John Nelson

It's good that you are referencing a variety of commercial tracks to judge how well you match up. Especially ones in similar genres. Gain staging from start to finish is the heart of the matter, always has been, always will be. Yellow is the new red!

Free Gain by Sienda/Sonalksis. Dead simple, and it's free. https://www.sonalksis.com/freeg.html

It's about learning. Next time, make sure your incoming signal levels leave lots of headroom. Yellow is the new red.

BFD3 has presets for all of the Roland kits and most others too. "Mapping" is a one click thing. I would assume Superior and the other popular VSTIs do, too. Maybe not Session Drummer though. I would recommend a step up to a more fully featured drum VSTI.

I'm leaning towards the triggers. Probably will use moon gels anyway so not too concerned about any damping effect. I'll let you guys know how it works out. most likely will be closer to summer.

I can wholeheartedly recommend one of the fellows from the old Cakewalk forum, Jonas Aras. He was conscientious and delivered a great result at a fair price. http://audiorecordingandservices.com/

I have the paid-for Essentials, will try it out. Obviously a highly isolated kick or snare should work better. Overheads would probably be difficult if not impossible with a monophonic algorithm. Re. Drum Replacer, I think that is a simple canned sample and not the multi-sampled 256 velocity layers full monty like you get with BFD3. Doesn't sound very sexy....

Re. Melodyne, I would need the Editor right, not the Essential? I have v-drums and I normally play them and record the MIDI to trigger BFD3, but I want to get real drums for the fun factor. Banging on mesh or rubber is like kissing your girlfriend through a screen door. I've recorded other drummers here before, they brought their own drums and it came out fine. But I just want to keep open an option to use multisampled drums to provide variety so not every song is the same sound. I thought that triggers might be the way to go. Are they expensive or wonky to set up?

What is the best, most elegant way to convert a multi tracked drum recording to MIDI, either wholly or partially (e.g., kick and snare), such that it could then be used to trigger a drum VSTi like BFD3 or Superior etc.?

I'm not surprised... the company is out of business !

V-Vocal was a crashfest ... Thank the Lord for Melodyne! Let that abomination rest,dead and buried in its artifact filled grave.

Now THIS is good stuff! Bravo, Noel.

Have you tried some of the mixer presets? I have mine set up to output as a single stereo channel and mix the drums inside of BFD3. Toggle through the presets and see which one works best for you. Try enabling the loudness option for any kit pieces that are unruly and dial in the dynamics to your taste.

Using the IK one here. Works great! https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/trwhite2a/

Kudos for the Mackie Control enhancements, especially wrt the Pro Channel! This is spot on... my top row buttons are getting a right good work out now! They were feeling left out.