NI:s new Studio drummer - kills Superior drummer 2 and BFD2?

[klagga]

Give me Studio Drummer and a couple of months and I'll let you know .

I got Kontakt2 for ns_kit7 as was (now NaturalDrumKit) as I didn't want a dongle for Halion3. Fortunately, Doug decided Kontakt was far better at handling drums than Halion and continued supporting with updates and new kit pieces until he sold up. There are plenty of drum libraries around - Analogue Drums, AcousticsampleS, Wavesfactory all spring to mind - using Kontakt. I play my kits "live" - I'm not sequencing. I don't want to have to mess around too much to get a realistic, natural, live sounding kit. I've updated through to Kontakt 4 as the scripting features have been added and expanded and I've found that, alone, worth having. (Now I'm unemployed, the €99 is harder to come by...)

Of the Abbey Road kits, I've only got the 60s set and do really quite like the larger kit. I'd like a bit more detail in the hi-hats (but that applies to every kit I've heard apart from ns_kit7) but it's very playable. The UI is okay - I ended up leaving the mapping at default settings and setting my edrums up to match, rather than vice versa, so that part of the UI is just wasted on me. The other two tabs aren't really that exciting...

And I couldn't care less about included grooves, etc. Actually, I could: I think they're a waste of money for me and I'd like to see them as an optional extra, reducing the price of the main product appropriately (as I reckon they'd probably sell well to many people).

Thanks for your tips on Analogue drums etc, I didn't know that.

On included grooves, I'm all over it. I'm just no good at programming my own grooves, I'm no drummer. If I buy Studio drummer, I'll sure plan on using all my Groove Monkee midi files for it.

By the way, I noticed the following on the NI site:

STUDIO DRUMMER includes mapping templates for instant use with E-DRUMS and other Drum Modules / software:

General MIDI
V-Drums TD-12/20 / V-Drums TD-3/6/8*
DrumIt Five
Superior Drummer
BFD
iMap
Addictive Drums

If you've made grooves in your sequencer with these plug-ins, you can play them back in STUDIO DRUMMER - Just select the mapping preset from the Drum Page.

I would guess that Studio drummer requires more complexity than General midi to sound really realistic, since that's the case with SD2 at least. Wonder if Groove Monkee will have to map their libraries to acommodate Studio drummer...

[darsho]

AD x64 is available for PC (there's a beta section on their forum). XLN has decided that recoding the whole AD to condone to Cocoa UI wasn't worth the time and resources they'd rather spend on developing AD2.

so there won't be an AD1 64 bit ? (apart form a beta version)

[EvilDragon]

AD x64 is available for PC and working splendidly. It just won't happen for Mac AU. Mac VST works well via bit-bridge, supposedly.

[EvilDragon]

I would guess that Studio drummer requires more complexity than General midi to sound really realistic, since that's the case with SD2 at least. Wonder if Groove Monkee will have to map their libraries to acommodate Studio drummer...

No need - you can just use remapping in SD to work with Groove Monkee that were mapped for EZD or BFD or AD or whatever.

[DF2R]

Looks cool. I want it for drum practise with my V-Drums.

[hibidy]

AD x64 is available for PC (there's a beta section on their forum). XLN has decided that recoding the whole AD to condone to Cocoa UI wasn't worth the time and resources they'd rather spend on developing AD2.

[Lotuzia]

The more I read this thread, and listen to the different audio/Videos demos and the more I'm convinced that a lot of kits or instruments are OK, but the real concern is really .................. how you play them

Playing a poor kit like a real drummer will always give better results imho ...... than the opposite .......

fwiw

LtZ

[EvilDragon]

AD x64 is available for PC (there's a beta section on their forum). XLN has decided that recoding the whole AD to condone to Cocoa UI wasn't worth the time and resources they'd rather spend on developing AD2.

:D:D:D:D

[klagga]

I would guess that Studio drummer requires more complexity than General midi to sound really realistic, since that's the case with SD2 at least. Wonder if Groove Monkee will have to map their libraries to acommodate Studio drummer...

