Superior drummer 3 ...what do people think?

PolarityMan

http://www.studio-one.expert/studio-one-blog//toontrack-announce-superior-drummer-3-all-the-facts

Ive been a convert to BFD since I jumped ship from toontrack's dfh, tbh I feel like I have samples covered and its hard to beleive that their triggering stuff i going to be that much better than slate or drumagog and all the other stuff I would never use since i program all my own drums.

What do you guys think?

mrleon83

I had huge amounts of excitement at first .. it sounds good but so does sd2 ... I think it might be overkill for me right now, the drum replacement seems very clever ... so yeah, I'm waiting for some amateur YouTube clips to hear sound quality ... tbh I've been i
using Ezdrummer 2 more recently for the instant gratification ... 

guitarfishbay

So it's out.  Has anyone tried it?

I've not bought it yet.  I might hang on a while yet, I don't need any of the new features yet and still want to pick up a couple of the already released SDX packs instead first.

I'm guessing that they'll release the Colin Richardson pack as an S3 SDX this metal month.

Lodious

Finally got this downloaded and installed (It took about 4 hours to install after the download!). So far it seems really, really good. I never really liked the SD2 NY Avatar drum sounds and these are in a totally different league. I've played around with some of the presets and grooves, and it all seems really intuitive to get around. The presets offer loads of variations for different sounds, but all sounding convincing. The midi grooves are excellent, way better than any groove library I've heard before. 

Installation has been easy, although my Platinum Sounds Evil Joe Barresi Drums library won't load, even after upgrading using the Product Manager. 

My SD2 mappings for a TD12 were directly available within SD3 and it all seems to work perfectly. 

After playing for an hour, it's obvious it's in a different league SD2. I think the upgrade was £160, which is looking like a total bargain.

guitarfishbay

@Lodious ;

Thanks for your review - have you tried a bunch of the harder hits yet?  I've seen it discussed on the gearslutz thread that some people don't feel like some of the articulations are played hard enough on some of the snares etc.

I'm not actually lacking in drum sounds, but it's a bit disappointing you've had trouble getting Evil Drums to load as that's one of my favourites.  Hope you manage to get that sorted.

Lodious

No, not really tried the harder hits, I've just started reading the manual so probably gonna spend the next couple of nights getting familiar with it. I think Evil Drums will work, it did look they have thought about compatibility, so I'll probably leave it a week and then start googling :-) If not, I guess I'll have to keep SD2 installed. I'll post again when I've had time to get familiar with it. 

darcym

I've got superior 2 and a few additional kits that work really well for me.

a.) is it really worth me upgrading, is the jump worth it, or as S2 works for me and I have additional kits should I just stick with it
b.) are the S2 kits supported on S3 ? I can't get a clear answer to this on the toontrack forum
c.) the 250GB download is monster for just one set of kits and this puts my protools mac close to the disk limit (with protools, ez keys and S2)

with these questions / statements in mind do you think it's worth the upgrade ?

I love S2, and really rate the whole toontrack product range

guitarfishbay

I have not upgraded.

It would appear that the maximum velocity hits are less strongly hit than I'd want, from discussing with a few people who have got S3.  Caveat, I'd be doing heavier music which needs stronger hits.  For most other styles it would appear the samples in S3 would cover a lot of ground, but I've not personally used them.

I am of the understanding that all currently released SDX and EZX were supported.  I've not heard otherwise, and know of people using prior SDX's within S3.

Re: Download and install size, that's answered on the site.  I think you'd only do the big install to get all the ambient mics.

"SOFTWARE: Approx. 320 MB download + installation space.

