Credits: Toontrack/Art Bromage

Cost Benefit Ratio Analysis

Superior Drummer 2.0 is not a free drumming solution. It cost around $400 as a download in their site. I also checked with Amazon and Superior Drummer 2.0 cost only around $179 which is not a download version.

If you are buying outside United States, shipment costs a lot and it can be delayed. It is why buying as a download can be beneficial.

Also if you want to use presets; this would save you a lot of time experimenting with getting a good sound out of your drums, it is available at around $18 and you can buy it in the Toontrack website here:

https://www.toontrack.com/products.asp#S20PP

Superior Drummer 2.0 actually sounds real because it is using real drum samples during recording. If programmed correctly, you can hardly notice the difference between programmed drums and an actually performed drum take in the studio. Take a listen to this mp3 with drum tracks created using Superior Drummer 2.0:

Credits: Toontrack/Miles McPherson Music City Presets

Real drums like a Yamaha drum kit cost around $1000 (other drum kits are even more expensive) and there are costs for microphone which can run at least $300 if you are very conservative in putting microphones on the drum kit. All in all, let’s round this off to $1500 for a complete and working drum kit.

The cost for Superior Drummer 2.0 would be $420 rounding off (download version) with the following benefits:

a.) Entire drum kit samples recorded in one of the best recording studio in the world.

b.) The drums are fully customizable and they are using some of the best sounding drum kits.

c.) Entirely programmable and can be used with any DAW. (You need a DAW/VST host such as Reaper before you can use Superior Drummer)

d.) 24-bit samples for real sounding drums. Working with 24-bit samples in Superior Drummer is like actually recording a real drum kit and configuring your audio interface to record 24-bits.

e.) If you are a home studio producer with limited space in your home (not enough space to accommodate real drums), Superior drummer provides professional drumming solutions since it is software based.

While real drum kits cost more, the following are benefits:

a.) Your studio can record a real live band. If you are accepting artist or bands to record in your studio; then having real drums are necessary because these artists do include some drummers in their line-up.

b.) It will improve your ability and skills as a recording engineer because of your opportunity to work with real drum kit. The skills such as getting a good drum sound out of recording, proper room acoustics, microphone placement on the drum kit and mixing them can best be realized if you are using a real drum kit.

This can give you a strong technical edge and working experience against those engineers relying only in software solution.

c.) Using real drum kit with a drummer in your music production can give you the “feel”, “realism” and “dynamics”. Although this can also be created with Superior Drummer 2.0, it is far easier with tracking a real drummer.

d.) By recording a real drum kit in your home studio, you can get a great drum sound with worrying about effects processing if you are able to record the drums right.

So which is actually better?

They actually perform the same. The main decision on why you should be using Superior drummer 2.0 or not depends on your background and experience as an engineer/producer. For example:

a.) If you are a type of musician that would like to work alone with your projects and does not need other artist to collaborate in your studio (such as not working with real drummers); then Superior drummer 2.0 is a perfect solution.

b.) If you are a recording engineer that owns a studio that accepts clients like rock bands and artist to record their album tracks then definitely you need a real drum kit.

c.) If you are a record producer that are working with both self-producing your projects and with any rock bands/artists then you need both. Superior drummer 2.0 allows you to create and experiment great drum tracks for the song. You can use that as a demo for a real drummer to work with. Or you can even use that as the final drum track for a solo artist album project; thus eliminating the need of a real drummer which can save some studio cost.

Assuming you do not need to buy another much more powerful drum sequencing software solutions or buying a real/acoustic drum kit, the quickest way you can improve the sound of your drums is using samples.

These samples are actual recording of the beat which can be taken from any percussion instrument. If you have that bass drum in your home or a solo snare kit then you can use it. By doing that “actual recording” you add some realism to your existing drum groove.

Another way you can sample drums is to duplicate an existing drum sound in your loop and add a bit of delay and different EQ settings on the duplicated tracks. This can broaden the drum sound.

Let’s have an actual example so that you can understand this technique.

Drum Sequence without the samples (original)

Supposing you use a relatively inexpensive drum sequencing software such as Hotstepper to generate the drum arrangement. Like any other drum sequencing software, it needs to be programmed. Then assuming you have the following drum sequence below:

And this is how it sounds like:

Supposing you want a more fat bass sound in the kick as well as a punchier snare sound, this is possible using samples.

