Regret purchase of DrumComputer Small Review

[AllMediaLab]

Hi,

Purchased Drum Computer this morning to find out that it is impossible to use it for EDM music or what ever music.

I'm a experienced drum sound designer mainly with Operator in Ableton Live. Operator lets you design in a dead a simple way any drum sound you can imagine with 1/5 of the parameters found in this plugin.

To be sure that is was not my ability to work with this Sugar Bytes plugin I listened to the Kick, Snare and Hihats presets to hear that nothing sounds any good. It lacks punch, definition and mixes terrible in a mix. That probably explains the freaky useless sequencer presets that come with the plugin.

It lacks simple efficient drum synthesisers to create the particular Kick, Snare, Toms and Hats sounds with a body and dynamic sound. No matter what you do, you never get a kick like in Kick 2. The weird thing is that even the Kick 2 samples in the DrumComputer plugin don't help, because of the design of the other synthesisers. Also the onboard effects are not suited for a DrumComputer and makes everything sound cheap.

I hope some update is planned to come with renewed synthesizers for for basic drum elements like Kick, Snare, Toms and Hats. The Gui looks nice and the idea behind the different panels is brilliant, but as long as it sounds like it does pretty useless!

Regards,
David

[D.K Envelope]

its not so good for edm kicks, but brilliant for percussion sounds and hihat in a creative way
i like it a lot but , dont make music anymore

but its true it dont fit in genre like edm or so

[bboxdw]

Purchased Drum Computer this morning to find out that it is impossible to use it for EDM music or what ever music...
The weird thing is that even the Kick 2 samples in the DrumComputer plugin don't help, because of the design of the other synthesisers...

I don't know if this will help for your particular use cases, but check out these two resources.

For the latter, make sure you have DrumComputer v1.2.5 that was just released today.

viewtopic.php?p=8354304&hilit=drumcomputer#p8353537

https://www.davewheitner.com/music/pres ... mcomputer/

[imrae]

It lacks punch, definition and mixes terrible in a mix.
...
It lacks simple efficient drum synthesisers to create the particular Kick, Snare, Toms and Hats sounds with a body and dynamic sound. No matter what you do, you never get a kick like in Kick 2.
...
I hope some update is planned to come with renewed synthesizers for for basic drum elements like Kick, Snare, Toms and Hats.

This is all really vague, what exactly is the problem with the sounds? Are the transients not short enough? The subs not deep enough? The tails not long enough (or the wrong shape?) Can you describe how you wish it was different without using vague words like "good for EDM" or "punch"?

[AllMediaLab]

@bboxdw

Thanks for the very useful tips and links! Much appreciated!

David

[mtelesha]

I say throw a transition and some expansion VST and you might be surprised

[kraster]

As has been said before I agree Drum Computer struggles particularly with kicks.

It's not so much that it's not capable of producing decent kicks but more that it takes a lot of tweaking to get there. Like a lot! Too much. Getting the right resonance is very fiddly and even then the results are never fully convincing.

Much easier to load up something like XO and pick a kick. It's nearly always a better result in 1/100 of the time

I always feel like there is very little headroom in the plugin. So it feels slightly "choked"

I notice that it seems like the Global saturation section is always "engaged". Even with the knob at zero changing the algorithm changes the sound character. Maybe that has something to do with it. I dunno.

My kick usually ends up about ten times louder than the other parts with the kick and master fader both cranked. You can mitigate that by outputting to different channels in your daw but it seems like an unnecessarily convoluted way of doing things.

This makes FX on these other parts pretty much useless since they're post fader and the faders are so low that you don't get enough signal being sent to the FX. I'd also gladly swap the room reverb for a basic delay. I don't see the point in having two reverbs.

I have no problem getting great snares, hats, claps and percussion and even synth sounds . It really excels in this regard but kicks are an issue.

I personally love the sequencer. It's quick, easy and the chaining function is invaluable. I would love a track by track humanize function.

I think that Drum Computer is inches away from being one of the the best Drum machine VSTs ever with a few tweaks. Particularly the kicks and overall gain staging

[AllMediaLab]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

I don't know if this will help for your particular use cases, but check out these two resources.

For the latter, make sure you have DrumComputer v1.2.5 that was just released today.

viewtopic.php?p=8354304&hilit=drumcomputer#p8353537

https://www.davewheitner.com/music/pres ... mcomputer/ (https://www.davewheitner.com/music/presets-drumcomputer/)

Checked the downloaded kicks out from the link and there is not one usable kick in the list. I have to admit that they make a lot of noise, but lack body, tightness and the proper amount of mid range frequencies. It's easy to make a loud sounding kick, but that's not what I want. I'm looking to make a kick loud and usable in a Melodic Techno mix and other EDM genres. There is something wrong in the design of this DrumComputer that results in unusable kicks. I have Kick 2, Elektron Drummachine and MBase 02 here and all of them give great results.

