Superior Drummer 3 ~ Features Nice ~ Results Dismal for me

mwd

mwd

Power User
Not feeling the love yet for Superior Drummer 3. After what seems to be over a decade with SD2 I looked forward to the new GUI and technology they had to have amassed since the inception of SD2. I spent 4 days downloading entire package and started cruising thru the drums and features.

On the plus side the new GUI is pleasing to me. The mixer, especially due to resizable windows, seems useable for the first time. Tap to find is a fantastic feature for guitarist structuring songs. I got used to it in EZ Drummer and it's great they incorporated it into the new build. So far so good.

I then started cruising thru the drum kits and presets. A cold not fuzzy feeling kind of crept it's way in. To me 90%+ of these drum kits and presets sound like absolute crap. Like I walked into some garage band from Jr. High on a kit someone dug out of his brothers closet.

I was able to 'build' a couple of ok kits blending drums from one kit to another and opening up the room mics just a shade. Which, by the way, are nice capabilities but... with all the kits included and all the super pro engineers involved this result is close to laughable.

So real world test. I lay down loops and ideas to songs, rough draft guitar and bass parts and send off to my drummer friend in Dallas. He is adept with Superior and an awesome drummer and he creates an awesome MIDI drum tracks using his Roland kit. I then replay bass and other instruments to his drums and thus the project begins.

I had 4 mini tunes in a medley we are working up and Dave laid down the parts. He also just purchased SD3 but had not had time to mess with it so he used our familiar SD2 with Avatar Natural kit with a couple of custom touches. He saves the .s20 file for each song he does for me. I used this file to create a preset in SD2 which is useable in SD3.

I couldn't wait to transform this SD2 work to SD3. When I tried to either load a preset kit, or even build a custom kit, in SD3 none matched the sound we were getting in SD2. So no problem I could obvious use the SD2 kits in SD3 and enjoy the SD2 sound with SD3 graphics and features. I loaded Avatar kit and even loaded Dave's preset. Still doesn't match. Quite a reduction in volume, clarity and quality. Then I duplicated the MIDI track loaded SD2 in one track and SD3 in the other and A/B'ed them. No doubt the SD3 engine sounds inferior even in playing the SD2 kits with the same preset and double checking that every setting on mixer panes were identical.

Not my intent to bitch and I really don't have the credentials for anyone to consider my review noteworthy but rather I am asking others for their experiences on the upgrade with the possibility that I'm just flat missing something. So far this is turning out to be a feature upgrade with a sound quality downgrade for me.
 
Wow, this is good information.
I was thinking of pulling the trigger on SD3, but maybe I'll wait it out a bit to see if they come out with a patch/fix the inferior quality.
Have you reached out to SD or been on any forums to see if this is a common issue?
 
I have not. I noticed 'something' the day I got it but today was the first day I decided to reach out anywhere and see if I was crazy. I posted to the UAD forum as well. Figure I'll hit up Toontrack and see their response.
 
BBN said:
Wow, this is good information.
I was thinking of pulling the trigger on SD3, but maybe I'll wait it out a bit to see if they come out with a patch/fix the inferior quality.
Have you reached out to SD or been on any forums to see if this is a common issue?
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Don't let one opinion deter you. Read a few other opinions and try to listen to some demos. OPs experience is vastly different from mine, and I've read a lot of other people raving about the sounds they get from SD3 on various recording forums.

For shirts and gurgles, I looked at the UAD forum and found the thread that mwd started and everyone else seemed to contradict his view. I'm not saying this to start a controversy or anything, just saying I'd research it a bit before discounting it based on one opinion.
 
As I stated on the UAD forum I have never been more stoked to have so many people disagree with me. It gives me hope that this is a resolvable quirk.

I 100% agree with Genghis in that never was there a more clear cut example of YMMV. This is my experience so far. At the same time I've used SD2 for near a decade, programmed MIDI since the 80's, drums since the Oberheim DX and digital recording since Cakewalk in the 90's. I mention this not to brag, because I'm not a pro by a stretch, but feel I do know enough to know 'something ain't right here' and it's got me puzzled.

For example. I have SD2 MIDI track with SD2 preset loaded. I duplicated the MIDI track on a new channel and loaded SD3. In SD3 I loaded the SD2 kit and loaded the SD2 preset. This should produce 100% equal results because volumes are the same, routings are the same, samples are the same, Logic channels are the same. I am, best I understand, literally using SD2 samples via SD3 GUI.

Yet there is literally a 9 db difference in these tracks. It is both audibly and visually apparent.

This morning I loaded up Toontrack downloader and there were 2 new updates for SD3. I downloaded them and immediately noticed the gap in dB seemed reduced by 3dB. I started trouble shooting my Logic X project intending on creating 2 fresh software instrument tracks to see if it was an internal glitch in my Logic channels and my vid card tanked.

So it will be a few days til' I can get back to it. Thanks for any help.
 
mwd said:
This morning I loaded up Toontrack downloader and there were 2 new updates for SD3. I downloaded them and immediately noticed the gap in dB seemed reduced by 3dB. I started trouble shooting my Logic X project intending on creating 2 fresh software instrument tracks to see if it was an internal glitch in my Logic channels and my vid card tanked.
Click to expand...

Good to hear. This is exactly why I'm going to wait it out a bit.
 
Stick with it man. It really seems like it has potential, but i too am limited on the amount of time available to really dig in and get the most out of It. Work is crazy, and my musical time lately is spent on learning a few songs for a new live project I'm working on with a few friends. While it ia good to be playing with people again, i also want to find some timw to record and gwt to know this new pluagin better. :)
 
Really interested to see how this will play out for you man. I love SD2 but hearing stuff like this about its successor makes me less willing to upgrade.
 