Adding Samples to your Drum Track

Supposing you will use a beat box/cajon/drum box percussion instrument to re-generate the fat bass sound in the kick that you need; follow the steps below:

1.) Insert the drum loops (the original one) to the any multi-tracking software for example Reaper DAW.

2.) These drum loops would serve as your click track (timing or reference).

3.) Put a microphone on the percussion instrument. For example, you put the microphone on the drum box as follows:

4.) Plug the microphone to the audio interface preamp input.

5.) Adjust for desirable gain to make sure there is no clipping and noise.

6.) In your DAW (multi-tracking software), insert a new track, for example you named it as “bassdrumrecord”, see below:

The first three tracks are your original drum loops that you want to improve. The fourth track is the bass drum sample sound to be added. It is red because it is aimed for recording. Finally hit the record button and record your sample. When you record the bass drum, record only the bass drum sound not anything else. The recorded peaks of the bass drum should at least synchronize with the original kick spike; see the first 4 yellow arrows below:

It should follow to the rest of the kick drum spikes. Do not purposely align them perfectly. By recording; you add some natural delay captured on it. Some minor “off-beats” can add “feeling” to your beat sound and prevent it to sound too mechanical.

7.) Now duplicate the snare track. Do not yet add any EQ or other effects.

Adding Effects – EQ and Reverb

Now the following effects have been added (feel free to experiment for a better sound, the above settings are for quick guidelines only):

Original Kick drum:
A.)Parametric EQ:
1.) Low shelf 150Hz, -3dB
2.) 2000Hz, +3dB, Q=1.0
3.) 400Hz, -6dB, Q=7 (removing cardboard sound)

Recorded Sample Bass Drum:
A.) Parametric EQ
1.) 75Hz, +3dB, Q=1.0
2.) 2000Hz, -3dB, Q=1.4

Original Snare:
A.) Parametric EQ
1.) 200Hz, -6dB low shelf
2.) 2000Hz, +3dB, Q=1.0
3.) 8000Hz, -3dB, Q=1.4

B.) Reverb
1.) Focusrite Reverb, preset to Small Bright room with mix set to 60% dry.

Duplicated Sample Snare drum:
A.) Parametric EQ
1.) 100Hz +3dB, Q=1.0
2.) 8000Hz, +3dB, Q=1.0
3.) 2000Hz, -3dB, Q=1.4

B.)Focusrite Reverb, small bright room, 60% dry
C.) Delay (10ms)

Hi-hat
A.) Parametric EQ
a.) 12500Hz, +3dB, Q=1.0
b.) 3000Hz, -1.5dB, Q=1.4

B.) Reverb (same as the snare)

This is the result:

- The conversion process can be lengthy depending on the complexity of your drum loops. In this tutorial, you will learn how to convert your HPA file (Hotstepper drum sequencer) into a 32-bit float/96KHz WAV which can be used by your multi-track recording projects. Since the purpose of Hotstepper is to compose and arrange drum sequence loops, it still needs to be converted into a high resolution WAV file for it to be added to your project. If you are entirely new to this one, you can read this introductory tutorial on Hotstepper. You can also download the fully working version of Hotstepper. This software is free.

FIRST STEP: Create your drum loops and export each drum parts

1.) Launch Hotstepper, create and compose your favorite drum loops. If you are having difficulty in creating drum loops, you can download the common drum patterns for Hotstepper and open it. Supposing you will download pattern 8 on that page, extract first the hpa file from the zip archive. Then in Hotstepper, go to File – Open and click “No” for “Do you want to save before continuing?” then browse to the location of pattern8.hpa. This is how patter 8 drum loops would look like:

If you see an error when opening the hpa pattern files on any of those downloads; it is most likely that you do not have the correct drum parts saved in your Hotstepper library. In this case, you need to add real drum sound parts to your Hotstepper and specify correct filename as used by the downloaded pattern example (e.g. rock kick.wav, tama snare.wav, etc).You can get these real drum sounds in any professional drum recording studio or in your own acoustic drums. Once you have finalized the sounds and added it to the Hotstepper library, you can reuse it many times in your projects without needing to go to the recording studio anymore. You can also assemble unlimited amount of drum loops/sequences using the same real drum sound samples you added in the library.