[all_theory]

Found this thread looking for the new DrumComputer update and thought I'd add a couple of things. I'm sorry that this plugin hasn't worked out the way you hoped, I think we've all probably got a few purchases we regret! It certainly doesn't have the control over transients and pitch envelopes that you'll find on something like Kick 2. That's like doing surgery in some ways. But, like a lot of instruments, the fact that something does excel in one area doesn't mean it's a failure in general. It depends what it was designed for and why people might be interested in it. For the record, I bought DrumComputer with Punchbox because I wanted to use them together.

The less predictable nature of DrumComputer was the selling point for me! It feels a lot like patching a kick or snare on a modular (since the sub is coming from a resonating filter). It's moving and alive. If you're into more raw sorts of techno, breaks, electro (which I am) this is a really unique drum synth and a powerful percussion weapon. The ability to drop the swung/humanized midi files into projects immediately is also awesome for my purposes.

One suggestion that I've found after working with this plug quite a bit: I use an initial preset that has NO modulation or effects (from sequencer or mod matrix). This means clearing all of the settings by double clicking each setting to return to default. Then for kicks, I mute parts and quickly build sub, body, noise in order. It's tempting to punch the randomize button a lot on this plugin, but this will often introduce modulations that rob a sound of punch or presence (at least across time as mods shift in and out). Of course, this still may not get you the sound you're after though it's hard to know since EDM and melodic techno cover a lot of territory.

[dangayle]

Purchased Drum Computer this morning to find out that it is impossible to use it for EDM music or what ever music.

This seems overly broad. I use it for Techno, and it's great. It might not be the best for your main kick, but everything else is pretty amazing. Even then, I've used the kick as a good layer.

It's designed to be a unique drum synthesis machine, and you can 100% get interesting, unique drum sounds, including kicks. It's not meant to be a Kick 2 replacement, I don't even imagine how you think it could be. If you get the perfect kicks with that, why are you angry at this for not making the kicks you want?

[masterhiggins]

Probably not suitable for tarnce, but it’s great for experimental stuff.

[SLiC]

Like most Sugar Bytes stuff it’s left field and not the same old boring repetitive stuff…808, 909 etc….it’s great that electronic music can still Ogaden any be inventive and not retrospective.

Plus there is a great free demo to find out exactly how it sounds before you buy…I had this for almost a year as a demo before I bought it.

[dangayle]

Like most Sugar Bytes stuff it’s left field and not the same old boring repetitive stuff…808, 909 etc….

Yes, exactly. It's really great for top lines and percussions and things. I'd personally always do my kick separate anyway for this kind of music.

[bboxdw]

they make a lot of noise, but lack body, tightness and the proper amount of mid range frequencies. ..I have Kick 2, Elektron Drummachine and MBase 02 here and all of them give great results.

It sounds like you've already got a few other options that may meet your particular needs more efficiently. DrumComputer is one of those plugins that you can do amazing things with, and get lots of "happy accidents" from; but it does take some up front time and effort to get to know it, due to the range of parameters and the ways in which they interact.

At the same time, I appreciate the more specific feedback. It makes me suspect that I may have EQ gained the fundamental frequencies a bit heavily for some people's uses. So, I've added a "no EQ" version of the preset pack as well, alongside a few more pointers, at https://www.davewheitner.com/music/pres ... mcomputer/ . Hopefully these two options will give many people a starting point for further tweaking and creating.

[dlandis]

they make a lot of noise, but lack body, tightness and the proper amount of mid range frequencies. ..I have Kick 2, Elektron Drummachine and MBase 02 here and all of them give great results.

It sounds like you've already got a few other options that may meet your particular needs more efficiently. DrumComputer is one of those plugins that you can do amazing things with, and get lots of "happy accidents" from; but it does take some up front time and effort to get to know it, due to the range of parameters and the ways in which they interact.

At the same time, I appreciate the more specific feedback. It makes me suspect that I may have EQ gained the fundamental frequencies a bit heavily for some people's uses. So, I've added a "no EQ" version of the preset pack as well, alongside a few more pointers, at https://www.davewheitner.com/music/pres ... mcomputer/ . Hopefully these two options will give many people a starting point for further tweaking and creating.

Thanks again, Dave. Much appreciated!