Superior Drummer 3 odd behavior

[Mind Riot]

Making my first custom drum set from scratch, getting most of my parts from Progressive Foundry, but then I add a china cymbal that's from the Core library and it's really, really quiet. I haven't even begun mixing the set or anything, but it's barely audible next to the other cymbals and the drums.

I max out the volume on all the articulations for it and it's audible but still obviously quieter than everything else. There's no direct way to increase the volume that I know beyond this point besides getting into the mixer and messing with the bleed from all the overheads and room mics and such.

I load up the Core library just to test some things, and once there all the kits are quiet like the cymbal was.

Is there some master volume to control entire kits or even whole libraries that I'm missing here? Why would the Core library and Progressive Foundry be so out of whack from each other all of the sudden? This is my first self made drum set, and I started from scratch, meaning I used an empty kit at the start, I didn't modify an existing preset. Why would kit pieces from one library be much louder than kit pieces from another library when I'm picking completely unaffected brand new pieces of gear?

I'm really liking what I've found and heard with SD3 so far, but there is a lot to learn about. I've been reading the manual, but its lack of a table of contents is quite a hindrance, and this seems like such a basic question that I'm probably just a moron for asking it in the first place. But I'd appreciate any insight other SD3 owners would be willing to give. Thank you very much for your time.

[noiseboyuk]

Some kits are definitely louder / quieter than others. You've got a few options - I just tested with a Progressive Foundry kit and a Core cymbal and I found turning up the cymbal level control to the max of +12 gave a pretty good match to the other prog kit ones. If you need more, then right click the cymbal, click More and then Route Instrument microphones. Here you can see all the mic options and where they are routed. In my case, three are routed to existing overhead and ambience channels, two are not routed and none of the bleeds are routed. So the instruments from two different kits are all ending up in the same place, which doesn't give you complete control. So what you need to do is route all these to brand new channels - in the drop down menu for each mic positions Mixer Channels, at the bottom is Create New Channel. Then of course you can add gain to make it exactly what you need.

[Mind Riot]

Thank you for your insight! I'll try out what you recommended. I'm new to SD3 and the routing and mixing setup is a bit daunting at first, but this is definitely a piece of software that is worth sticking to and learning.

[noiseboyuk]

Thank you for your insight! I'll try out what you recommended. I'm new to SD3 and the routing and mixing setup is a bit daunting at first, but this is definitely a piece of software that is worth sticking to and learning.

You're lucky you're not using SD2! That really was impenetrable, I always found.

One of the best things about SD3 is that it works out of the box for nearly everything you want to do with it very simply. But if you need to get more detailed and clever with it, pretty much all that functionality is there even if you have to dig around a bit to find it.

[Mind Riot]

You're lucky you're not using SD2! That really was impenetrable, I always found.

One of the best things about SD3 is that it works out of the box for nearly everything you want to do with it very simply. But if you need to get more detailed and clever with it, pretty much all that functionality is there even if you have to dig around a bit to find it.

Speaking of which, what is the "Black Box" that's all over the effects slots on some of the presets? It's sitting there like an effect but there's nothing there when I open it.

[noiseboyuk]

Apparently Toontrack say Black Box effect is when the preset was created with an effect unique to EZ Drummer 2, and it can’t be modified. Only stumbled on to these myself the other day.

[Mind Riot]

Ah, interesting. Makes sense. Thanks again for your insight, it's been very helpful and I'm pretty comfortable with how everything works now. The mics and how they interact with the mixer takes a little imagination to grasp, but it's very powerful and flexible once you understand it. The effects are excellent as well.

There's so much to try out and experiment with, it's really a lot of fun. I'm burning away hours just fiddling around.