2.) To get started in converting this hpa pattern file to WAV; you need to export EACH drum parts (snare, kick, cymbals, etc) as a separate wav file. One big mistake after completing/creating the drum loop is to directly go to “File” – “Write Pattern Wav” and export the entire drum tracks into a single wav file. This is not correct because you will still be applying effects to each of the drum tracks during mixing. Since this is only a single file (already containing all the drum parts); you cannot implement your desired effects for each drum parts and you cannot isolate them in the mix for further processing (panning, etc). Looking at the previous screenshot; you are only using three drum tracks and that is “rock kick.wav”, “tama snare.wav” and “open hi hat.wav”. This means that at the end, there will only be 3 separate wav files for your drums. Let’s start by exporting “rock kick.wav”. To export the kick drum part, you need to remove the red triangles of all active drum parts (snare and hi hats) except the kick drum. You can do this in Hotstepper by right clicking over the entire red triangles on snare and hi hat parts so that only rock kick.wav red triangles should remain. This is how it looks like after doing this adjustment:

As you can see, only rock kick.wav has the red triangles and the rest (snare and hi hats) has been removed. Now it’s the right time to go to “File” – “Write pattern wav” and click “Select File and Write”. Name the wav file as “kick.wav”. Go to “File” – then “Quit”. When you see the message “Do you want to save before continuing?” Be sure to click NO (Very important so that your loop that is saved will not be overwritten). Save it to a newly created folder. Name the folder as “drums” so that it will contain all isolated drum track WAV files. Now take a listen to the newly created kick.wav; you should only hear the kick drum part in the wav file and no snare/hi hats. This implies you have completely isolated the kick drum part from the HPA file.

3.) Launch Hotstepper and open pattern8.hpa again. Let’s export tama snare.wav (the snare drum part); click the red triangles of kick drum and open hi hat parts because you only need the snare track to be active, see screenshot:

Now the snare parts are isolated; export it as WAV file (using the same saving procedures mentioned previously) and named it as “snare.wav”. Close the Hotstepper and never forgetting to click “NO” when “Do you want to save before continuing?” shows up.

3.) Finally re-launch Hotstepper, open pattern8.hpa and isolated hi hat parts in Hotstepper by removing the red triangles of kick and snare drum parts. This is the screenshot:

SECOND STEP: Sample rate conversion to 32-bit float/96KHz

You now have 3 wav files for your drums (kick, snare and hi-hat). However Hotstepper will only export it as 16-bit/44.1KHz which is not optimal for mixing. You need to convert it to 32-bit float/96KHz (or to whatever bit depth and sample rate you used in your mix).

1.) Download this bit depth and sample rate converter. R8brain is also free.

2.) Launch Voxengo r8brain. In the “Input WAV file” browse to kick.wav then click Open. Change the “Resample to r8:” from 44100 to 96000 (change those two 44100 to 96000)

3.) In the “Output bit depth” change 16 bits to “32 bit float”. In the quality, select “Very High”.

4.) Click “Batch” button.

5.) In the “Input Directory”, it should be the directory to your “drums” folder, for example:

C:\Documents and Settings\Emerson R. Maningo\Desktop\drums\

6.) Finally click “r8brain batch” button.
7.) Go to your “drums” folder. You will see newly created files for example “hihat.wav.orig”, etc. These are your OLD drum wav files in 16-bit/44.1KHz format. The newly converted wav files are still using the old filename but with new bit depth/sample rate.

THIRD STEP: Import all drum tracks to your multi-track project

1.) Open your multi-track software.
2.) Add each one of these track to separate channel in your multi-track. This is how it looks like after adding all of them (using Adobe Audition):

As you have observed, the tracks are clearly isolated to each other so you can apply dedicated effects to each one of the drum parts. Finally you have completed converting your HPA (Hotstepper) file into a high resolution wav file. It is now been added to your multi-track recording project.

Thank you
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My reply:

Theory about central frequency of every drum instrument

Thank you for writing and subscribing to audiorecording.me. First let give you a theory about central (or fundamental) frequencies which are discussed in the musical instrument frequency range analysis. The frequency response of any drum instrument can be approximated by this graph:

At Emax is where the central frequency of the instrument will be located. This is the strongest and dominant frequency that you should know. The purpose is to have your EQ adjustments to be as accurate and effective as possible. Central frequency is what gives the drum instrument a distinct and identifiable sound in the mix. Kick and bass drum tends to have central frequencies in the bass/subwoofer frequency range. Snare drums tend to have its central frequency in the mid-frequency range. And finally hi-hats and cymbals tend to have its central frequency in the upper frequency range (treble).

