Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by toodamnhip »

James Steele wrote:I just watched some of the promo vids for this on YouTube. So many features my eyes sort of glazed over and I felt thankful I'm basically a rocker guy at heart and made me yearn even more for the days of just using a human drummer whenever possible.

That said, the feature that caught my eye was the one where you can tap in a basic pattern and then SD3 will search its groove library for all the grooves that are similar to the pattern you tapped in. Takes a lot of the hit or miss out of it, especially if I'm working on a song where I have a basic idea of what the feel should be with the kick/snare. I could see myself using that one often.
That search feature has been on EZ drummer for a long time. Nice to see SD3 finally came out. I am looking forward to replacing pieces of live drums that were;t recorded well enough. Looks like SD3 is cutting edge in this area.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mikehalloran »

mhschmieder wrote:Took me all night and all day (I hate leaving my computer on while at the office) to do the downloads/installs, but now it is done and I launched it quickly enough to make sure it works and that it found all of the libraries.

Greatly improved interface and workflow overall. A bit strange though that some EZX libraries are getting identified as Superior libraries.
Took me about 28 hours but downloads were slow. I expect that there were many users accessing the server at once. It should be faster now that most of the pre-order users have downloaded.

I turned Time Machine off during the process. I didn't want to back up 183g of installer files that I would be deleteting when done. The Toontrack Product Manager lets you delete the installers once you are done with them bypassing the Trash — nice touch.

No idea what SSD5 will bring to the table — haven't been paying attention. Until this thread, I'd forgotten that I bought it during some sale that Sweetwater had way back. I did see that I was running the SSD4 beta files so I logged in and updated the AU. I'll deal with 5 when it is released.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by toodamnhip »

mikehalloran wrote:
mhschmieder wrote:Took me all night and all day (I hate leaving my computer on while at the office) to do the downloads/installs, but now it is done and I launched it quickly enough to make sure it works and that it found all of the libraries.

Greatly improved interface and workflow overall. A bit strange though that some EZX libraries are getting identified as Superior libraries.
Took me about 28 hours but downloads were slow. I expect that there were many users accessing the server at once. It should be faster now that most of the pre-order users have downloaded.

I turned Time Machine off during the process. I didn't want to back up 183g of installer files that I would be deleteting when done. The Toontrack Product Manager lets you delete the installers once you are done with them bypassing the Trash — nice touch.

No idea what SSD5 will bring to the table — haven't been paying attention. Until this thread, I'd forgotten that I bought it during some sale that Sweetwater had way back. I did see that I was running the SSD4 beta files so I logged in and updated the AU. I'll deal with 5 when it is released.
I could use some help. SD3 has an amazing ability to export the drums to sound files, all in 1 action. But they omitted something. If you agree, it would be nice to see you go to their user forum and ask for this update- The ability to bounce individual files THROUGH the mixer. As it stands now, you can bounce them as separate files PRE mixer, or, as a stereo file, POST mixer. There are some amazing mixing capabilities and pre sets available. But when you individually send out the separated files, you lose all that amazing mixer processing. Thus, toontrack needs to add a 3rd option, that being to export individual drum parts THROUGH the mixer. I have submitted a request at the forum. But the more the merrier right?
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by James Steele »

toodamnhip wrote:That search feature has been on EZ drummer for a long time. Nice to see SD3 finally came out. I am looking forward to replacing pieces of live drums that were;t recorded well enough. Looks like SD3 is cutting edge in this area.
Hmmm... that's interesting. I never noticed it. I'll have to check that out.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by toodamnhip »

James Steele wrote:
toodamnhip wrote:That search feature has been on EZ drummer for a long time. Nice to see SD3 finally came out. I am looking forward to replacing pieces of live drums that were;t recorded well enough. Looks like SD3 is cutting edge in this area.
Hmmm... that's interesting. I never noticed it. I'll have to check that out.
Its slightly more refined in Superior. Been working with it for 2 days, some great things, and other things like tracker real drums and converting to MIDI, that I am having trouble with. It is great at tracking audio ti MIDI, amazing, but sending it back to DP , I cant get it to sync. So I am doing crazy work around till i figure it out. Another thing apparently missing from various areas of all toontrack stuff, swing quantize. I am going to get on them for that. Even non jazz stuff can benefit from swing %, even if slight
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mhschmieder »

The search feature, and the general way of replacing kit pieces, is such a huge time-saver, and also means I never have to worry about having overlooked a superior (no pun intended) choice as in BFD3.

