Steven Slate Drums... Wow

[conleycd]

Hi guys,

If you are interested in Rock, Pop, or Metalish stuff... this drum sample library is amazing. I picked up the LE version and was blown away. It comes with Kontakt 3.x. The stand alone instrument is built around it as are the plugins.

We actually rigged up an acoustic to electric edrum kit at my church and ran Steven Slate Drums (triggered by an old Alesis D4) - and it was amazing. No perceivable latency and punchy, punchy, punchy.

The customer service by Yellow Matter (I think that is the parent company) has been really great to me too.

Anyway thought people may like to know.

Check it out (not to sound like an ad): www.stevenslatedrums.com

CC

[mhschmieder]

Well, opinions seem quite polarised on this library. I personally think they're some of the worst virtual drums I've heard in recent years. But I suppose it's all a matter of taste, as I'm not a big fan of effects and feel these kits leave little to no room left to manouevre. Maybe the MP3 audio examples were just poorly done, but I listened to every single one of them a few months ago, and there are a lot of them, and not even one of them struck me as being anywhere near the level of clarity, air, space, detail, and fluidity of phrasing, as BFD 2, Ocean Way, or Superior.

It's good they're working out for you though, and I seem to recall they will have a BFD 2.1 kit available, maybe for free or as a cheap add-on, for those who prefer that work environment to using Kontakt or other generalised sampler VI's.

[conleycd]

Really?

I checked out Superior Drums and BFD and felt they were no better than any of the samples I had accumulated over the years.

With the SSD they are actually recorded fairly flat with slight eqs and compression. The instrument though does offer a good deal of variability in how you mix them. You can have overhead samples on each of the drums either on or off. As well, you can adjust the room variability on each drum and overall.

I don't think they would suit someone who wasn't into doing rock and pop music. No Jazz drummer is going to be happy with it.

Most of Rock and Pop stuff relies on pretty closed mic sounds - so there isn't (literally) a lot air between the drum and the sound developing. But as I mentioned you can tweak the kit with any variety of variables.

Our drummer said when he played the kit with the sample library and the band - it sounded (in his in ear monitors) exactly like he was playing to a well mixed CD - that's a pretty high compliment.

I can say - even as a non-drummer that I could do snare rolls unlike I have ever experienced with other drum machines or sample set.

Anyway... perhaps different strokes for different folks.

CC

[mhschmieder]

Maybe their audio demos just aren't representative. Wouldn't be the first time.

Also, I'm not sure the demos I heard were for the new version, which might be a rewrite or at least a change of platforms.

[conleycd]

Mhschmieder - listen/watch the videos that the fellow did with the v-drums on the website. They maybe more representative than the MP3s on the front page.

They're here:

http://www.stevenslatedrums.com/index.p ... &Itemid=41

CC

[mhschmieder]

Thanks. I always try to keep an open mind about products and vendors. I'll give that link a listen when I get home in four days time.

After all, if I had permanently written off IK Multimedia based on AmpliTube 1, I wouldn't own some of my most used current plug-ins.

[mhschmieder]

OK, I've run out of time to go through more of the demos, but did watch the first two video demos, and they do leave a very different impression of the QUALITY if not the CHARACTER of this drum library.

I can tell from these video demos that the drum library is well-programmed and is very playable and fluid, with good capture of natural phrasing and articulations, and an especially good match for V-Drum input triggers.

Players probably need this sort of specially-tailored library for e-drum playing (which is different from keyboard or drum pad based virtual drum playing or MIDI based track rendering).

Due to the poorness of the main audio demos on the front page, I had initially concluded that this was a poorly recorded library. This is clearly not the case; nor is it poorly programmed.

The CHARACTER of the library is completely not to my taste, however, so it has come down to personal preferences vs. an indictment of the QUALITY of the library.

I personally detest compression on bass or drums. That puts me in the minority. I've recently picked up some classic/vintage mics because I want to capture that 60's drum sound, before effecting drums got so popular. I like wide lopen drums.

