Steven Slate Drums Holiday sale up to 67% 0ff

[Larry Shelby]

http://everyplug.in/ssd

[Bapu]

Those are by far the lowest prices I've seen for both SSD5 in quite a while, Trigger and all those expansions.

If I didn't own them all I'd buy them just so I could say Installed!

Edited November 26, 2023 by Bapu

[Yan Filiatrault]

1 hour ago, Bapu said:

Those are by far the lowest prices I've seen for both SSD5, Trigger and all those expansions.

If I didn't own them all I'd buy them just so I could say Installed!

I think I bought SSD 5 for lower (around 50$) some years ago. But yes, expansions prices are low.

[Moon OverSea]

so which one is better? SSD 5 or EZ Drum or BFD3?

[jngnz]

16 minutes ago, Moon OverSea said:

so which one is better? SSD 5 or EZ Drum or BFD3?

Can't say anything about EZ Drum but there's about 13 moons between BFD3 and SSD5. You can make songs with BFD. You can barely make demos with SSD.

[Moon OverSea]

I see, thank you for your explaination, 13 moons' distance is quite far away ?

[PavlovsCat]

10 hours ago, Moon OverSea said:

so which one is better? SSD 5 or EZ Drum or BFD3?

This is difficult and I think it's dependent on what genres you do. I think SSD is best suited for harder rock styles. It's production-ready for certain styles of harder rock. It really doesn't fit what I do -- and I'm friends with Steven and sincerely think it's excellent for what it is. Listen to the demos and if it's right for you, I think that it's pretty much in no brainer territory at the sale price. I own BFD Eco, not BFD3. I think the kits in BFD3 are more versatile, more natural sounding than SSD, which is more to my liking. A developer friend of mine who is a superb musician who has made a bunch of excellent demos many of you have likely heard, did use BFD3 for a while, but eventually deleted it from his hard drive because he found it too much work to deal with (maybe jngnz could explain that, I seem to recall something about just requiring a lot more work to mix the drums and set outputs for various effects). While I don't have the latest version of ezDrummer, I have the first version and switched to SD and am now on SD3, I would pick it as my favorite of the three choices. I find the drums are extremely well recorded and tuned very well from kit to kit. The interface from what I've seen is far more sophisticated and easy to use than BFD3 -- although BFD3 probably gives you more options.

So my picks would be ezDrummer for rock, jazz, singer/songwriter style music and SSD if you're doing harder, high energy rock and more slick, aggressive productions. 

 

[jngnz]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

This is difficult and I think it's dependent on what genres you do. I think SSD is best suited for harder rock styles. It's production-ready for certain styles of harder rock. It really doesn't fit what I do -- and I'm friends with Steven and sincerely think it's excellent for what it is. Listen to the demos and if it's right for you, I think that it's pretty much in no brainer territory at the sale price. I own BFD Eco, not BFD3. I think the kits in BFD3 are more versatile, more natural sounding than SSD, which is more to my liking. A developer friend of mine who is a superb musician who has made a bunch of excellent demos many of you have likely heard, did use BFD3 for a while, but eventually deleted it from his hard drive because he found it too much work to deal with (maybe jngnz could explain that, I seem to recall something about just requiring a lot more work to mix the drums and set outputs for various effects). While I don't have the latest version of ezDrummer, I have the first version and switched to SD and am now on SD3, I would pick it as my favorite of the three choices. I find the drums are extremely well recorded and tuned very well from kit to kit. The interface from what I've seen is far more sophisticated and easy to use than BFD3 -- although BFD3 probably gives you more options.

So my picks would be ezDrummer for rock, jazz, singer/songwriter style music and SSD if you're doing harder, high energy rock and more slick, aggressive productions. 

 

This is honestly surprising coming from someone who considers themselves a former semi-pro drummer.

To me, SSD5 feels like a toy compared to BFD. It's like having a sampler with a bunch of half-decent one-shots available vs. having actual drum kits available.