Of course, it helps that there is a rational and consistent approach to naming and organizing things to start with, but that may just be a reflection of it being a closed platform with all sound data coming from the original vendor, vs. BFD3 being an open platform with library contributors all over the map.

New libraries take advantage of new features in S3, but they also default in such a way that they mix well with older kits without any real effort. I really appreciate the effort they put into compatibility of kits and consistency across the kits.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mhschmieder »

Some of the newer libraries have spot mics on the ride cymbal, I discovered last night, while getting around to auditioning some of the kits I had bypassed earlier.

Still not sure if I'm going to use the internal mixer or not. I don't like being locked in with only a stereo drum file for the long-term, but there's no denying the power of Superior 3's mixer and its incredible versatility as well as how idealized it is for New York Compression and other side-chaining and parallel processing workflows.

The internal effects seem good quality, but many have zero controls; maybe they're built into the specific library and are just on or off. For instance, "Black Box" shows up on quite a few presets, but no controls are displayed if I click to expand, and yet it's for Compression and Reverb both. I keep thinking I haven't found all the routings yet, but I think it's probably a fixed preset as with EZMix.

I generally don't care for other people's presets, and the Superior mixer is so complex that I don't know if I'd want to spend the time doing my own as I doubt the things I do at that level would be generic enough to make my own presets vs. being song-specific anyway.

And of course I have way more effects than any sane person should own, so the ONLY advantage to me of the internal mixing would be if the presets are better than what I can do on my own, due to knowledge and experience of who made them (but of course they don't know my usage contexts).

One thing is for certain: I am going to look into resale terms/costs for BFD stuff very soon, as I'm not convinced I'll be using any of it any more. I bought everything, just about -- even from third-party vendors. And the Percussion lib may still be necessary as there probably is still stuff that isn't done well elsewhere. But in general, I'm just finding the actual SOUND of the Superior libs to be more what I aim for when I record live drums, in terms of miking choices and how the drums are tuned (and the kit pieces themselves; especially the snares and the cymbals).
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mhschmieder »

This is the one year anniversary of Superior 3 (it seems longer ago!), so most of the expansions are on sale. I have all but The (Bob) Rock Foundry, which is too new to be on sale yet. My highest recommendation for breadth of coverage is The Progressive Foundry, which also has mallets, brushes, and even a stainless steel drum set from Ludwig!
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mhschmieder »

I'm lucky I got onto their forum when I did, and was able to get through the entire year's worth of postings, to quickly get answers to my many questions (and to post two of my own), as the forum has been down for several days now. Apparently whoever put together the anniversary celebration, broke some links.

I didn't print anything, but read things enough times that I remember what I learned -- much of which I have since summarized and posted here as well.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mhschmieder »

After considerably more time with Superior 3 tonight, I have firmed my decision to do all of the mixing in Digital Performer, in spite of how flexible and advanced the internal mixing engine is.

The bottom line is that the built-in effects may be great for people starting out, and compared to previous versions, but they don't hold a candle to the plug-ins I have available for use inside DP.

Also, even the presets in the newer expansions are too over-the-top and artificial once one listens more closely. But they can sometimes provide hints about level balancing and mic routing.

So what I do is find either a kit preset I like, or an overall preset (when that preset's kit isn't available in the desired configuration in the kit preset drop-list), then I set the mixer to default, and leave everything else as-is except for raising the cymbals and hi-hat by 6 dB and the ride cymbal by 12 dB (for most kits; this will vary to some degree).

The cymbals are all artificially low in Superior 3 to account for downstream processing in the presets, which doesn't pertain in my case, so I'd rather not have my peaks be at -32 to -36 dB max, even though I do tend to mix with peaks brought down to -24 dB -- that's still a big gap though.

In BFD 3, I did WAY more than this, as I hated ALL of the default settings for tuning, resonance, mic combinations, and generic mix levels between kit pieces and between the mics within a kit piece.

Superior 3 has such good internal balance out of the gate though, and the OH and ambience mics are so good (I turned ALL of them off in BFD 3, except for rare exceptions), that I'm not finding a need to tweak at that level. Also, I'm glad bleed is off by default (it's on by default in BFD 3, so it's a time sink to undo all of that, and to save time I made a generic template preset and then just loaded different kits).

