softly.
If you program our sounds with softer midi you can definitely match a lot of those drier kicks and snares.

But anyway, don't compare a 50 euro sample pack with some of the greatest drum recordings of all time. Virtual drums are always a compromise compared to a real drummer. they are for people who can't afford a great studio, can't afford a real drummer, don't know any good studio drummers. Don't have time to book a studio or hire a drummer.
We have definitely covered a lot of those sounds in your audio demo, but it's a case of choosing the right drums in the pack, then mixing the various channels and making sure your midi is the appropriate velocity for the style of music you are trying to emulate.

[Guy Rowland]

(Just a thanks for these posts Chris, great to get your input).

[Whitten]

Thank you

[Piet De Ridder]

.
Hi Chris, a big thanks from me too for dropping by and taking the time to explain a few things, and for correcting my most faulty assumptions. (I also want to apologize if some of my comments caused irritation.)

You’re obviously correct with just about everything you’re saying, and I’m fully aware that a drums library — be it a £50 or a £500 one or even a £1.500 one, should that exist — is no replacement for a well-recorded good drummer, but within the limitations of all that sampled drums can be, I can’t shake off the feeling that Toontrack, despite covering such a huge range of types of drums, playing styles, timbres and recording techniques, still leaves quite a bit of territory unchartered. And I don’t know why.

And as I mentioned above, I believe it’s more a sound thing than anything else. It’s not so much the instruments, or the players, the recording techniques, the venues, the equipment or the people involved, but more the sonic imprint, or stamp, which characterizes the finished result, that makes me lump everything together — no doubt unfairly, as this thread is increasingly teaching me — as ‘Toontrack product’.

For example: I can’t think of a single TT pack that has hi-hats which sound quite like (or are as expressive as) these. (They’re the Mixosaurus hi-hats. To my ears, still the most satisfying sampled hats available, despite their considerable age.)
And when I hear this sampled drumkit (a little demo I did for HandheldAudio’s White Kit), I can immediately tell that it’s not a Toontrack kit. Just by the way it sounds. Not saying this White Kit is better or anything, it’s just that it has a sound and a character which Toontrack, as far as I know anyway, hasn’t captured (yet). (Even if Toontrack were to sample this exact same kit, in the exact same studio and with the exact same team, I have a strong feeling the final result would still sound very different, meaning: much more Toontrack-ish.)
Or take a very basic library like Peter Erskine’s Living Drums (a very old Sampleheadz drums library for Akai): that's another example of a sound which I haven’t heard in any Toontrack product I’m familiar with. And I could name several others.

And that’s what puzzles me a bit. Why, despite recording in so many different studios all over the world, with so widely different people and instruments and gear, (1) the sonic stamps of all these different sessions have so much overlap (to my ears anyway) and (2) why there are still so many sonic stamps which, for some reason, don’t seem to make it into a Toontrack product. (Which is why I compiled that montage in the first place: to illustrate different sonic stamps and characters of recorded drums.)

But again: it needs to be stressed that my hands-on experience is limited to SD2 plus a few of its expansions, and that I only know SD3 via audio demos. Perhaps, if I were more familiar with Toontrack’s most recent releases, I might have to adjust my views a bit.

Anyway, sincere thanks. For everything Toontrack- and, even more so, non-Toontrack related.

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[Whitten]