Currently I feel I had a corrupted .s20 save project file in SD2. That or some internal weirdness in the environment section on my Logic track. When I reset both of my Logic tracks and loaded 'stock' Avatar/Natural in SD2 and 'stock' Avatar/Natural 'via' SD3 there was no noteworthy difference.

Now I have to move to getting an actual drum kit I like. SD2 Avatar spoiled me. For my work it is perfect layout, tuning and balance. SD3 is super feature rich. In spite of issues I am having I feel Toontrack will take the ball and run with an awesome product. Excepting pulling in a snare and ride cymbal from Studio Drummer, SD2 was rock solid for me for near 10 years. Now the snares in SD3 are crispy and very articulate. I don't think I would fear the program. The majority of my forum peers, and most of what I read, indicate great results and here in a month or two I hope to be in that group :)

I'm going to pull up SD2 and SD3 in solo mode and try and duplicate the Avatar/Natural kit in SD3 with the new samples. Even if it doesn't work out I should be able to use the SD2 Avatar in SD3 mode and take advantage of new features with a familiar kit. Tap-to-Find is a killer feature for guitarist. Introduced in EZ Drummer and now it is in SD3. Threw together a very decent guide track for Voodoo Child in minutes.

Also looking for anyone to point out there favorite kit or preset in SD3 just for direction.
 
That's software development for ya. To keep it in perspective the flight sim I've been flying has been beta for half a decade.

Hell, even Fractal's firmware is a (beautiful/inspired) WIP.
 
I just got mine downloaded (boy do I wish I had a speedier internet!), and having had the SD2 for years, this is a definite step up. Maybe you've used the 2 so much that anything else frels wrong? To me, the sounds are more natural than the ones from SD2. Like, less processing in the samples themselves. It feels sort of like the difference between the small and compressed EZdrummer samples vs. Superior2, but smaller. Ezdrummer sounds fell apart if you tried to apply heavy compression or EQ, vs. the higher fidelity of Superior sounds that work like you'd expect. This is another small step up from the SD2. So far I'm loving it! The core library is a lot bigger than in previous versions, I can see myself doing a lot of stuff with just these drums.
 
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aziz said:
I just got mine downloaded (boy do I wish I had a speedier internet!), and having had the SD2 for years, this is a definite step up. Maybe you've used the 2 so much that anything else frels wrong? To me, the sounds are more natural than the ones from SD2. Like, less processing in the samples themselves. It feels sort of like the difference between the small and compressed EZdrummer samples vs. Superior2, but smaller. Ezdrummer sounds fell apart if you tried to apply heavy compression or EQ, vs. the higher fidelity of Superior sounds that work like you'd expect. This is another small step up from the SD2. So far I'm loving it! The core library is a lot bigger than in previous versions, I can see myself doing a lot of stuff with just these drums.
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Do you store the core library on a separate drive (being that it's so large)?
Asking because I'm wondering if there is any latency concern if you have to go that route....
 
I have 5 hd's in my PC so no trouble there. I guess an external HD would work fine, since it loads the samples for loaded drumset into RAM, so it's just a question of load time when changing the drumsets. A big set can take 2g of ram, so I wouldn't recommend running this on a machine without good amount of RAM.
 
aziz said:
Maybe you've used the 2 so much that anything else frels wrong?
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Could be. But after several hours of dinking I haven't found anything better than what I consider to be the perfect bass drum sound via attack, tone, tune and resonance of the 18x22 GMS bass drum.

That said I am pretty sure I can surpass the Avatar SD2 Toms and Snares with SD3. Many times I separated the snare track and ran it thru NI Studio Drummer anyway for the snap, crackle and pop. Best I can tell there is nothing that would stop me from pulling in a SD2 bass drum, if I can't surpass it, and mix and match the others to taste.
 
Wow, my experience could not be farther from yours. I LOVE S3. The usability, MIDI features, and UI are all greatly improved. It sounds fantastic to me in my mixes and experiments. I love the new effects as well. That said, in practice I am using mostly S2 libraries because of my familiarity with them. I did not have your experience of finding different results when I loaded my old presets. They just sounded great. I also really like all of the new mixer effects. One niggle: I do wish there was a way to convert old maps to new. I had to do it all by hand.
 
Yep on post 5 I exposed my preset probs most likely were a corrupt .s20 project file. Further testing showing using my fav kit from SD2 in SD3 produced near identical 'good' results. Also make no mistake there are a ton of new features that are killer. Resizable windows (which make the mixer finally useable for me) replaceable drums, MIDI grid editor, accessibility to previously embedded controls. There is a lot of good there. Combined with backwards compatibility I definitely haven't lost anything I just haven't found a go to preset kit I like.
 
SD2 is still underused over here. No one's fault but my own. I'm been using live musicians, mostly. But you have me doubting about getting 3, even though yours seems to be a lone voice.
 
I just tried the tracking function on a real drum recording. I got good results with snare and bass drum, but the song was very simple and the drummer was a world class pro. I hope it works on "village level" drummers too... Hihat and cymbals didn't track properly, but that's ok since a real recording is more lively with those anyway. This was a major motivator in buying this software in the first place, as we start our album recording next week!
 
I own SD2 but it's under utilized. I am intrigued by SD3 though. I use Slate Trigger2 a LOT for drum replacement and for generating midi from live drums.
 
Anyone own SD2, EZD2 and SD3? I'm wondering if SD3 has all the EZD2 functions that are missing in SD2?

I bought SD2 last year on black Friday when it was on sale for $75. I like the sounds better in SD2 but I wanted to buy EZD2 for its ease of use and work flow enhancements but it wasn't on sale and would have been more expensive than SD2. If SD3 has all the features of SD2 and SD3, I'm definitely upgrading.
 
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