Hi,
I recently bought Superior Drummer 3 and I think it is wonderful. Especially the Hitmaker and Decades expansions. I wonder if SD3 is really used in productions or is it more of a vst for demos or playing in general. I mean, it's always better to use a real drummer, but sometimes accessing certain rooms and drum sets is impossible. I wonder if you guys would use it or if it would be like cheating, I feel a bit guilty to save some money and use a VST to pretend there is someone there playing. What do you guys think? I'm starting a production at the moment and I'm hesitant to go for this solution and focus on other things.
Thanks!

So do I. Except I bought it a few months after release.

I have Hitmaker and I have read nothing but great reviews about Decades.

What do you mean by "productions?" You mean professionals under hire with deadlines or a hobbyist in a bedroom messing around? It is really used by both. But since hobbyists or prosumers are in the drivers seat, there are many more prosumers supporting Toontrack than there are professionals. Therefore IMO, yes more for playing in general however it is used in a professional environment too.

It goes both ways. Real drums go to SD3 and SD3 samples can go to real drums. SD3 is really the top of the line, meaning most flexible most powerful tool for VST drums. The only reason I would look beyond EZX or SDX is for immediacy of a sound I can't seem to find with Toontrack. Time is money.

no it is not. Your new with this aren't you?

I don't think it's cheating at all. Was it cheating in the 80s when drum machines were first used? You know back then, drum machines were going to put the drummer out of business.

Regarding using a real drummer or SD3 depends on too many variables to mention. Who cares if your hit song was created by SD3 or a real drummer...or a mix of both? Are you going to pay points?

You are hesitant to go for the SD3 solution? Well, what is your total budget?

A 'good' real drummer is always better I'd say if you're wanting to use SD3 for organic music.



I use both all the time. Sometimes the sound of a specific kit/room from SD3 gives me the inspiration for a track.

I recently did a track using a specific kit/room from SD 3 and then when the track came together I got Aaron Sterling

https://aaronsterling.com/

in LA to replce the drums. He carefully re created the sound of my SD3 drums in his studio with the correct kit /micing and sent me back a wonderful 'performance' of the song which added a little extra to the track.

The track would have been fine with the SD3 version but I thought it was worth the extra $$$$ to have that extra 5%



SD3 is also my go to when layering samples with real drums as well. I just get a dynamic midi track from the audio in Cubase and use that to trigger sounds from SD3. You can do it directly in SD3 but I like to have the flexibility of the midi track as well.

So... SD3 is a great tool to be used in many ways.


M

I'd argue it's always better to have real anything ever, if budget allows, aside from metal and its sub genres where the sound of replaced drums is so iconic.

Even though there are great groove presets in there played by real people, they're not playing to YOUR song. So it'll never be the same.

On the other hand, i'm playing more to them instead, relying on their cliche understanding of pop, pop/rock, country etc. Sometimes the velocities work, sometimes they don't, and unless you spend time finding the right kick/snare/tom/crash/ride sound, along with the accurate velocity sample to go along to your song, it'll never be organic enough for me, but i'm still happy to release them.

By "real production" I mean with commercial projection and not someone who recreates songs in his bedroom studio just to have fun on a Sunday afternoon, which is not a bad thing either. Maybe it's a bad label, because in reality it all depends on the budget. What seems more evident is that time is money, and nowadays what matters most (something I criticize a lot) is the workflow and the fastness with which the work is done. In that sense, I certainly prefer a real drummer, but if the budget is limited I understand the need to use something like SD3. My question is just that, if there are productions that I can listen to on Spotify that sound good, whose drums are a VST, or if you think that, even if the room and the drums are not optimal, it is better to use a real drummer.

I understand what you are saying, but with any pad controller you can "play" the drums, using the different velocities, grooves, etc, that you give it in your playing. It seems to me that the question points somewhere else. Does anyone really care that the drums you are listening to are software?

I agree with you. Maybe it all depends on the workflow. You probably programmed the drums for the whole song in SD3 and when you were 100% sure you asked a real drummer to replace it. But after that there is no turning back. Maybe it has to do with the certainty and confidence of making decisions, I'm always changing things until the very end.

You corrected the OPs original statement by adding "good." That, I can agree with.

Plus adding organic...definitely.

Indeed, I was reminded of a saying by an old studio guy I met when I was working in Nashville who said to me;

" It's a really great drummer that's better than no drummer at all" .............


M

You can. But it depends on who the drummer is in the pack, you're hitting it through them, if you get what i mean. I still get pretty good results but it's never one size fits all, which SD3 lets me mix and match.

All sorts of things make it into final production really.

I just finished an album project using SD3 for all 13 tracks. This is my 2nd album production using SD3. Prior to that I was hiring drummers...both locally recorded in a studio, and remotely with tracks recorded to my ref track and delivered in stem format.
My history with Toontrack goes back to 2010 so I'd been using EZD for a decade for quick rhythm track ideas for drummers to reference before I jumped to SD. Once I became adept with SD's deep editing, and especially after acquiring a wide variety of kits and kit elements, it was an easy switch to using it over a real drummer. The workflow is faster, the drums sound better, and the mixes are just as good, if not better, and I can work within my time allowance without having to wait for other humans to get my work done. With SD I find no restrictions or challenges accomplishing a good drum track for any genre of music I've produced ranging from Rock to Jazz, Americana, Country, Blues, even New Orleans/Dixieland style jazz. Now, that said, I do spend time in the editing pages to adjust note placement, velocity, and even add or remove drum notes as needed. But I'm pretty fast at it after all this time.
With a real drummer, I can't choose among 80 snares or kicks, or 20 different kits, or accomplish the mixing tactics that SD provides in anywhere near the short amount of time it takes with SD. Moving forward, SD is my drummer.
YMMV

I was in a band signed to Sony, our producer used Superior Drummer on 99% of our material that was commercially released by a major label. And in Nashville there are a huge number of producers here cranking out major releases with Superior Drummer all over it. It really comes down to the programming in terms of how realistic you make it. The recording is as professional as anything else in terms of the capture of the library, so the question is, how real can you get the programming.

I (we) only use Superior Drummer for our prog-rock releases. Then again, I always play my expansions through a high-end e-kit (my trustworthy Yamaha DTX900). Obviously, programming is a big no-no. How would you know that I as a drummer would hit the second ghost stroke differently in a herta played in mp-mf, or playing the bell slightly off every third beat during an inverted paradiddle?

The most important thing is of course that the drums are a PLAYED PERFORMANCE. Regardless if you are doing an acoustic session or recording SD3 via an e-kit.

Sup Drummer 3 is next level, but maybe addicted to Drums or whatever it is, is about the same

I just think the workflow of superior is pretty cool they kind of thought of everything.

But the truth is you’d really be hard-pressed to tell whether it was superior drummer, or a real drummer in many productions

Decades has some beautiful cymbals, but even with that
One place it all Drum libraries fall down as cymbals the phasieness because of all those complex wave forms at least to me always need the most work to get them to sit.


Decades, Hansa ,fields of rock would cover pretty much everything, unless you’re a metal person, and these libraries really lean towards many metal style sample libraries you could probably get those sounds out of those three packs… Plus the original pack that comes with I use for three years before I bought any extra stuff, is pretty good sometimes it seems too wet, but there’s so many adjustments you can do with the attack time of Drums you can deaden them if you’re creative… After using it for three years, I got a lot out of that, plus if you download the extra mics, which are huge, that can be another source of different sounds