Toontrack releases Area 33 SDX by Fredrik Thordendal and Daniel Bergstrand and updates Superior Drummer to v3.3.4

Toontrack has released Area 33 SDX by Fredrik Thordendal and Daniel Bergstrand for Superior Drummer 3 (and updated Superior Drummer to v3.3.4).

Area 33 SDX, $179, brings together parts of the original Drumkit From Hell team: Meshuggah guitarist Fredrik Thordendal and producer/engineer/mixer Daniel Bergstrand (Behemoth, In Flames, Dimmu Borgir).

Toontrack says:

In this joint venture of sourcing, engineering and ultimately externalizing their very figment of what the most all-encompassing metal-related SDX for Superior Drummer 3 could be, they ended up with an absolute monster weighing in at a staggering 180+ GB. It was recorded at Fredrik Thordendal's personal studio 33 in Stockholm, Sweden. This studio, which Thordendal and Bergstrand built from the ground up, was designed with the goal of creating the epitome of a drum room: spacious and reverberant but at the same time profoundly precise, direct and controlled.

With its seven contrasting and complementing kits, extensive pool of additional drums and virtual forest of cymbals, the Area 33 SDX presents a massively broad palette of raw and unadulterated drums that you can hone, shape and mold using Superior Drummer 3. These are not your average, everyday kits – several of them boast up to eight toms, double bass drums and 15 cymbal slots. On top of that, this SDX was captured using what is beyond traditional in terms of microphones. Each kit was recorded using the classic close-mic technique but, in addition, with an extra set of microphones on each position. This means that each drum and cymbal is represented by both a mono as well as a stereo pair of microphones. Finally, to capture the essence of the room and to give you even more options, 11 ambience microphones (of which seven are in stereo) were recorded.

Feature Spotlight:

• Engineered and produced by Fredrik Thordendal and Daniel Bergstrand.
• Recorded at 33, Fredrik Thordendal's personal studio in Stockholm, Sweden.
• Featuring seven (7) unique drum kits.
• A total of 13 snares, 14 bass drums (x2), 42 toms, three hi-hats and upwards of 40 cymbals.
• Recorded using 11 ambience microphone positions (of which seven are in stereo).
• More than of 180 GB of sampled drums and cymbals.
• Sampled by drummer Leo Margarit (Pain of Salvation).
• Includes presets for each kit engineered by Bergstrand as well as the Toontrack sound design team.

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Superior Drummer v3.3.4 is now available to download using the Product Manager or from the 'My Products' area in your Toontrack account. The main changes are listed below:

General:

• A MIDI Mapping Layout window has been added. It can be opened from the Help menu as well as from the More menu for each instrument.
• "About Sound Libraries" has been removed from the Help menu. (Library versions are listed in the About dialog, up-to-date library descriptions are on the Toontrack website and the MIDI layout can be seen in the new MIDI Mapping Layout window.).

Grid Editor:

• A new articulation row called "Choke (Stop Playing) " has been added for each instrument that responds to aftertouch. The poly-aftertouch editors have been removed.
• Moving the playhead in the song track now scrolls the Grid Editor to show the playhead, unless the Auto-Scroll option is off.

Mixer Tab:

• The maximum number of mixer buses has been increased from 16 to 32.

E-Drums:

• The hi-hat splash feature has been improved in order to remove unwanted hi-hat splashes. The hi-hat now has a time window, within which the pedal needs to have been raised after a "Pedal Closed" hit in order to generate a splash.

Settings:

• In MIDI In/E-Drums settings, there is now an option to show "All Notes in Preset" to only show the notes relevant to the selected e-drum preset/kit.
• In MIDI In/E-Drums settings, it now says "-" instead of "No" in the "Edited" column.
• On Windows, there is now a setting to invert the horizontal scroll direction when shift+wheel is used.

For a list of bug fixes see the release notes.