However, the central frequency at Emax is DIFFERENT for EVERY DRUM RECORDING SESSION. This is because recording techniques have strong influence on the final/resulting instrument sound. Like how you place the microphone in the bass drum could affect its central frequency response. If you put the microphone nearer to the kick pedal, it tends to have different sound than placing the microphone significantly farther. Another example is the way how you put the microphone on the snare drum. Also the type and skin of the snare drum can also affect the resulting central frequency. And even different brands of drum kit can have different sound. This goes to say that:

“Central frequencies of drum instruments at which you can cut and boost using EQ depends on the recorded material, the type of drum materials used and the manner how they are recorded”

Therefore; there is no fixed and general EQ/frequency rule that applies to all drum recordings. If you attempt to generalize frequencies for all of your drum tracks during mixing, you cannot fix EQ problems effectively. The primary reason is that each of the drum tracks might be recorded using different techniques that results to different resulting sound. So how can you be so sure that you are adjusting the correct central frequency?

First Method: Perform Frequency Spectrum Analysis

The first approach is that you can perform an audio spectrum analysis on your recorded drum tracks to check the central frequency. This is mostly available in most recording software. This will give a plot of frequency vs. amplitude. The highest peaks in the graph are the central frequencies that you can cut and boost using parametric EQ. For example this is the frequency spectrum analysis result of a bass hip hop/RN’B drum:

As you have observed, the highest peaks occur somewhere 30Hz to 50Hz. On the average, the central frequency is somewhat around 40Hz. Also looking at the chart; the effective range of this specific bass drum is somewhere 20Hz to 200Hz as it occupies almost the entire bass frequency spectrum. It seems to be strongest at 40Hz. During audio mixing, you might cut the bass drum frequencies above 100Hz (they are not as important as the central frequency) to make it a hole for the bass guitar or synth to sit in the mix.

If you take another bass drum or kick drum sample from another song or from your friends track, you will notice that it might have different central frequency such as 50Hz or even 70Hz. So it’s good to check using frequency analysis to make sure you are adjusting the correct frequency. Now this is the frequency spectrum analysis of hi hats:

It shows that this specific hi hat recording is strongest at 10000Hz. Like kick drums, the recording approach of hi hats can influence the resulting central frequency. In this case, other hi-hats have central frequency of more than 10000Hz. One way to check is to perform frequency analysis of the recorded hi hat material. To continue, below is the frequency analysis for snare drums:

It seems to be strongest on 200Hz. Again take note that this central frequency depends on how the snare drum is recorded. For other snare drum tracks; you might get an entirely different central frequency such as 500Hz or 2000Hz. Finally this is crash cymbal frequency response:

If you have observed, there are two central frequencies. The first occur at 500Hz while the other 10,000Hz. In actual audio mixing of crash cymbals; the one that is used will be the 10,000Hz while the 500Hz will be cut using EQ. Frequency spectrum analysis helps you decide which frequencies are important to that specific drum instrument and which are the ones that will be cut during mixing. By emphasizing what are important and not important frequencies using EQ techniques, you can have a well sounded drum sound in your mix.

Second Method: Notch Filtering Technique

Sometimes you do not want to use frequency spectrum analysis and decide to use notch filtering technique to find instrument frequencies. This works by sweeping through the entire frequency range using a parametric EQ and using your ear to spot at what frequency the instrument sounds gets severely affected. This is where the central frequency will be found. Feel free to search for more drum recording and mixing information on this blog using the search box.

Hey!
I’ve been following your tutorials and they have been very helpful. I’m quite new to mixing and I’ve been trying to mix some recorded drums for a rock song and I find it very difficult to get them to sound good. What mean with good is, well with regards to any modern rock song. In my opinion they sound boring, dry, “hi-endish” (made up word) and lacking some space.
What is your take on them and what can I do to improve the mix. Any tips? If you have time please let me know, it would be very appreciated. Big thanks

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My Reply:

Actually before going to any drum mixing details, one of the most common problems originated in the drum recording/tracking process. There are too many factors influencing the drum sound as you will know in this post. Remember the garbage in-garbage out analogy. If it’s not recorded properly then you will have a hard time mixing it. On my experience the following are the important elements in getting a great drum sound:

a.) Make it sound perfect before doing any recording takes.
b.) Record it in a perfect room.

