The Swedish company's software reaches a new tipping point: Toontrack has released the third version of its flagship software for batteries.
Over 230Gb of new samples recorded at the Galaxy Studio in Belgium by none other than George Massenburg, combined with a completely rewritten software full of new features.
Superior Drummer hadn't been developed since 2008; in recent years Toontrack had focused much more on carrying on her younger brother, Ez Drummer, paving the way for what would be the new flagship software.
- THE SOFTWARE
Upper Drummer 3 comes as a plug-in in formats VST, AU, Aax or as a standalone application on 64bit Windows and MacOS systems only. There are two possibilities for obtaining the software: via direct download or via an external SSD provided directly by the company, a clearly more expensive mode. Having a good internet connection, downloading from the Product Manager is still a fairly advantageous choice, considering that installation and updates take place from there anyway. You just need to have a little patience to install the huge library available.
The company also declares that compatibility with older versions of Superior Drummer is possible: for example, by owning the V2 on your PC, you can install V3 without affecting the operation of the V3.
For registration, as we said, the staff of toontrack went to the galaxy studios in Belgium, using a 330sqm room with a height of eight meters, acoustically treated in an impeccable way. At the mixer he was present George Massenburg, a living legend in the field of sound engineering, who had the opportunity to record various drum kits for inclusion in the software. Let's talk about Yamaha, Tama, Ludwig, Pearl, Premier, Gretsh, Ayotte, played both with normal sticks, brushes or hot rods.
To give you an example, the library offers 26 snare drums with nine different variations, for each “piece” of the drum kit there are samples depending on the groove chosen by the drummer at that moment. For the hi hat alone we have 27 different “intentions” to use! There are also electronic kits that can be combined with the acoustic starting kit. So for example we can have an acoustic and an electronic kick in the same set.
- THE TEST
Speaking of the interface, we note that one of the biggest news is that each drum piece is displayed with individual graphics and the whole set is fully customizable by adding, for example, parts from other kits. On the right side of the main panel you can edit the main parameters for each part of the drum kit we have created. In addition to being able to act on the level, we can act on the drum tuning and other parameters such as humanize, pitch, the possibility of creating reverse effects and more. By providing this possibility, even routing has been significantly expanded: in fact, unlike the previous versions, the system is completely "open", since each channel of a sample can be routed to any other existing channel within the SD3 mixer ; it is also possible to create new mixer channels.
The internal mixer also provides 35 effects created in collaboration with the software house Overloud. We have emulations Neve, Urei, SPL transient designer and several others. Among other things, we must point out that the samples were recorded to have as little reverb as possible on each part of the drum kit, so that you can act later to add some ambience to your set. All this either via your DAW or via 6 algorithms of reverb internal to SD3.
In total the software provides 1600 different groove with a browser with five main categories to skim them (Genre, Play Style, Type, Time, Power Hand, the latter allows you to determine which is the dominant drum within the set). It is possible to completely edit existing grooves in a very intuitive way. SD3 also provides a Midi Grid Editor internal, very useful when using the software in standalone mode.
The company has also developed a Drum Trackers internal, so as to bypass the various Trigger software on the market. This means that you can import drum audio multitracks and export them as midi files. The developers claim that they have fed the software about one and a half million files, to make it "understand" how to distinguish a drum track, snare drum or overhead, and then translate them into midi without errors. Actually it is just like that: by importing an audio multitrack, Drum Tracker is able to create very precise midi files for each part of the drum kit that it is told to analyze.
- PROJECTED IMPACT
In conclusion we are faced with an excellent drum emulation software, not only in the pre-production phase, thanks to the grooves present, but also in the mixing phase, having the possibility to trigger in a very simple way any part of our drum multitrack and replace it with samples of absolute quality. For example, I found the snare emulations fantastic Tama Artwood Maple 14 "x 8", which I have used on many occasions to create a very deep snare sound that was not originally possible to achieve in the recording phase. Excellent for this use also the Ludwig Coliseum 14 "x 8", which with a skilful "tuning" through the tuning function, becomes very useful to create the classic 80s snare.
Talking about the groove section, we are facing a very high level. For the first time in my life, I had the distinct sensation of listening to a real drummer and not a simple plug-in, with the possibility of bringing all these grooves to midi and therefore being able to change them as I wish.
On the choice to insert plug-in emulations of historical machines at the hardware level, I find myself relatively in agreement with Toontrack: today there are dozens of emulations available, even at low cost, which more or less all do their honest job. Of course, it is clear that the Swedish company's goal was not to compete with the various software houses producing hardware emulations, but to make Superior Drummer 3 a completely self-sufficient software, giving the possibility to a producer, or to any musician, to have your drum sound already beautiful and ready at the “exit” of the software, without having to use anything else.
In fact, speaking of this, the standalone mode, the presence of all these plug-ins and the possibility of mixing, favor the use of SD3 through a virtual external drum, so that the programming is decidedly immediate and the touch response on Roland pad with mesh leathers returns an optimal feeling. Clearly the software is very heavy and therefore you must still use a high performance PC, in order not to incur possible crashes during the executions.
In short, we purists will continue to argue that the "real" drummer will always give that sound that the software (at least for now) cannot fully emulate, but Superior Drummer 3 takes the world of preproduction to a much more advanced stage, indeed Using drum recordings of this quality will force users to make mixes of a certain level to keep up with them.
The price of 329 € is widely justified for what Superior Drummer offers, starting from the huge library available, up to the possibility of having the management of a 11.1 surround.
PRO:
- Endless library of samples and grooves for all tastes
- Very high quality of the recordings, made by George Massenburg
- Ability to use standalone software, without the need to use other mixing software
AGAINST:
- None, but remember to use these software wisely and inventively, not just to "replace" the drummer!
Useful Information:
Official website: www.toontrack.com
Italian distributor: www.midiware.com
Good music everyone!
Vincenzo Siani
