What is your favorite Virtual drummer or Drum VST?

#1 metal VST

  • Total voters
    66
  • Poll closed .
Yours To Behold

Yours To Behold

Inspired
For my rock and metal guitarists who use drum VST for their drums what is your top pick for metal and rock, including value

I think addictive rock and metal edition ($160 but like $100 on BF and sales) gives you the most kits, grooves, ease of transforming the peset, and overall the best value - it’s somewhere between SSD/Ez drummer and sd3/bfd3 I think....it’s just easy to get going on it

ofc my old favorite was rayzoon Jamstix 4 but I can’t run it on my OS so I actually found the best virtual drummer by far is inherently built into logic

beyond that the more expensive ones are too complicated for a non drummer like myself to even want to tweak, and then the other virtual drummers are just not user friendly (melda) or just too simple and not great (strike 2)

what are your favorites?
 
Superior Drummer is my favorite. I've dabbled with a few others. But I have to ultimately agree with Muad'zin. Even if it's a little ghetto rigged, and the fidelity leaves something to be desired-- nothing beats live drums. With Superior Drummer, I can outline a track and even come up with some interesting parts. But a good drummer can add so much more.
 
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Wow toontrack is in the strong lead but to be fair since drum kit from hell and metal foundry they were legend - they released so many EZX and SDX and it is so expensive though, and the memory it takes is insane - I don’t need any of that extra sound stuff at all

And while I vote for XLN as best metal VST, I now have changed my mind from my old picks to Logic Drummer - it’s just amazing what it does, and watching it work

Actually using Logic as A DaW with XLN, you don’t need anything else for drums in metal as far as I’ve felt in exciting week 1
 
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I voted Superior Drummer 3. You don't need all of the SDX add-ons. I have a few that cover my needs, as well as a couple of EZ Drummer packs that fit in now and then. (the first electronic one for when I want electronic drums, for example.)

I just picked up the Death and Darkness SDX and I haven't even gotten around to checking out any of the Death presets yet. Darkness has a lot of good starting points and I have already added my own tweaks to a couple of different variations. I think my task for today will be to check out the Death presets and waste the day on that. LOL

I used to use the Tap-to-find feature to find grooves that fit a pattern I was looking for and it can really save you some time when you have a basic rhythmic idea. I have also used it as a writing tool by just auditioning various MIDI loops and putting them into a song format and then jamming with the song until I come up with a few ideas on what I want to play with them.

More recently I have been triggering the SD3 kits with my Roland TD25. I may not be a great drummer, but it is a helluva a lot more fun to play your own drums than it is to do things the way I used to. I'm sure some of the progressive metal grooves that I have will be better for some things, but playing them myself is also giving me more of an idea of what I would need to do to edit the loops for more interesting and varied fills.
 
Genghis said:
I voted Superior Drummer 3. You don't need all of the SDX add-ons. I have a few that cover my needs, as well as a couple of EZ Drummer packs that fit in now and then. (the first electronic one for when I want electronic drums, for example.)

I just picked up the Death and Darkness SDX and I haven't even gotten around to checking out any of the Death presets yet. Darkness has a lot of good starting points and I have already added my own tweaks to a couple of different variations. I think my task for today will be to check out the Death presets and waste the day on that. LOL

I used to use the Tap-to-find feature to find grooves that fit a pattern I was looking for and it can really save you some time when you have a basic rhythmic idea. I have also used it as a writing tool by just auditioning various MIDI loops and putting them into a song format and then jamming with the song until I come up with a few ideas on what I want to play with them.

More recently I have been triggering the SD3 kits with my Roland TD25. I may not be a great drummer, but it is a helluva a lot more fun to play your own drums than it is to do things the way I used to. I'm sure some of the progressive metal grooves that I have will be better for some things, but playing them myself is also giving me more of an idea of what I would need to do to edit the loops for more interesting and varied fills.
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I didn’t find tap 2 find to work for me
That was my issue with SD3
I just couldn’t jive with the groove GUI

BFD3 is a bit better but almost too much for me to tweak ; (“big f——ing drums”is right ) so it was slightly better groove GUI for me

actually EZd2 was the easiest for me to use, obviously, but SD3 sounded better with all the ezx :

btw you’ll love death and darkness , it’s one of the best metal set of presets I’ve ever seen, to me it’s on par with XLN which is saying a lot for me IMO
 