This library strikes me as being very compressed, with some pulling back of that tendency in the older vintage kits. I was bothered by Steve Albini's expansion pack for B.F.D. for the same reason, and resold it.

[mhschmieder]

On a separate note, the interface, which is based on Kontakt Player 2, looks very intuitive and easy to use -- though I do prefer drum libraries to specifically identify kit pieces as that is how I personally put kits together (but that's also because I prefer unprocessed drums).

What is curious is that it isn't Kontakt or Kontakt Player but a special version done just for Steven Slate called SSD Player.

This begs the question of what happens next, now that Kontakt 3.5 consolidates and integrates all of the separate concepts from Kontakt and Kontakt Player into a unified code base and interface with feature-selectivity based on license keys (or something like that). In other words, where does SSD Player go from here?

I also thought there was a B.F.D. 2.1 version of Steven Slate Drums that was to be made available either for free or for a nominal fee, but didn't locate information on that this time around.

At any rate, this library is probably better overall quality than the similar producer's kits from fxpansion, which were originally done for the early versions of B.F.D. One would expect any Next Generation product to be better.

Given the price, though, and its size and level of detail, I think a fairer comparison isn't to B.F.D. XFL or B.F.D. Deluxe, but rather to the Producer Packs from Platinum Samples, which are now starting to take advantage of B.F.D. 2.1 capabilities.

To my ears (and I owned the Andy Johns and Joe Barressi kits until recently, when I sold them to a long-time forumite friend), the Platinum Samples kits excel on top-kit where the detail of sample tails really shows up (especially cymbals).

But it wouldn't be fair to make a final comparison vs. on-line demos, which are by their very nature compressed anyway and may thus exhibit artefacts that affect cymbal tails.

I haven't seen raw specs to let my eyes vs. my ears be the judge, in terms of number of velocity layers and overall sample size. Those can be deceiving statistics so I prefer not to depend on them.

[conleycd]

Good to hear your thoughts. The whole library is actually just an instrument that loads into Kontakt. I am running now Kontakt 3 not-beta version and SSD shows up as a library to load up. I might be a little different in that each drum loads as though is its own patch. I don't use Kontakt for anything else so I don't know how other instruments load up.

There is some custom programming of course for things like whether the overheads are on or off for each drum. Most of the individual drum descriptions are sufficient (i.e. Maple toms or something of the like).

I picked up the LE version just because of cost. I think in SOS there is a coupon for $25 off with a promotion code.

CC

[bongo_x]

I'll give you my take on it, bear in mind though that I don't really know what I'm talking about and don't know much about the subject at hand.

I did listen to the samples on the front page briefly and it's not something I'd be interested in. It all sounds like the samples are already compressed, eq'd, etc. As an engineer I want to do that to my liking. Non-engineers may disagree. I really wanted the Bun E. Carlos drums that someone put out a while back, but they were all mixed stereo tracks. No offense to Mr. Albini (who recorded them) but I would rather do my own mix that would fit my needs better.

The other side of that is, if you are using these as your main drums then you're using the same sounds everyone else is. With so much processing already done it's really hard to make it into something else. It seems that much popular music sounds the same these days, and I think it's because everyone's using the same sounds and equipment to make it.

I could be totally wrong about this, but being naturally lazy I'm disinclined to to the work necessary to validate my opinion.

bb

[conleycd]

Well... if you want to venture your own way on drum sounds then yes popular sample libraries are not going to float your boat.

But, if I can make drums sound like Tom and Chris Lord-Alge do then I'm real happy. A lot of popular music sounds similar in the mixing department because popular mixing folks are mixing multiple albums.

I think my mixes are reasonable but if someone cited one of my mixes and said that it sounded like something on the radio or a commercially produced album - I'd be pretty happy.

When stray too far from what other people are doing people will often think it sounds bad - and sometimes it does.

CC