Sure, this can come with the "disadvantage" of actually having to mix a drum kit from scratch, but I guess I've never understood that factor at all. I'm still a beginner mixer (an audio engineering student, in fact), and mixing drums has always been the easiest and most fun AND most rewarding thing to me. It's the foundation of every song. And I don't want someone else to decide for me what the foundation of my song sounds like.

And even if you can't or don't want to mix drums, even if you can't be bothered to mix and match kit pieces and make everything your own, BFD3 also comes with "mix ready" presets that still feel and sound a million times better than anything in SSD5.

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, jngnz said:

This is honestly surprising coming from someone who considers themselves a former semi-pro drummer.

To me, SSD5 feels like a toy compared to BFD. It's like having a sampler with a bunch of half-decent one-shots available vs. having actual drum kits available.

Sure, this can come with the "disadvantage" of actually having to mix a drum kit from scratch, but I guess I've never understood that factor at all. I'm still a beginner mixer (an audio engineering student, in fact), and mixing drums has always been the easiest and most fun AND most rewarding thing to me. It's the foundation of every song. And I don't want someone else to decide for me what the foundation of my song sounds like.

And even if you can't or don't want to mix drums, even if you can't be bothered to mix and match kit pieces and make everything your own, BFD3 also comes with "mix ready" presets that still feel and sound a million times better than anything in SSD5.

"Considers themselves a former semi-pro drummer?" 

First, no one -- absolutely no one -- is impressed by anyone who was a semi-pro anything, especially in the distant past. But I still have the posters somewhere in my basement, I think.  And all of my old drums and cymbals. I recently found that a snare I bought right before my injury is a collector's item and in mint condition and will soon be selling that stuff. I have witnesses to Jimmy Chamberlin (Smashing Pumpkins) walking up to me at one of his shows and telling me I was one of his favorite drummers and named two bands I played in over several years (okay, he did say, "one of my favorite drummers on the Chicago scene" not just "favorite drummers" but I prefer to remember the first part before he limited the scope down a bit; but he didn't say like, in the 60804 area code, he said Chicago, and that's pretty big, right???).  But I digress...

Seriously, I think you've misunderstood my point. My advice was to someone comparing 3 drum plugins, and not knowing the genres they played in, I tried to give the best advice I could. And, as I explained, I haven't used BFD3 myself, so I realize that my recommendation is less solid due to that fact. I was basing my understanding on what a friend who is a pro developer and very knowledgeable on mixing told me, that he wasn't crazy about the capabilities in BFD and was sending everything out to external effects and thought it was too big of a hassle compared to what he could do with alternatives. My personal go to drum plugin is SD3, but I also use AD2 and KONTAKT. I don't use SSD5, but I did try to the demo. I think for someone looking for ready to go, production ready presets for high energy hard rock, SSD5 for it's current sale price, is a really good deal. I absolutely prefer the sound of real drums, and so I was comparing what I know about BFD3 and what a developer friend told me about it -- and considering that, I was comparing it to what I know as a SD3 user and former ezDrummer user (version 1).  I recommended that instead, as it has a lot of the great capabilities of SD3, but more simplified, with less customization available, it's rock solid software and I love the drum kits. I think for many users, ezDrummer 3 is a great fit.

Personally, as I wrote earlier in the Toontrack BF sales thread, I'm a huge fan of SD3 and love the SD3 ecosystem. I love having high quality effects like a compressor, transient designer, reverb, etc, in the plugin so that I can save everything as presets and reuse them in other projects. I love and regularly use the ability to swap and layer drums and cymbals.  For me personally, if I had to rank what I like the best and considering BFD3's history of software problems (that's enough to make me uncomfortable with it)  I'd rank ezDrummer3 first, then BFD3, then SSD5.  

Edited November 25, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[jngnz]

Fair points.

Admittedly, my recommendations and, more importantly, my disapprovals of things, are always to be taken with two or three grains of salt because I have an unjustified and sometimes borderline baseless aversion against products I think are not worth it.

I used to be into films a lot and was known around a small online community for writing seething hate reviews of often universally beloved films (wish I still had my review of Touch of Evil. What a piece of **** that movie is. Don't get me started.) Whenever I don't like something, its existence is a personal affront to me. I think I might need some help, really, but it's the way I've always functioned.

