How big of a difference is there between Steven Slate compared to Superior Drummer, Addictive Drummer, BFD?

[CapCrunch]

Money is very much a factor but if there is such a clear difference in usefulness of these programs than so be it. It would be used 90% for live playing. Getting realistic sounding and nuanced triggered drum sounds would be my focus. I just have the SSD free and compared to my old modules like it pretty well. One thing I couldn't do was completely control the volume of a cymbal. All I could do was lower the overhead volume which affected the other drums too. In my old modules I could just choose a certain cymbal sound and control it any way I pleased. Maybe I'm missing this. Regardless, I'd like to be able to better understand if the cost of the SD, AD and BFD compared to SSD is justified for what I hope for. Thanks

[Pim]

Hi,

I can't say much about the other VSTs, but you can control the volumes of each cymbal individually in SSD5. Just route the audio of each instrument/mic to separate (aux) channels. The default is "stereo out 1"...if you click on that there is a dropdown menu showing you all the options. With the correct routing, the sounds of the other instruments won't be affected.

Best regards,
Pim

[ffmcloud]

In AD2 you can dial the Voulume of each individual Instrument.
Cymbals only have one zone (edge sound). Ride and Hi Hat have edge, bow and bell sounds.
You can download a free version of AD2 that includes Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat and Crash, but should be enough to try what you want to achieve.

[perceval]

Having tried a few, here's my very own perspective, YMMV!

Tried BFD a long time ago, didn't like it. I haven't seen a lot of updates to the program, so I don't think I miss much.

Looked at SSD, didn't feel right. It was a pass.

AD is quite good and very easy to set up. It has a gazillion of presets, so finding one that comes close to the sound you're looking for should be easy enough. Then, fine tweaking the sound is easy with the well laid out controls and effects. It might take you a while to adjust to the HH's performance, as it needs another midi note produced to end the initial hit, whether it is another hit or a chick on the pedal.

EZD is a bit like like AD, as the samples are more compressed, but there is a little less control on effects as it is easily done in AD. But, EZD shares the continuously variable HH like SD, which is a bonus.

Finally, the behemoth, SD. Huge samples, loads of mics and routing options. Few presets to get you started, but the options to play with the sounds are endless... which means you will initially need to spend a lot of time to fine tune the sound you are looking for, and it can be a rabbit hole. You start adding fx, routing, etc and there's still more you think you could do! It is very powerful, but can also become a nightmare, especially if you want to play quickly with different sounds.

PS. There's another one worth mentioning.
DrumMic'a. From Seinheiser. It's a free VST that sounds pretty good. It has the same HH limitations as AD/SSD/BFD, but... it's free!
The only thing, it needs to run inside Kontakt, and I hate that platform.

[jacko]

just a comment on sd3...

comparatively speaking, i don't know how many presets sd3 has compared to the others, but it does have plenty of presets and can be used with a 'plug and play' approach. this is something rarely mentioned with sd3 - most people focus on the tweakability which is of course what sets it apart, but you can just use the great presets and play without going down the rabbit hole if/when you want. for example:

https://youtu.be/g5A5VHox0zo

https://youtu.be/VGPRfBg8EiA

this gives you the luxury of 'just playing' when you want, or going in depth if necessary for recording or detailed set up for specific live situations as required

i haven't tried to get the degree of isolation the OP wants on individual cymbals in sd3

[CapCrunch]

Helpful to read these comments. My skill level is more to just take the drum sound as is so the tweakability and midi grooves included won't be used much by me. Good to see the range of sounds in those youtube videos. I actually have that Drumica but have never actually heard it as I couldn't figure out the Kontact format to get it to open in Reaper. So like Perceval said it's a stumbling block but I'll try to figure it out again. Good to know from Pim how to turn the individual instruments down in SSD. It's a bit more complicated than just turning the instrument volume down but good to know there's a way. Also good to know about that demo of AD. I'll check it out. Thanks!

[monospace]

I have no experience with the other sampler software mentioned by the OP, but I have been using SD2 and SD3 for more than a decade so I can comment on that.

I understand that many people like to mess with different drum kits and different sounds, and it's obviously very good for that — but it can get expensive too, once you start looking into expansion packs. Me, I prefer to pick/build just one kit, so I picked one and and made it "mine" by tweaking it the way I want it. Obviously, SD3 is very good for that too! If I were to use this in a live setting, I would treat it just like I treat an acoustic drum kit: I don't have a separate kit for each song, so this one is it.

It's $400 which may sound steep compared to some of the other options, but considering the range of what you can do with it, it's worth every penny, in my opinion. (Not to mention that for that money, you get 7 meticulously recorded drumkits plus a sh!tton of snares and cymbals.)

For example, in addition to being able to adjust the volume of each close microphone, every drum and every cymbal also has their own Level control in the Drum Tab that you can modify. In addition to that, you can control how much of each cymbal (or drum) bleeds into every other microphone. What I did for some of the cymbals is to "detach" them from their standard microphone routing (i.e. the overheads) and create a new mic channel for them. I can then increase or decrease the volume of that cymbal into that new mic (in addition to the instrument level mentioned earlier), I can pan it around in the stereo image of the kit, and finally route it into a new "overhead" bus along with my other custom cymbal mic channels.

You can do similar fun stuff with the drums, of course. And I haven't even mentioned creating X-Drums, or the very capable effects in the Mixer Tab. Or the incredible useful Tracker Tab and the Grooves Tab. For 400 bucks you get all of that. It was and is a no brainer to me.

[monospace]

Oh, and another reason why SD3 kicks ass: the macro controls. In this screenshot, you can only see the assignments I made for basic volume busses, but you can connect and control pretty much any effect you like as well. You can even connect multiple busses, effects sends & returns, and individual effect parameters in a single macro, giving you endless creative possibilities. Combine it with a cheap MIDI controller (mine was $20 on Amazon), assign the knobs and sliders to the macros as you see fit, and you have a level of control over your sound that you can't get with even the most expensive Roland modules.

Untitled-1 copy.png (1.23 MiB) Viewed 1075 times

(The strip of instruments on the left are my X-Drums. The first is my secondary snare, the others are assigned to my BT-1 trigger bar and I can switch between them with a footswitch connected to my eDrumIn.)

[monospace]

Here’s Luke Oswald barely scratching the surface of what you can do with Macros in Superior Drummer 3.