Looking forward to this. There's still a lot of room for improvement in drum synths out there, IMO.

In the meantime I'll use my new Machinedrum.

Shortcircuit? EDIT: Oops, you must be on Mac because you mentioned Ultrabeat.

spritex

yes I am on Mac - but in the thread about Ableton sampler heard some things about Short Circuit - sounds good - but, well, no mac version ....

best

So, how about that drum machine Urs?

Something like Tip tops analogue 808 modules would be cool--phat n simple

Maybe a physical modeling module on the side, to mix with subtractive stuff too.

d-uhe-ke nukem forever

Thread Necromancer



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Exciting news!
Intriguing, yet also slightly unsettling, as the sound would of course be of utmost importance. Yet it is also true that a good drum instrument also needs a great interface, pattern handling etc. And as this sounds more like a reimagination of the whole drum sequencer concept rather than a plugin -- dare I even say it (as I'd also love to see a u-he drum synth) -- maybe even take the modular approach and leave out the audio part completely?

On a related note, I really lust for good saturation/overdrive/distortion effects to make (electronic) drums sound great. Imho a big part of the charm of classic drum machines is not their 'dry' sound, but how their sounds behave when given a nasty kick in the butt (much like an electric guitar can sound better when driven over the top). Perhaps even more so than with other types of sounds, a relatively bland drum sound can become that much more interesting when treated with these type of effects. However, I have not yet found more than a few that I really like. I guess it's quite a bit harder to do them 'just right' than one might expect at first glance.

IIRC, Urs has also been playing a bit with a distortion-type effect for Diva, but then discarded it because it apparently didn't meet his own quality standards. I would very much like to see some further efforts in this direction, perhaps applying zero delay feedback algo's to this type of effect (as I understand it, this has not been the case in Urs' attempt at adding some distortion to Diva's effect section).
Meh, just when we were getting used to zero delay plugins... at least you're getting very close to zero delay developer feedback (without resorting to auto-reply bots).

@HunterKiller:

! Nice to hear, sir! I believe, some people have gotten some drum sounds from Zebra over the last year?

So I'm playing around with Tremor and I thought it was nice. However, the cpu hit was a bit much (I guess I'm spoiled with Microtonic). Anyway I reset each engine, which effectively turns them off I guess, and decided to drive some other synths to see what I could get into. Well, well...

*** quick disclaimer to say I am not bashing FXpansion products ***

To make this easy I used a drum rack in Live and loaded in a bunch of different stuff like Blue, Zebra, ACE and Twin. I was a bit surprised at how well Twin worked in this context. Next I tried loading Zebralettes in all 8 slots (corresponding with the 8 coming out of Tremor) and ended up playing around with it for about 4-5 hours straight. I couldn't put it down. Even though I couldn't access the cool modulations built into the Tremor interface I was still getting some really great stuff coming from that rack. The kicker? For most of the time it was about 1/2 the cpu hit!

Now, I know there's a difference up under the hood between the FXpansion sound engine and the Zebralettes, but I thought the Zebralettes sounded every bit as good when it came to the percussion stuff (and quite often I preferred the Zebralette stuff). I really like what FXpansion has done with that sequencer but I wonder what it would be like to have a U-he drum-synth? Maybe where I could swap out different engines and still keep a killer sequencer...hmmm...

Now I ain't tryin' to be pushy or nothin' like that I just thought I'd share my experience and give this fine topic a litttle bumpage

Enjoy that vacation Urs!

Hmmm, hehe, I think Tremor is much more than just a drum sound generator, it's a whole package of things. I'm looking forward to give it a spin shortly

Well, Howie has recently been doing tom sounds for Hans in Zebra which unfortunately won't be used in that movie. These use quite a bit of CPU, but they do sound great! We might be able to sneak some in. That again speaks merely for synthesized accoustic drum sounds.

Anyhow, things are changing at a rapid pace. Nevertheless I think we will concentrate on Zebra and Berlin Modular this year.

We'll see...

Ok. Well, we'll just tuck this very fine thread away until next year then

Yeah, I suspected as much. It's funny, I keep going back to the Tremor demo like a moth to a flame (that would be my CPU that's burning) I've gotten fairly at programming it to sound pretty lively compared to their poor over-compressed distort-o-rama patches (though I must say that Himalaya's recent examples are excellent). Anyway, I've gotten some really good sounds out of it...

...compared to their presets. Well, good in general too. In the grand scheme of things I'm honestly not sure if the sound coming from it is actually any better than sounds I've made in other programs (though I've never used Zebralette, better than sounds I made with hardware) or better than Microtonic. Sure, more flexible than Microtonic with their modulation scheme... but was I making sounds I liked more? Sounds that were of better aural quality? Not sure. I like the sequencer. All I know is that after making something I felt was really good I moved to a stock kit in Maschine(samples of synthesis) and... it sounded really good too.

So it is. I go back and forth. I know part of it is because I decided to not start saving for a Tempest and I "think" that I should find a substitute. Maybe Tremor is it... maybe... I already have it.