But more to the point, I got SSD5 for $49 and it was still one of my worst purchases ever. Its samples and presets are below AD2 level, IMO, and playing it on my e-drums felt lifeless and uninspiring. Of course, YMMV. I would also like to point out that the person asked which was "better" and not which was "easier", but I guess for me "better" is "more advanced" and for you "better" is a lot about being more "user friendly". Hope that didn't sound disrespectful, because it genuinely wasn't meant to. Different strokes and all.

[CSistine]

4 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

14 hours ago, Moon OverSea said:

so which one is better? SSD 5 or EZ Drum or BFD3?

This is difficult and I think it's dependent on what genres you do. I think SSD is best suited for harder rock styles.

Not only it is dependent on the genres, but also on your taste! I can't argue about BFD, but what I like with SSD are the kick sounds, much better than in AD2 (their kicks are all too boomy)! Also I like the straight mixing console, not too much fancy stuff. I prefer to mix the drums mostly in the daw and not in the drum plugin. I usually export the drum plugin tracks as audio and import them into my mixing projects.

In respect of the current Steven Slate deals I am really disappointed, because I purchased Trigger 2 and found out that there is only 1 lousy iLok activation for this one, for SSD 5 I got 3 activations back then! Thus I had expected the same for Trigger 2. Regret my purchase!

[Soundwise]

18 hours ago, Bapu said:

Those are by far the lowest prices I've seen for both SSD5, Trigger and all those expansions.

I think, SSD5 cost me around $50, and I recall seeing extensions for $29 at JRR, but that was long ago.

[Soundwise]

3 hours ago, jngnz said:

This is honestly surprising coming from someone who considers themselves a former semi-pro drummer.

To me, SSD5 feels like a toy compared to BFD. It's like having a sampler with a bunch of half-decent one-shots available vs. having actual drum kits available.

Sure, this can come with the "disadvantage" of actually having to mix a drum kit from scratch, but I guess I've never understood that factor at all. I'm still a beginner mixer (an audio engineering student, in fact), and mixing drums has always been the easiest and most fun AND most rewarding thing to me. It's the foundation of every song. And I don't want someone else to decide for me what the foundation of my song sounds like.

And even if you can't or don't want to mix drums, even if you can't be bothered to mix and match kit pieces and make everything your own, BFD3 also comes with "mix ready" presets that still feel and sound a million times better than anything in SSD5.

I'd love to hear your opinion on NI drums, like Abbey Road Drummers and Session Drummer.

[jngnz]

56 minutes ago, Soundwise said:

I'd love to hear your opinion on NI drums, like Abbey Road Drummers and Session Drummer.

They are surprisingly good, especially AR and Studio.

[PavlovsCat]

9 hours ago, jngnz said:

They are surprisingly good, especially AR and Studio.

I agree, and I never see anyone posting anything about Abbey Road Drummer when people discuss sampled drums. I also like NI's Studio Drummer too, as one of the kits reminds me a lot of how I used to tune my own drums. If you anyone wants a really nice set of additional presets, my late,  very talented friend Cory Pelazzari made presets for the entire Abbey Road Drummer series and Studio Drummer that you can find along with his related video (sorry, I'd link to them, but I'm running out the door) . 

Edited November 25, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Soundwise]

14 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

I agree, and I never see anyone posting anything about Abbey Road Drummer when people discuss sampled drums. I also like NI's Studio Drummer too, as one of the kits reminds me a lot of how I used to tune my own drums. If you anyone wants a really nice set of additional presets, my late,  very talented friend Cory Pelazzari made presets for the entire Abbey Road Drummer series that you can find along with his related video (sorry, I'd link to them, but I'm running out the door on a trip to take my son back to college after the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US) . 

