Superior Drummer vs MDrummer and other sample-based drum instruments

[buffalo roam]

I see a sale on Superior Drummer, and it’s tugging at my wallet. I’m used to working with MDrummer, and I like it very much, but sometimes I wonder if I’m getting the really crisp kicks and snappy snares I would like, not to mention some other features of Superior Drummer.

Would anyone with experience with these two plugins and other comparable sample-based drum instruments comment on whether Superior Drummer is significantly better or not? Thanks!

[BazJacuzzi]

Superior drummer is wonderful, but I wouldn't necessarily describe it as crispy or snappy. What kind of music are you making, that might help give advice.

[buffalo roam]

Superior drummer is wonderful, but I wouldn't necessarily describe it as crispy or snappy. What kind of music are you making, that might help give advice.

Thanks! That answers my question. My music is "cinematic".

[Tubarao33]

Can't help you with superior drummer. I use ez drummer 3 but I'm tempted by Mdrummer. I tried the demo and liked it especially the rhythm generator side but it is too deep and I haven't fully understood it in the demo period. What is it you don't like about it and you search for alternatives?

[buffalo roam]

Can't help you with superior drummer. I use ez drummer 3 but I'm tempted by Mdrummer. I tried the demo and liked it especially the rhythm generator side but it is too deep and I haven't fully understood it in the demo period. What is it you don't like about it and you search for alternatives?

I’m actually pretty happy with MDrummer, especially when it comes to being able to alter sounds in various ways. The drum libraries are enormous, and beside the standard MDrummer abilities, there are “synthesizer”, “sampler”, “multisampler”, and “scratcher” options that offer even more ways to come up with unusual percussive sounds.

My only big complaint so far is that I haven’t yet figured out how to add my own outside samples to the MDrummer libraries, which in this world of drag and drop should be easily done. (Battery 4, by contrast, does this easily.) There may be a tutorial on this I’ve been too lazy to look for.

My only other question about MDrummer, sometimes, is just how “realistic” the drum sounds really sound. Sometimes the bass kicks and snares seem just a bit muffled to me, and I wonder if Superior Drummer is better on this front, perhaps more deeply sampled with more microphones, etc. I’ve been impressed with the sound demos on the Superior Drummer Toontrack site, but as with all demos, I wonder whether extra, invisible processing has been added to the sounds. Don’t know, and I’m still on the fence. There's no demo to play with.

My initial impression is that Superior Drummer may be more intuitive and easy to work with, compared to MDrummer, with all MDrummer’s submenus to click on to get sound-designing done. And I like how Superior Drummer allows for stacking sounds and importing my own samples easily.

I've never played with MDrummer's rhythm generator, and so I can't speak to that. I just use my DAW's piano roll.

What do you feel about the sound of EZ Drummer, and what has you interested in MDrummer?

[Tubarao33]

EZ drummer 3 is good provided that you like its sounds or you find an expansion that you like, otherwise it is pretty limited in manipulating its sounds, but it relies 100% on midi patterns if you don't want to write everything yourself in the piano roll of your daw or its midi editor (which is good). I really liked the way the pattern generator works in Mdrummer even though it is not perfect.
I have found an EZ expansion I like, I use the reggae expansion for some stewart copeland inspired grooves and the default library is not bad at all, but I guess Mdrummer has more options sound wise plus it should cover any percussion and electronic drums needs I may have. The pay once and get every update forever is a good deal too.
Superior drummer drummer should be better than Mdrummer (much more expensive and much bigger libraries) but it still relies on midi files for grooves.

[buffalo roam]

EZ drummer 3 is good provided that you like its sounds or you find an expansion that you like, otherwise it is pretty limited in manipulating its sounds, but it relies 100% on midi patterns if you don't want to write everything yourself in the piano roll of your daw or its midi editor (which is good). I really liked the way the pattern generator works in Mdrummer even though it is not perfect.
I have found an EZ expansion I like, I use the reggae expansion for some stewart copeland inspired grooves and the default library is not bad at all, but I guess Mdrummer has more options sound wise plus it should cover any percussion and electronic drums needs I may have. The pay once and get every update forever is a good deal too.
Superior drummer drummer should be better than Mdrummer (much more expensive and much bigger libraries) but it still relies on midi files for grooves.

Thanks for your feedback. Unless some reseller miraculously offers a Black Friday discount on Omnisphere 3 this year, I may well go ahead and get Superior Drummer.

Meanwhile, it sounds like MDrummer may be a good choice for you, given what you like about it. For what it's worth, it's now on a 55% off sale at 112 Euros for the next 11 days. Otherwise, it occasionally goes on a half-price sale during one of Meldaproduction's rotating monthly "Madness" sales throughout the year.

[Steve Bolivar]

I think the Mdrummer Drum Tornado 2023 kits are really good as far as big sounds go. I was A/Bing then against Addictive Drums United Heavy kits and found the Drum Tornado 2023 kits more powerful/harder hitting at equal volumes to my ears. But there is a lot of processing going on with those to give them all that extra beef.