Hi,
Over the course of three separate Toontrack products, spanning 15 years, Peter and I have covered just about any recording scenario you can think of.
The first one we did (Custom & Vintage) was one of the first two Superior packs, and none of us knew quite what we were doing, as everything was new. Peter and I had recorded drums in the studio (2khz) in London, which had an amazing vintage EMI console, before. So when we went back with Toontrack we just did the same as before and the Toontrack team were very happy with that approach.
At the time it was absolutely the only drum sample pack recorded in a small dry room, with vintage drums. Every other pack was going for mainstream rock, with glossy sounding drums in large ambient rooms.
Around 2010 we made EZX The Classic for Toontrack. Again, at the time it was the only sample pack you could buy that had drums recorded with only four mics (ala Glyn Johns).
For the recording of EZX Kicks and Snares, Peter and I didn't work with Toontrack until we sent them the final recordings. We followed our own instincts and employed all the different recording scenarios we'd encountered in many decades of making records.
So it can't be that we've ignored any style of music or recording technique known to man.
The only other thing that could influence a sonic signature is the software engine itself - the way Superior plays back samples.
We've listened to EZX: Kicks and Snares at low velocity levels using my own drum midi with just the direct mics engaged and without fx or Toontrack 'presets' and feel the drums sound great, basically what we remember recording.
So you seem to be particularly sensitive to the playback engine of Superior (and perhaps EZdrummer)?
It can't really be that Peter and I have missed some recording scenario, or forgotten some alternative drum tunings, the way some drums are played, or the type of microphones some people use.
Pretty much all drum sample libraries are recorded from one to four days, in one recording studio, with one recording engineer and one drummer.
On this project, we recorded in 8 different studios with 3 different drummers over years, not even months.

[Guy Rowland]

FWIW Piet, I just don't hear anything different in your examples materially different from the kinds of sounds and expressivity in the Toontrack cannon. Of course I'm not saying that you can get identical results, but given the huge breadth of different sources I'm pretty sure I could find something that felt along the same lines.

I know Hans Z swears that the playback engine of Kontakt is somehow inferior and he doesn't like it, though I've never been convinced certainly when it comes to straightforward unprocessed samples. But who am I? So perhaps Chris here is right that there is something in the playback engine I simply cannot hear that you are sensitive to, though it seems improbable to me. What I suspect is more likely is that in some other specific products - especially Mixosaurus - they have a sonic signature that really chimes with you, and that is not immediately present in the drum sounds you have from Toontrack. If there's a sound I already love, I can find myself being disatisfied with other newer alternatives as I subconsciously keep wanting to return to that original sound.

But with 42 EZXs (with one of them having 130 snares alone), 16 SDXs and 2 core libraries recorded in all manner of places and configurations with all manner of different drums played by differnet drummers, I suspect there are some out there that you will bond with. The bravura compilation of Greatest Drumsounds In History re-inforced that point to me, in pretty much every case I felt that TT could give it a solid crack (ha ha), even allowing for the obvious gulf between real classic recordings and cheap sample packs.

[Piet De Ridder]

You know, when I was typing my previous post, I also got thinking that maybe there's something in Toontrack's playback engine that somehow does something to the sound which, on occasion, disagrees with me just a teensy-weensy bit.

See, I do agree with Hans Zimmer's opinion on the sound of Kontakt which, to my ears as well, tends to sound a bit scream-y, blurry, harsh and grainy, especially when there's a lot going on. It's not all that obvious when you have just a few instruments playing, but a production that consists entirely of Kontakt-based instruments is, in my opinion, often a recipe for rather unpleasant, congested and flat sound for which there is no real cure. You can make things sound decent, sure, and sometimes even good, yes, but never great. I also keep having difficulties with separating everything nicely in a mix when all the tracks are Kontakt-generated. So, whenever I have an EXS-equivalent for a Kontakt-patch, I will always go with the EXS.

I don't like the VSL-sound either. But I have a feeling that's more to do with the way they sample things over there than with their software.

Spectrasonics has a playback engine I quite like the sound of. If Kontakt often sounds a bit VHS to me, Spectrasonics's is more Blueray.

But back to Toontrack. You have to forgive me, but I keep doubting the claim that 'pretty much every' fragment of that montage can be emulated convincingly with some or other Toontrack-pack. (If I didn't doubt it, I wouldn't have posted that montage in the first place.) And I also need to hear it first before I'm prepared to accept that somewhere in Toontrack's vast catalog of samples there lurks a sampled hi-hat capable of matching Mixosaurus in all its articulate detail.

That said, I hope I haven't come across as someone holding negative views on Toontrack's products. Been using Superior Drummer enthusiastically since it was first released and despite that lingering faint feeling about things not always sounding quite how I would like them to sound, this thread has brought me closer again to pressing the SD2>SD3 upgrade button.

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