C Holdz said:
I didn’t find tap 2 find to work for me
That was my issue with SD3
I just couldn’t jive with the groove GUI

BFD3 is a bit better but almost too much for me to tweak ; (“big f——ing drums”is right ) so it was slightly better groove GUI for me

actually EZd2 was the easiest for me to use, obviously, but SD3 sounded better with all the ezx :

btw you’ll love death and darkness , it’s one of the best metal set of presets I’ve ever seen, to me it’s on par with XLN which is saying a lot for me IMO
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Actually once I started to get the basics on the Groove part I really dug it. Tap to find isn't perfect, but on some beats it can help you find a starting point. Have to agree that on the more unique stuff it can come up short.

Oh, and will I ever get tired enough of the Darkness kits I've already been diggin to even check out the Death kits? I sat down with full intent to explore the Death kits and started jamming away on my favorite modified Darkness kit.
 
I started with EZD2 then in a moment of frustration/temper tantrum, I got pissed that I couldn't print the mutli-out tracks in Logic, despite having a track open for each drum/cymbal. Before I could even think about it much, I already had SD3 downloading. No regrets. It's OUTSTANDING software and thanks to the killer mixer within it, I can get 98% of my tweaking done in the program itself. KILLER drum sounds without downloading further expansion packs. Really, that's my only complaint is that the exp's are over $100 each.

Muad'zin said:
Another one not in the list, if you can afford him, Delta Empire does do session work. I'm old school in this regard. samples and VST drums are great to set up a base upon which to build your musical ideas. But only with real drummers does it come alive.
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I'm toying with the idea of having him do the drums for my album. I spend a LOT of time tweaking drums, to the point that I'm about 90% comfortable with keeping the Superior Drummer 3 tracks on it. Going to have to play it by ear when it comes closer to the time that it's completed.
 
AlGrenadine said:
That's sad because it's by far the best of those...
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The snares in GGD were the only things I really dug. It was absurd to me that they EQ'd and tweaked the kick/snare sounds but left all the toms untreated. I always had issues with Kontakt and that's what ultimately got me to throw in the towel. I was using the free version, but it just stopped allowing me to do certain things, like assign the in's/out's in Kontakt. I'd change them and they wouldn't show up visually, but they would in Logic, or they just wouldn't do anything. Way too much of a hassle to keep dealing with while I was trying to get work done.
 
Oh if GGD is Kontakt expansion or plug in , it wouldn’t count

I’m talking about developers who not only put in the work for the drum sounds in studios, but for the programming the VST and GUI itself - kontakt sucks lol

ironic considering you are arguably the best iOS app programmer there is (let’s hear it for FracPad III folks !)
 
I have a medium collection of SD and EZ expansions, accumulated over the years.
Everything I have is great, though the whole experience can get a bit fiddly.
(...says a guy who sends Way Too Much Time rabbit-holing in the Axe III...)
If I wasn't trying not to buy stuff, I'd also want Progressive Foundry, Rock Foundry, and maybe Hansa.
 
Anyone who has voted for SD3 please just give your review or general opinion of “Tap2Find” and the song maker/groove editor - and also how do you feel about the metal midi packs themselves ?
 
C Holdz said:
Oh if GGD is Kontakt expansion or plug in , it wouldn’t count

I’m talking about developers who not only put in the work for the drum sounds in studios, but for the programming the VST and GUI itself - kontakt sucks lol

ironic considering you are arguably the best iOS app programmer there is (let’s hear it for FracPad III folks !)
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Yes kontakt sucks...
That apart it's the best modern metal sounds...
 
Glad I saw this thread as I'm about to pop the cork on a Drum VST but dont know where to start. I was initially just going to go full bore gut shot and get Superior but I get the impression it might be way more than necessary and potentially be a steep learning curve. I did however just check out Drum Forge, specifically the Bergstrand Edition and that seems like a better starting point. The GUI seems easy to grasp and fairly straight forward. Predominantly dealing in the Metal area but down the line I would be doing other stuff needing a more varied pallet so in that respect maybe Superior is the better option?

Anyone used Drum Forge?
 
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