KVR Audio

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:34 pm

A Vistalite drum set plus a Wuhan gong.

Many, many velocity layers; top and bottom snare and tom microphones; old-school tuning and playing techniques to match the instruments.

Read about them here.

There are a few free examples for evaluation available on the page.

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:26 am

The example samples seem very nice and this is a great deal for $7.50 Being a drum sample addict I can never get enough but the samples seem to be very low volume. Is this intentional?

runagate · Post by **runagate** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:29 am

Jeez, I thing I'll be buying this if I ever manage to digitize some money.

750 for 7.5 USD??? What in hell? Now I really am going to come over and record you whacking on me with your Public School gong.

Maybe you'd sell more sample sets if each included a sample of me being beaten and my attendant piteous wailing.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:45 am

Teksonik wrote: the samples seem to be very low volume. Is this intentional?

Yes.

There was minimal compression applied, and they aren't normalized.

The goal was, initially, to have 40 velocity layers with a dynamic range that was genuinely reflective of the real dynamic range of the instrument. There is a huge dynamic range in, e.g. a snare drum. The quietest hits are very quiet, while the loudest hits can destroy ones hearing.

The major advantage of 24/96 audio is that it allows one to come closer to capturing this dynamic range.

Resonance · Post by **Resonance** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:46 am

herodotus, the example samples cut off really quickly (like the ringing of the tom, ride, and crash). Did you tail these short just for the examples or is the whole kit done like that?

Sounds nice and organic though.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 2:02 am

Resonance wrote: Did you tail these short just for the examples or is the whole kit done like that?

The examples are more or less representative. I tried to make the cut off points natural sounding, without adding needless bloat. But obviously this is a matter of personal choice. The samples are probably short by modern rompler standards, but extremely long compared to most Akai drum samples.

I would say the snare drum samples are about half a second on average, with the under-miked samples being slightly longer. The tom samples average out at about a second each, the cymbals between 4 and 10 seconds, while the gong hits max out at about 20 seconds.

The whole package is about 605 MB, so that gives a sense of length as well.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 3:17 am

runagate wrote:Jeez, I thing I'll be buying this if I ever manage to digitize some money.

750 for 7.5 USD??? What in hell? Now I really am going to come over and record you whacking on me with your Public School gong.

Maybe you'd sell more sample sets if each included a sample of me being beaten and my attendant piteous wailing.

It would be fun to take the piteous wailing and pitch it down a couple of octaves. I did that with my dogs piteous wailing (wailing, that is for a treat, not due to any sort of cruelty) and when you pitched it down you could start to hear all sorts of overtones that were inaudible at normal pitch, so it freakishly got higher the lower you played it on the keyboard.

Good fun.

runagate · Post by **runagate** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:09 pm

rofl!

Resonance · Post by **Resonance** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:06 pm

Alright man. I ponied up a whopping $8.00 CAD for these!

Looking forward to 'em.

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:48 am

Now these are just the wave files, right? It's up to us to map them? Just checking... this is an amazing deal.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:20 am

Gregjazz wrote:Now these are just the wave files, right? It's up to us to map them? Just checking... this is an amazing deal.

No, you are correct, they aren't mapped.

Actually I did start to map them for sfz: hihat, kick and snare were more or less completed before I gave up. If anyone is interested they can pm me and I will send these sfz files along.

I set myself the task of doing a gm drum bank and it just didn't work for me. In fact, figuring out drum multisampling has been very hard for me, largely because as a drummer, it so unintuitive to approach playing drums in this way.

But I think that I have finally figured out an approach that will do multisampled drums in a way that I can work with.

In any case, these drums were meant to work in a velocity layered sample set, with top and bottom mikes mapped to the same midi note, so you can adjust the tone according to taste.

In retrospect, I would have made some of the samples longer. I was trying to push the anti-bloat envelope and probably got carried away.

It is for these reasons that these are so cheap.

The real value here, in my opinion, is in the 45 ride cymbal samples. They really do capture the sonic possibilities of that lovely 18 inch thin ride pretty well.

The 36 gong samples, too, are fairly unique. I experimented a lot and found that if you put an Audio Technica pro 25 (a dynamic mic usually used on kick drums and bass cabs) in just the right spot, you can pick up some fascinating overtones. I use these gong samples all of the time.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 2:36 pm

Resonance wrote:Alright man. I ponied up a whopping $8.00 CAD for these!

Looking forward to 'em.

Thanks!

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:25 am

An interesting ambient demo, generously provided by SIGHUP:

http://www.realmusicmedia.net/oneshotdemo.mp3

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:27 am

What can I say, these are some pretty awesome samples. Next step is mapping them, but from listening to them in a sound player, they sound great!

stale bread · Post by **stale bread** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:38 am

can't wait

Real Music Media: 750 one shots for 7 dollars and 50 cents