Centipeak releases "Drum Experience" Advanced Drum Sampler for Win and Mac (VST, AU & RTAS)

Centipeak has released Drum Experience, an advanced drum sampler constructed to offer all possibilities to create, process and change drum sounds in dramatic ways with sustained professional sound quality.

They have an expanding library of presets made by users and invited drum engineers that gives access to the same mixer setups and sounds as these professionals.

To tune and process the sound with total freedom and quality, a new type of sample engine was constructed. 127 velocity layers with round robins, up to 16 individually controllable microphones, insert effects, an internal routing system, an advanced sample selection/processing algorithm to guarantee the dynamics and realism. Drum Experience also has the ability to load custom samples (any WAVE-file) side-by-side with the full-fledged drums.

All basic facilities of a drum sampler are included in Drum Experience. The pitch has a novel feature, Preserve Attack, for keeping the original punch of the drum while still pitching the tone and sustain of the sound. The envelope control has up to 24-points which can reshape the sound with great precision. Each microphone, articulation and MIDI-event type combination has its own envelope. The Volume-curve can boost/cut the volume of a sample based on its velocity, which allows boosting of the quietest ghost hits in the mix or reduce the volume of the highest hits for example.

By using the custom samples-technology your current sample libraries can be imported into Drum Experience. Enhance and reshape them with the pitch, envelope, insert effects and other features.

Drum Experience's core engine is capable of playing hundreds of samples at the same time, perform the processing of the insert effects, apply pitch and envelope to the sound and route the audio without restrictions on a personal computer or laptop without the need for extra hardware.

Insert effects are a vital part of drum production and therefore Drum Experience has integrated versions of Centipeak's in-house Bona Fide Effects Series which consists of Bona Fide Reverb, Bona Fide Compressor and Bona Fide Equalizer. The effect arsenal also contains an event-based Transient Shaper for changing the attack and sustain characteristics of the drums. The Transient Shaper has the TransEQ which applies an equalization profile to either the attack or sustain or both.

Currently available kits:

• Glam Rock: The dreamlike sound created in the 70s by bands such as David Bowie, Gary Glitter, T-Rex and Uriah Heep is something many producers would like to achieve today. This is an original 1970-kit with the original heads, 42 years of age now, still sounding magical.
• Maple Studio: One thing common to maple wood drum kits is their ability to stand out of a mix. Their natural tone and versatile character are a few of the reasons why they have been frequently used as studio kits for as long as there has been studios. This extremely dynamic drum kit has been sampled in a small room giving it a dry and colourful sound inviting processing, tweaking and shaping.
• Matte Modin Drums (MMD): Matte Modin is the metal drummer who rose to fame with bands such as Raised Fist, Defleshed and Dark Funeral. Even though Matte Modin is the "king of technical ecstasy" the drums are more than suited as an all-round kit for every kind of music with a heavy beat such as slow rock and ballads. Of course it's suitable for Metal blast beat manias as well.

Features:

• 127 velocity layers.
• Up to 16 microphones/drum.
• 64-bit (or 32-bit).
• Supersize drum kits.
• Minuscule loading times.
• Totally fluid routing system.
• Advanced sample selection and processing algorithm.
• Bona Fide integrated insert effects.
• Advanced pitch & envelope.
• Large Scale Automation (50000+ parameters)*.
• 30 drums simultaneously.
• 32 buses (up to 160 concurrent effects).
• Intelligent physical absorption.
• Stick-to-reality mode.
• Multi-threaded glitch-free loading.
• Super CPU-efficient.
• MIDI mapping with MIDI-learn & presets.
• Volume/velocity curves.
• Window-based UI.

* For VST-version only

Pricing & Availability

Drum Experience costs $359 / €295 excl. VAT (including one drum kit). It is available for 32- and 64-bit Windows and Mac OS X in VST, AU and RTAS instrument plug-in formats.

Drum Experience requires iLok2-copy protection dongle (not included).