This is how the professionals do the drum tracking. If you have done a great job in doing those two essential elements, it will be very easy to mix drums. Lets go with each in detail. This is the drum audio you have provided:

Listening to it, its not actually that bad though it can be improved significantly. Anyway below are my suggestions to improve that sound:

1.) Fix the snare. Since you are aiming for rock, make sure you get the snare sound right before doing any takes. It sounds a bit weak and uninteresting as I’ve observed. There are a variety of ways you can arrive at your desired snare sound. First, you can adjust the microphone angles to the snare as this will contribute significantly on the snare drum sound. See screenshot below:

Credits: tcmmastering

Two things that are very important here. First, the angle of the microphone with respect to the snare. You need to adjust it and use your ear to judge whether you finally arrived at the desired snare sound. Start at the 30 degrees to 40 degrees angle. Second, the distance of the microphone to the snare skin. Since you are aiming for modern rock sound, you should try to get the microphone as closer to the snare skin so that it will sound strong and punchy. If you put the microphone farther from the skin, the snare sound sounds smoother and will have more reverberation captured from the room, although its does not sound very aggressive and strong. This is a much more reliable technique than fixing all problems in the mix. Remember to fix all possible audio related issues in the tracking stage as much as possible (before you start to mix). Relying more on EQ during mixing is only necessary for “slight” tonal adjustments.

2.) Want some some “space” and “ambiance” in your drum sound? You need to record it in a spacious room. It is because a spacious room has some natural reverb on it which will be captured by your drum microphones. If you want it tight, (as most modern rock drums would sound) you need to record the drums inside a small, cemented floors and concrete walls. Remember it depends on your production objective. Back on the early 90′s, drum tracks from Guns n’Roses, Bon Jovi etc has so much reverberation because its the trend. But today; particularly in alternative and punk rock, you won’t notice it a lot. What if you do not have that “room”? Well, you can track it dry and then apply reverb later on the mix. It is still doable. To apply reverb, you can apply individual reverb settings to snare, kick and hi-hats. Personally, I won’t be adding reverb to the kick drum particularly in rock.

Experimentation is the key, I cannot provide specific settings as it depends strongly on your production objective. I suggest to tweak your tools until you reach the desired sound. Remember that if you cannot fix it in the mix, something is wrong on the way it’s been recorded. So you need to re-record in this case. You can as well experiment on compressing your snare to arrive at the optimal sound.

3.) Panning drums properly is also very important. Reverb and Panning creates the “space” you want for your drums. Make sure to experiment these two settings.

4.) Recording depth and sample rate can as well influence the sound in the long run. Make sure you are recording and mixing at the highest resolution- 24 bits or 32 bits and 96Khz sample rate. If you record and mix at 16bit/44.1Khz, personally I do not find them as lively and strong as those recorded in higher bit depth.

5.) What do you mean by “high-endish”? If you find the hi-hats a bit annoying, you can apply some filter on it after the microphones. So it controls the excessive high frequencies before it will be recorded. You can as well record it dry and then apply EQ at -3dB 8000Hz Q=1.0, to reduce the effect on that undesired sound.

6.) The “drummer performance” factor – this is very important. Take for example a very aggressive drummer vs an inexperienced weak drummer. If you have noticed, those professional experienced drummers (such as those in modern rock bands) are very aggressive, lively and dynamic when tracking drums. They know what to do to produce great sounding drum sound. They play hard, strong, dynamic and timing with the music. The results are great compared to those performed by amateur drummers who don’t care about getting their drum sound right. Remember that things like this have significant impact to the drum sound. This cannot be fixed in the mix using any plug-ins, no matter what you do. You need to motivate and direct the drummer if you are the producer of the project.

7.) The quality of your drum kit – some drum kits have legendary sound signatures for rock music, for example Tama, Pearl and Zildjian cymbals. Some drummers have their strong preference to a specific brand as compared to another because simply they know it sounds great. And if it sounds great with a great drummer– less headaches on the part of the engineers at the recording/mixing session.