Once I got the ride cymbal up to a usable level, I became more attached to the ones in Superior. I never liked the top kit in BFD, or the snares, even after buying all of the expansions. Snares are good in some third-party libs, but the cymbals are so hard to browse and know where you are in the list or what is worth comparing, and I ended up finding almost all of them too brash or not at a pitch I could use.

The toms were always the strength of BFD3 in my view, but in Superior 3, you also have rim shots available, which isn't part of most standard techniques but sure gets used a lot by the drummer in the jazz combo that I lead, so I've become more aware of how tom rim shots can also help substitute for timbales in latin music and in latin jazz (even more than snare rim shots with the snare turned off).

One of my favourite kits that I haven't had a chance to use yet (so far the candidate projects weren't as good a fit as I expected them to be), is the Ludwig Stainless Steel kit mentioned earlier. I thought I might end up using that on some jazz fusion pieces, but ended up finding the Pearl Masters Series to cut through and blend the best with saxes and other warm instruments.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by FMiguelez »

mhschmieder wrote: The bottom line is that the built-in effects may be great for people starting out, and compared to previous versions, but they don't hold a candle to the plug-ins I have available for use inside DP.
I totally agree. They're MUCH BETTER than what we had in SD2, but they're a far cry from what we have available in 3rd party specialized suites.

But I really really love this upgrade. It's almost as if they rewrote the program from the ground up, with spectacular results. Hell, even some aspects of SD3's MIXER put DP's mixer to shame, I may add...
mhschmieder wrote: Also, even the presets in the newer expansions are too over-the-top and artificial once one listens more closely. But they can sometimes provide hints about level balancing and mic routing.
I have one of the metal kits, and yes, the presets are really over-the-top. But in this case it's metal, a style I hardly know, and it seems most presets would work in a mix quite well once you have all the other elements.

If anything, the presets show me that I don't have to be shy when tweaking! :) I had never seen such exaggerated EQ manipulation to get top end from the drums in Metal styles! These guys are not kidding and are certainly not afraid of +18 dB shelf EQ settings!
Also, I think it's very nice to see how different producers use and abuse the OH and ambient mics with level and EQ. Very different and surprising approaches and results. For a non-expert drum mixer, like me, this is invaluable lesson material, especially for styles/genres I don't have much experience with.
mhschmieder wrote: So what I do is find either a kit preset I like, or an overall preset (when that preset's kit isn't available in the desired configuration in the kit preset drop-list), then I set the mixer to default, and leave everything else as-is except for raising the cymbals and hi-hat by 6 dB and the ride cymbal by 12 dB (for most kits; this will vary to some degree).
May I ask where and how you raise the cymbals? Since there are no default dedicated mics for them, do you treat the OH and ambient mics as faders for the cymbals? Does most of your "cymbal mix/sound" come from some combination of those mics at a preferred ratio?

What I've been doing is to treat each ambient mics set (or mic) as if they were the only drum mics I had and make them sound nice on their own, with perhaps a "special feature" in each (a low or high pass filter, softened transients, etc), so that all combined sound nice. This is where having the bleed submixer in each channel is so useful! I don't know if this is the best approach, but the possibilities seem almost endless with all this control at so many different levels.
It's delightfully complicated :)

One thing I still have to resolve is how to make the cymbals not so obviously panned to the sides. I don't recall real drum kits from rock bands I liked to be like that... I need to dig out my Guns 'n Roses CDs for reference for hard-rock.

How do you deal with cymbal panning, Mark?

I've been thinking of having 2 separate MIDI tracks, one for skins-only and one for cymbals-only. That way I could manipulate them separately and control the cymbals' pan to my liking. But perhaps it's better to do it via stacks or X-drums within SD3?
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

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This is just a partial answer for now, as I had to halt my reading 3/4 of the way down since I only do internet stuff at work if eating my sack lunch or when waiting on compiles to finish.

The level control is in the info column on the right, at the very top. I'm doing this from memory so don't recall the terminology for that panel and whether it's automatically present -- certainly SD3 reopens with your last session's settings intact, which saves time. So I might have manually opened an info panel to make those fields available. You have up to +12 available.

Of course, you have to have the relevant kit piece highlighted. And if you hop across the kit, you'll notice that some of the kit presets already have some level adjustments -- usually with some of the cymbals brought down below unity gain! Yet in the "full mix" presets, the top kit rings through -- I just don't like the metallic edge to the sound of the snare and toms (and even the kick) so can't use those presets, as well as not wanting to bake in the settings for only one single stereo drum track in the DAW.

