Steven Slate drums fucking suck... Period. They sound unnatural and extremlely processed. I am easily able to tell they aren't real drums... I want superior 2.0 with some expansions, but they are too expensive

WHy the fuck are my sounds so unnatural sounding? anyone know how to get better sounds for them? Idk they are just so polished it is annoying and totally unnatural.

The whole point, as far as I can tell, of SSD is that it's supposed to be "production ready" or something along those lines- instant modern glossydrums in a box. SD2 is nice, but it takes a bit of working with to really get it rocking. There's much more depth to it than you usually hear on forum clips. The Toontrack stuff does have a bit of a recognizable sound to it if you're not deviating from stock, though. I like and use SD2 myself, and the ability to mix-and-match from the expansions with noisemaker percussion and electronic sounds and whatnot is really cool.

The guitarist from my metal band uses BFD (and Joe Barresi's Evil Drums expansion) when he's not behind the kit himself, and he's fooled me a few times. Definitely a bit more rough-and-ready, in a good way, than either of the other aforementioned. He likes his drums pretty dry and raw, generally, and I get the impression you'd have to work with the samples as you would a raw recording to get BFD sounding like either of the others.

SD2 is, from what I can tell, sort of the compromise option. Slate is glossy and you can't change it, the BFD stuff I've encountered personally seems dry and you have to build it up. You can do some really neat shit with just SD2 though and little else except maybe an EQ and compressor on your drum bus. It's deep. When I'm not using it, I'm using obvious electronics or a live drummer.

EDIT: they have Evil Drums for SD2! Hell-lo! They sound good: https://www.platinumsamples.com/JoeBarresi.php

A thought: doesn't Slate have Led Zep and Steely Dan kits? Maybe you could try those, something more '70s?

I get damn good sounds out of ezdrummer. and I mean DAMN FUCKING GOOD.

EZDrummer, for as much as we're used to hearing it totally stock on everyone's shitty clips ever , is surprisingly capable. It shares that same basic general "Toontrack" sound with SD2, which has a lot more editing depth, but the sounds are good. I think because it's their entry-level thing what it's capable of doing doesn't get exploited fully. (If you have the DKFH expansion for it, run two instances and use DKFH for cymbals and the stock kit for drums... it's cool.)

I think guys with a synth background generally pull nicer stuff out of these pieces than strictly guitarists, too.

Guilty as charged I tried some of the expansions but I thought they sounded pretty weak compared to the standard kit. Maybe I was just doing it wrong but especially in the vintage rock kit, the snare and kicks sounded so weak and dull to me. I hate dull snares, they must be crisp and tight. Then again my drum programming does consist of everything on the highest velocity except hi-hat and snare rolls, which I also suck at making sound believable.

I remember hearing someone on HCAF (may have been that afxwinter guy) do a Fugazi cover (long distance runner) using SD2 and it really sold it for me - sounded fuggin incredible

edit - I've just seen ezdrummer have a load of EZX kits I've never seen before. Listening to the clips, the Nashville actually sounds the best to me.

The standard kit on EZDrummer actually sounds pretty good over a broad range of styles without much tweaking, and that's, I think, why it's the basic one in their software. It's just that everyone and their mother has it that I would make that statement. It is the standard-issue drum machine these days, without a doubt. And for good reason- even at max veocity it's still better due to the multisampling than something like my old Boss DR660 or 770s or getting drums from my Alesis synth. Why hardware drum boxes that have acoustic sounds and aren't multisampled like EZD are still in production is beyond me, having come up with hardware drum machines. Space is cheap; if you want an E-kit, I'd say get Alesis Trigger I/O and jack it straight in to your 'puter and eff the notion of a hardware drum brain entirely unless there's something that I'm really, really missing. (Okay, dedicated live performance unit... but there's ways around that.)

I don't like the drums in the DKFH expansion- the cymbals are cool, but the drums are thin- and while I like Vintage Rock, it takes some tweaking unless you want to sound like Fleetwood Mac or something. The more noisy and/or electro expansions are fun.

I get decent sounds out of my SSD

I made my own kit and I EQ different things to make it sound all right for what I'm doing at the moment. That mic plugin thingy from another thread is

i've tried both those kits and they still have that clicky bass drum and the same old snare... plus shitty cymbals. idk i'll post a clip example, i'm getting better sounds with soundfonts.

when i''m making music that is supposed to sound old school this polished candy shit doesn't sound good at all

third post snaxie talks about the plugin I was talking about... I really think this would help you out a bunch...

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