No need - you can just use remapping in SD to work with Groove Monkee that were mapped for EZD or BFD or AD or whatever.

Of course, didn't realise that. Cool!

[pljones]

Playing a poor kit like a real drummer will always give better results imho ...... than the opposite .......

That's what I meant about splitting out the grooves. A well recorded set of MIDI grooves with great feel would probably make any library sound better, and therefore be worth selling. However, if you're a drummer with an e-kit, you probably want your drums to sound like you playing them. So I see two completely different things to sell:
Grooves - for those who don't drum (as well as they'd like)
Drum libraries - for those who want drum sounds (drummers/non-drummers alike)

But I object (a little ) to paying extra for the grooves when I don't need them and I imagine there are people who'd love to pick up extra grooves for the drum libraries they have, without investing constantly in new samples.

[darsho]

Playing a poor kit like a real drummer will always give better results imho ...... than the opposite .......

That's what I meant about splitting out the grooves. A well recorded set of MIDI grooves with great feel would probably make any library sound better, and therefore be worth selling. However, if you're a drummer with an e-kit, you probably want your drums to sound like you playing them. So I see two completely different things to sell:
Grooves - for those who don't drum (as well as they'd like)
Drum libraries - for those who want drum sounds (drummers/non-drummers alike)

But I object (a little ) to paying extra for the grooves when I don't need them and I imagine there are people who'd love to pick up extra grooves for the drum libraries they have, without investing constantly in new samples.

I think you overestimate the percentage of drummers among the customers of such drum plugins.
It might simply not be worth it for the developers to look at it from your angle, because the vast majority of people uses the MIDI grooves anyway.

[kelldammit]

I think you overestimate the percentage of drummers among the customers of such drum plugins.
It might simply not be worth it for the developers to look at it from your angle, because the vast majority of people uses the MIDI grooves anyway.

The the popularity of EZD is a good example of this. I know lots of people for whom EZD is ideal, largely because of the grooves. For others, like myself, S2 is a pretty precise fit. In terms of mass appeal, I understand that I'm likely in the minority, and I try to base my expectations on that reality.
In that light, for bundled sounds/grooves...I don't really look at it in the light of "paying extra for grooves I'll never use". Since I don't use grooves, they're obviously not a factor in the purchase decision, so I base my assessment of overall cost/value on the sounds themselves. As long as I value the sounds enough to buy the package, it works for me. The grooves are just something to be tossed into the bin...along with the manual

k

[BERFAB]

Nope, this has nothing to do with scripting.

Unfortunately I don't have Kontakt Player installed, but I can assure you that this works splendidly.

1. Load x number of instruments
2. Run the first output macro command
3. I get x outputs named according to instruments that I have loaded.


GIF which proves this to be true (I used empty new instruments as templates):

THAT'S how you do that. I couldn't for the life of me get that last step all this time. I just gave up and used the stereo output for those.

Thanks EvilDragon for making that very clear and very simple.

Cheers
-B

[BERFAB]

On included grooves, I'm all over it. I'm just no good at programming my own grooves, I'm no drummer. If I buy Studio drummer, I'll sure plan on using all my Groove Monkee midi files for it.



If you've made grooves in your sequencer with these plug-ins, you can play them back in STUDIO DRUMMER - Just select the mapping preset from the Drum Page. [/b]

I would guess that Studio drummer requires more complexity than General midi to sound really realistic, since that's the case with SD2 at least. Wonder if Groove Monkee will have to map their libraries to acommodate Studio drummer...

Not a doubt in my mind that Groove Monkee will be all over the Kontakt format. As it is, they support a bunch of extremely small formats, and I'm sure that they will make room on their development schedule for the world's best selling sampler.

That's my hope anyway. I'm a big Groove Monkee fan and their packs have provided me with huge bang for the buck.

[pljones]

I think you overestimate the percentage of drummers among the customers of such drum plugins.
It might simply not be worth it for the developers to look at it from your angle, because the vast majority of people uses the MIDI grooves anyway.

OK, whilst replying, I've talked myself into agreeing. I now think you should include some grooves and have add ons available for purchase. Hmm! Maybe someone had that idea already?