I agree about the shock of seeing huge positive gain on the EQ's in the preset mixes. I'm of the old school mixing, where you mostly do trim and not gain. But it is kind of fun to study the settings, when they're exposed (unlike a few that I think are "wrappers" for EZMix stuff, as there's no controls). The routing quickly gets over my head though, once it gets four levels deep as it often does. But I know I could learn some stuff from that.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mhschmieder »

I do all my panning in the DAW. As I record each kit piece to a separate track, I don't need it pre-panned.

Note that there's no strong need to center the mics in the mix when you mono-sum either. For some reason, this works perfectly in SD3, but I think I remember getting different results in BFD3 if I didn't first center all of the mics, even though using the mono instance of the VI.

When recording kit pieces that only have distance mics, I used to fret that this would smear the image when combining the tracks for mixing later on (I'm talking BFD days at this point), but the kit pieces were recorded independently so this is not a problem. And they combine even better in SD3.

It's too bad there's no mono instance with SD3 as with BFD3, but I just collapse the VI to a mono bus with -9 dB trim on the return (-6 dB for overall level being too hot, and an additional -3 dB for mono summing). And yes, I know that mono summing often trims by -3.5 dB, but this trim is just to prevent too hot of a signal rather than for level-matching with other tracks.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mhschmieder »

Still kind of skimming while doing other things, so I'll be bouncing around a bit on the various points.

I'm so happy with the internal balance of the mics in SD3 that I'm not bothering with any adjustments at all in the mixer window. They also made really smart choices for which mics to include with each kit piece. Not to mention that they chose good mics and miking techniques (and positions, and rooms) to start with.

I thought I might make an exception for "traditional jazz miking techniques", regarding outside kick only, which snare mic to keep, and then only OH's, but I'm finding that sticking with the more modern multi-mic method that was applied to all of the expansions, is working well within a jazz mix, and that picking the appropriate kit pieces is accomplishing the authenticity aspect.

Interestingly, for my fourteen song "not quite jazz" album, four pieces of which do not have a western drum set (instead, various ethnic drums from South America), I ended up with a different kit for each song, and now have brushes on three of them -- I could never get brushes to cut through with BFD's kits.

As for ideas of making OH tracks in the DAW for virtual drums, I've never really found that useful. I tried it in both BFD3 and SD3, where I'd send all MIDI tracks to the various OH and ambient mics, for their own tracks, and leave them out of the individual drum tracks. The problem is that this forces you into final level balancing decisions prematurely, without full song context (e.g. vocals are often done last, and might require re-tweaking the top kit, snare, or even the kick).

Of course, there are several production tricks that require the OH and ambient mics to be treated as a group. I simply give up that capability when working with drum VI's, and even though the OH and ambient mics are "baked in" for my individual kit piece tracks, I find that I'm not having to use much production, and not of the type where that might be an issue, along with no phasing issues and less need for reverb as the rooms are so great.
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Re: Superior 3 from Toontrack announced today

Post by mhschmieder »

As for skins vs. top-kit, as separate tracks, vs. all-the-way individual tracks, I'm not sure how that would work in SD3 as I don't yet quite understand what's in each mic channel.

For instance, is the bleed a dynamic interactive thing only when you are feeding the spot mics with MIDI for each, or is there some modeled or recorded interaction in the mics for each instrument, that get triggered even if you're only feeding the snare's MIDI, as long as you record the affected mic channels?

I personally hate bleed. I've spent a LOT of time with it over the years, when trying to see what I can learn from producers who DO like bleed, and always conclude that I just don't like it. Many feel it makes for more realism, but I don't feel the bleed most mics pick up is comparable to the natural interaction of the kit pieces that we hear at a live performance.

As for stacking, it appears there's some of that going on with a few of the hi-hat articulations, for instance. I may consider it later, but for now I'm just splitting my MIDI in a few places and independently triggering some snare rim shots to match the normal hits, as a way of emulating different strokes, and adjusting the MIDI velocities for proper balance of the "stacked" articulations.

I may try to work more with stacking within SD3 later on, but drum production has been my forte longer than anything else, and I know what works for me, even in multiple genres, so I'm not terribly interested in making things MORE complicated unless I have specific problems to solve, which I don't. From a "creative sound" point of view, I find it interesting to learn what others do with such processes, but am pretty traditional in my preferences as I like wide-open dynamics and a fairly dry overall timbre.
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