SOUND LIBRARY: Basic install: Approx. 41 GB download and an additional 41 GB for the installation process. Complete install: Approx. 236 GB download and an additional 55 GB for the installation process.
SSD install (optional): Approx. 236 GB pre-installed."

mrkb

I've upgraded. All previous kits and EXZ kits work. Benefits - you can create custom kits from any kit piece. I wanted the improved edrum mapping, and the EXdrummer like midi Pattern browsing and song creation methods. New kits are in five downloads - I've only installed 2- main kit (5 drum kits) and basic overheads.

it was £147 to upgrade (I think) so it depends on what you want from an upgrade. Sound on sound has a comprehensive review this month if you have a WHSmith near!

darcym

mrkb said:

I've upgraded. All previous kits and EXZ kits work. Benefits - you can create custom kits from any kit piece. I wanted the improved edrum mapping, and the EXdrummer like midi Pattern browsing and song creation methods. New kits are in five downloads - I've only installed 2- main kit (5 drum kits) and basic overheads.

it was £147 to upgrade (I think) so it depends on what you want from an upgrade. Sound on sound has a comprehensive review this month if you have a WHSmith near!

I'll be grabbing the magazine, thank you.

Do you have an initial impression over the S2 platform ? ease of use, improvements etc.

I'm quite torn by it because of how much I rate the S2 products, but I'm just scared of the hassle it will bring or disappointment.

Upgrade seems a very good and fair price.

equalsql

I cross-graded from EZDrummer and am really impressed. Very intuitive and some of the features like the real-life drum tuning, positional sensing and the hi-hat scaling are very impressive. The fact the it hooks into my existing EZD libraries is very cool.
Tunetrack really have set a new standard here.
In doesn't play nice in standalone mode with the ASIO drivers for my Roland Octa-Capture, just bombs out, but standalone works fine with asio4all.

darcym

Took a leap of faith and ordered it - it's installing now, the cross-grade price was too good if it's superior 2 + more / better it's worth it. The reviews seem to suggest not only is it a better audio product, the interface and integration into things like pro-tools and midi controllers is easier and better to work with, so it really seems worth a punt.

duotone

@Lodious , @mrkb , @darcym , @equalsql ;
 
How are you guys getting on with it?

guitarfishbay

I upgraded a few months ago but uninstalled the core library after I decided it doesn’t work for me. Mostly because some of the higher velocity hits aren’t hard enough for my tastes. 

The new drum tracker features are excellent and overall the GUI is improved and the plugin feels easier to use. 

darcym

duotone said:

@Lodious , @mrkb , @darcym , @equalsql ;
 
How are you guys getting on with it?

very very impressed with it, I don't have a negative word for it, but keep in mind I'm "basic" with it, I loved superior 2, and this for me is a minor upgrade, ease of use, I suspect it will be more black/white with more power users than I

duotone

Thanks guys for the replies, good to hear some honest reviews. Tbh one of the reasons I like it from seeing the online demos is that it can be resized to fullscreen...EZDrummer 2 doesn’t allow that, but sound wise works fine for me.

Perhaps the €269 Crossgrade, is a big leap for a full screen viewer although it does look good.  But I’m not sure I would truly use the extra features it contains.

Lodious

Still love it! Great variety of sounds and really nice UI. 

Whitecat

I spent my eBay voucher today towards the upgrade to 3... will probably have the whole thing downloaded by sometime after Christmas, it’s just massive. They are dropping support and updates for 2 at the end of the year though so I felt it was probably wise...

Nerine

It kicks SD2 severely into touch.

If you can't get good/incredible drum sounds of any genre with this software, it's truly not the software that's at fault.

guitarfishbay

It's a better piece of software for sure, but in terms of samples I think Progressive Foundry should've been the stock library, it's IMO the best pack they've released.  But clearly they wanted to do all the extra room mics in the huge room. 

While the sounds are good I just felt like they stopped at 90% of the drummer's striking velocity on a bunch of the kit pieces on the core library, unless this is something they addressed in a later update.  I uninstalled the core library a while ago now.

duotone

THREAD RESURRECTED!

Have got a couple of questions:

1) How does it work with EZ Drummer 2 EZX Expansions?  I’ve bought the Jazz and a couple of other packs & want to make sure that they will work OK within Superior Drummer.

2) Can a track ripped from a CD, be inserted & then get Superior Drummer to work out the the drum groove & create its own MIDI from this? (e.g. the track Heartbreaker by Led Zeppelin)