For importing sample libraries I followed this tutorial to import my Battery 4 library.

[funky lime]

As a long-time drummer, I prefer Superior Drummer 3. It does take more work out of the box—you have to know how to mix drums to make the most of it—but when you've got all the bleed enabled, it has a really full and natural sound. The depth of articulations is nice too; the core hi-hats have 27 different artics, and all the cymbals have various bow and bell tip and shank hits. If you like to get expressive with your cymbals, SD3 is pretty cool. It loads vastly quicker than (the latest) BFD3, and is much more stable than the old BFD3. Some stuff is not "crisp" or "punchy" out of the box (i might even describe the tone as "wooly" in some regards) but that's kinda by design; you are given all the tools you need to sculpt that sound yourself. (e.g. set the offset to -2.0ms if you need a more "immediate" thwack on the snare or kick). But as my own style tends toward the softer side, with a lighter touch on drums in particular, it is great for me. Of course, this will vary by expansion.

That said, given your own style is "cinematic" (whatever that even means in the context of drum kits), I don't know that SD3 is really necessary. As I see it, it really has more of a "band in a nice studio" sound/intent. Though if you really dig room sounds, the core library is recorded in quite a large room, and has tons of extra room & surround channels (optional) if you like your drums swimming.

BFD3 has some good sounds, as well as plenty of bad ones. The various expansions are a mixed bag, and some don't particularly play well with others. Even the core library itself has some inconsistencies in terms of recording and room sound. With a bit of effort and curation, you can get it sounding great. Amazing, even. That said, I find it really hard to recommend the ecosystem in its current state. I'm actually uninstalling most of my BFD3 stuff as I write this, despite it being a core part of "my sound" for the past several years. It does have some nice features that don't have parity in SD3, namely the cymbal swell modeling and the damping control. But it's a lot easier, for better or worse, to get a rather "unnatural," 2D, uncanny valley sound from it.

[buffalo roam]

I think the Mdrummer Drum Tornado 2023 kits are really good as far as big sounds go. I was A/Bing then against Addictive Drums United Heavy kits and found the Drum Tornado 2023 kits more powerful/harder hitting at equal volumes to my ears. But there is a lot of processing going on with those to give them all that extra beef.

For importing sample libraries I followed this tutorial to import my Battery 4 library.

Thanks for this! It addresses my laziness in looking for the appropriate tutorial, and I appreciate it. It looks pretty helpful for importing groups of samples or multi-samples at a time (although you have to be careful about following naming protocols), but a bit finicky if I just want to, say, replace or add only one outside drum sample to the MDrummer pile. On that front, Superior Drummer offers greater convenience--as do other sample-based drum plugins.

I agree with you about the Tornado drum sounds--they're great!

[buffalo roam]

As a long-time drummer, I prefer Superior Drummer 3. It does take more work out of the box—you have to know how to mix drums to make the most of it—but when you've got all the bleed enabled, it has a really full and natural sound. The depth of articulations is nice too; the core hi-hats have 27 different artics, and all the cymbals have various bow and bell tip and shank hits. If you like to get expressive with your cymbals, SD3 is pretty cool. It loads vastly quicker than (the latest) BFD3, and is much more stable than the old BFD3. Some stuff is not "crisp" or "punchy" out of the box (i might even describe the tone as "wooly" in some regards) but that's kinda by design; you are given all the tools you need to sculpt that sound yourself. (e.g. set the offset to -2.0ms if you need a more "immediate" thwack on the snare or kick). But as my own style tends toward the softer side, with a lighter touch on drums in particular, it is great for me. Of course, this will vary by expansion.

That said, given your own style is "cinematic" (whatever that even means in the context of drum kits), I don't know that SD3 is really necessary. As I see it, it really has more of a "band in a nice studio" sound/intent. Though if you really dig room sounds, the core library is recorded in quite a large room, and has tons of extra room & surround channels (optional) if you like your drums swimming.

BFD3 has some good sounds, as well as plenty of bad ones. The various expansions are a mixed bag, and some don't particularly play well with others. Even the core library itself has some inconsistencies in terms of recording and room sound. With a bit of effort and curation, you can get it sounding great. Amazing, even. That said, I find it really hard to recommend the ecosystem in its current state. I'm actually uninstalling most of my BFD3 stuff as I write this, despite it being a core part of "my sound" for the past several years. It does have some nice features that don't have parity in SD3, namely the cymbal swell modeling and the damping control. But it's a lot easier, for better or worse, to get a rather "unnatural," 2D, uncanny valley sound from it.

Thanks for your thoughtful reflections as a long-time drummer. I really appreciate it. I have read mixed reviews about BFD, and my own experience when downloading the free version of it was that the best things were the cymbals and hi-hats. Thanks for pointing out that SD3 is more geared to being a "band in a nice studio" product. "Cinematic" means I tell stories to music I compose--it's more like scoring. But I do use rhythms regularly. Thanks again!