Thanks for the tip! Here's the video with Cory's custom presets:

 

[PavlovsCat]

On 11/25/2023 at 8:07 AM, Soundwise said:

Thanks for the tip! Here's the video with Cory's custom presets:

 

The one thing that is a bummer with the Abbey Road Drummer series and the NI Studio Drummer library as compared to SD3, EzDrummer3, AD2 and BFD3, is that all of those players let you swap and layer drums and cymbals between libraries and the NI libraries do not permit that. Other than that, I think the NI stuff is great to have (NI Studio Drummer, Abbey Road 60s Drummer and Abbey Road Modern Drummer are my favorites of the NI acoustic drum libraries; I play rock and singer/songwriter music).  

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Soundwise]

23 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

The one thing that is a bummer with the Abbey Road Drummer series and the NI Studio Drummer library as compared to SD3, EzDrummer3, AD2 and BFD3, is that all of those players let you swap and layer drums and cymbals between libraries and the NI libraries do not permit that. Other than that, I think the NI stuff is great to have (NI Studio Drummer, Abbey Road 60s Drummer and Abbey Road Modern Drummer are my favorites of the NI acoustic drum libraries; I play rock and singer/songwriter music). 

If you need to be creative - flexible libraries to the rescue, and if you need a time saver - just use whatever preset or patch you like. And even though NI Drummer libs are meant to be time savers (at least, in my book), you can still go a long way adjusting mixer settings with built-in effects and/or route each channel to your DAW and process it individually.  By saying "you" I mean any user, of course.

[PavlovsCat]

36 minutes ago, Soundwise said:

If you need to be creative - flexible libraries to the rescue, and if you need a time saver - just use whatever preset or patch you like. And even though NI Drummer libs are meant to be time savers (at least, in my book), you can still go a long way adjusting mixer settings with built-in effects and/or route each channel to your DAW and process it individually.  By saying "you" I mean any user, of course.

100%. You can do a lot more with them than the presets or even Cory's presets might lead one to realize. If you have solid mixing skills -- (FTR, I don't; I was a musician, not a sound engineer; I relied on sound engineers back in the day) -- the raw samples in say NI Abbey Road Modern Drummer and Session Drummer can cover a lot of ground, far beyond the factory presets or even Cory's presets (which are really just tweaks of the factory presets). If I were just getting my start with sample libraries today and looking for an acoustic drum kit library, I think I could just buy SD3 with its factory kits (alternatively ezDrummer) and be able to accomplish a heck of a lot by creating my own presets using the various drums, layering drums, swapping cymbals, applying effects like the internal compressor, transient designer, reverb, etc. and save the resulting presets for furture use and for future tweaking to make even more kits. Because I don't have sound engineering and design skills, I do tend to rely on presets and tweak those -- and in my case -- I have a developer friend who's shared a bunch of AD2 presets he's made and he goes deep and some of his presets are so substantial that it's like buying a new drum library/expansion pack, because he does sample development and makes presets for his own libraries for a living. 

I think a lot of what Toontrack and other acoustic drum plugin makers sell is the expert-created presets, as they sell many libraries/expansions that, very candidly, aren't substantially that different from one another that you one could get pretty close to if you just have mixing expertise.  I would love it if Toontrack sold additional presets for each drum expansion. $15 - $20 USD for 30 new very different expertly made presets for an SDx that sound good to my ears -- I'd buy that in a heartbeat and it would be a high profit margin item for them. Someone who knows their CEO, please go pitch the idea to him! 

Edited November 26, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[CSistine]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

The one thing that is a bummer with the Abbey Road Drummer series and the NI Studio Drummer library as compared to SD3, EzDrummer3, AD2 and BFD3, is that all of those players let you swap and layer drums and cymbals between libraries and the NI libraries do not permit that. Other than that, I think the NI stuff is great to have (NI Studio Drummer, Abbey Road 60s Drummer and Abbey Road Modern Drummer are my favorites of the NI acoustic drum libraries; I play rock and singer/songwriter music).  

 

It is possible if you open the different drum libraries in Kontakt and assign different Midi channels. But I agree it's too cumbersome!

The thing I do, if I want e.g. the basic drums from Studio Drummer and the cymbals from 70s Drummer, then I open 2 Kontakt instruments in the DAW (1 for each drum library) and I separate the MIDI of the base drums and the cymbals to those tracks.