steadystate
Fractal Fanatic
I recently got the opportunity to try SD3. The interface and workflow are vastly improved, and the new features are great. But...
The core library is disappointing. I've read reviews of how awesome the samples are, but I find them lacking compared to many of the SDX libraries for SD2. The toms, especially the floor toms, sound like they are being hit by an old lady, even at max velocity. Were they afraid they'd hurt the heads? No power whatsoever in many of them. And little to no pitch bend. The small concert toms are not tuned nearly high enough. The new tuning algorithm sounds good, but not good enough to extend the range to extremes. In order to get a mega-power hit on many toms, you have to simulate one with amplitude and pitch envelopes. Too much work for a simulated result.
Many of the drums also have nasty ringing; the kind of ringing that would make me immediately retune or dampen. All in all, I'm not sure what these world-class experts were thinking. The effects have been increased in number from 5 to 35 IIRRC, but the quality of most I tried was shit, especially the reverbs. I guess I've been spoiled by Fractal and UA. They would have been wise to allow other VST plugins in their effects slots.
It seems I'd wind up using drums from other libraries within 3, which leads to the major problem of mismatched room ambience due to totally different recording setups. Had Toontrack had the foresight to record impulse responses of the room at Galaxy Studio (they had almost everything they needed already set up), then I could import close-miced drums and had a convincing kit by running them through convolution reverbs of the room captured with their mic setup and a sound source at each kit position. You could mix all libraries in one kit and have a cohesive sound.
IMOHO, they majorly dropped the ball when they failed to record IRs of the room and to record a stellar core sample library. Glad I didn't purchase before trying it out, despite the major advancements in the program itself. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, and I could warm up to it given enough time. But there is no demo, thus, no opportunity to warm.
The core library is disappointing. I've read reviews of how awesome the samples are, but I find them lacking compared to many of the SDX libraries for SD2. The toms, especially the floor toms, sound like they are being hit by an old lady, even at max velocity. Were they afraid they'd hurt the heads? No power whatsoever in many of them. And little to no pitch bend. The small concert toms are not tuned nearly high enough. The new tuning algorithm sounds good, but not good enough to extend the range to extremes. In order to get a mega-power hit on many toms, you have to simulate one with amplitude and pitch envelopes. Too much work for a simulated result.
Many of the drums also have nasty ringing; the kind of ringing that would make me immediately retune or dampen. All in all, I'm not sure what these world-class experts were thinking. The effects have been increased in number from 5 to 35 IIRRC, but the quality of most I tried was shit, especially the reverbs. I guess I've been spoiled by Fractal and UA. They would have been wise to allow other VST plugins in their effects slots.
It seems I'd wind up using drums from other libraries within 3, which leads to the major problem of mismatched room ambience due to totally different recording setups. Had Toontrack had the foresight to record impulse responses of the room at Galaxy Studio (they had almost everything they needed already set up), then I could import close-miced drums and had a convincing kit by running them through convolution reverbs of the room captured with their mic setup and a sound source at each kit position. You could mix all libraries in one kit and have a cohesive sound.
IMOHO, they majorly dropped the ball when they failed to record IRs of the room and to record a stellar core sample library. Glad I didn't purchase before trying it out, despite the major advancements in the program itself. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, and I could warm up to it given enough time. But there is no demo, thus, no opportunity to warm.
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