Please help me choosing a drum library

[payoak]

Hi again!
Well... Now I have the equipment for recording guitars, bass, vocals, keyboards.... But I don't have the mics or the space for recording a full acoustic drum kit in a convenient manner. Which drum libraries/VST drummers are you using this days? I tried MT Power Drum kit 2, it is intuitive and non bloated, but the cymbals doesn't sounded convincing to me and I would like to have some extra pieces (a splash is a must have for me).
Thank you.

[Mattias Westlund]

SSD 5.5 is probably the best free drum kit available right now. Again, if rock/metal is what you're looking for.

[payoak]

(03-25-2020, 09:26 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: SSD 5.5 is probably the best free drum kit available right now. Again, if rock/metal is what you're looking for.

WOW! The kit sounds amazing and it has splash! It is a shame that the full version requires an Ilok... Do you recommend me other plugins? I don't mind spending a few bucks in a commercial product because is a thing that I am going to use almost everyday. I will use the SSD 5.5 free for now, but I am not going to upgrade because the full version seems like a mixed bag of a million of kits and the only thing that is going to do is distracting me from making music.

[Paul Battersby]

(03-25-2020, 09:59 PM)payoak Wrote: Do you recommend me other plugins?

Here's one you could try:

SM Drums: Deeply Sampled Free Drums for the Masses

It is VERY deeply sampled. It might be worth at least checking out the demos. I don't recall if it has a splash cymbal or not but if not, you could easily sample one from another free drum kit and add it to this one.

[Michael Willis]

Drum Gizmo is a freebie that you can try. I don't know how well it fits your criteria, but I have enjoyed using it.

[payoak]

I am sorry for rescuing this post again. I have been testing all of the free drum libraries and the one that convinced me the most was Steven Slate Drums 5, but only the deluxe kits that come in the free and in the full version. The thing is that I don't like the shiny things of Steven Slate and I don't want to pay for upgrades in a product that comes with tons of legacy content that I am not going to use. What do you think about Addictive Drums 2? The Fairfax, Jazz and the Metal kit sound amazing in the demos, is very light on RAM/Hard Drive and there is no upgrade prices cause the engine comes bundled for free.
I could live with SSD 5 free but I am in the process of converting my old acoustic kit into an hybrid one and I am going to want more than one kit. AFAIK, the only libraries in which you don't have to pay for upgrades are the XLN Audio ones and also drum libraries licensed for Kontakt player (which is another free engine).

[Mattias Westlund]

(04-06-2020, 01:10 PM)payoak Wrote: The thing is that I don't like the shiny things of Steven Slate and I don't want to pay for upgrades in a product that comes with tons of legacy content that I am not going to use.

What shiny things?

(04-06-2020, 01:10 PM)payoak Wrote: What do you think about Addictive Drums 2?

I have no idea. It has been around for ages and some swear by it, but aren't AD sort of processed and ready to go and lacking in the tweaking department? If that's what you're looking for then great, but just a heads up.

Still not sure exactly what type of drum sonds you're looking for, but personally I like Analogue Drums. I've been using their Blacksmith kit for a number of years now and I love it. Really tight, detailed Mike Portnoy-esque metal kit. Though advertized as Kontakt libs, a lot of their stuff is available in SFZ versions as well.

[payoak]

(04-06-2020, 08:45 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote:

(04-06-2020, 01:10 PM)payoak Wrote: The thing is that I don't like the shiny things of Steven Slate and I don't want to pay for upgrades in a product that comes with tons of legacy content that I am not going to use.

What shiny things?

(04-06-2020, 01:10 PM)payoak Wrote: What do you think about Addictive Drums 2?

I have no idea. It has been around for ages and some swear by it, but aren't AD sort of processed and ready to go and lacking in the tweaking department? If that's what you're looking for then great, but just a heads up.

Still not sure exactly what type of drum sonds you're looking for, but personally I like Analogue Drums. I've been using their Blacksmith kit for a number of years now and I love it. Really tight, detailed Mike Portnoy-esque metal kit. Though advertized as Kontakt libs, a lot of their stuff is available in SFZ versions as well.

With "shiny" things I am referring to the Slate Digital brand, Steven Slate has good products such as the VMR but they are keep adding rare and not so useful plugins to justify the subscription price, some of them are from third party developers and the worst thing is that, if you want to buy one plugin paying upfront, it is ridiculously overpriced. Is the same as Native Instruments with the Komplete "deals", for me is bloatware. I prefer to buy only the things that I am interested in but that is my opinion of course.
The Steven Slate Drums is a different brand but I think that at some point it will reach the convergence because is basically the same guy and the same company. The thing with SSD for me is that it comes with tons of content, but some of it is very long in the tooth, it even has pieces of kits that are one-shot samples. AFAIK SSD started as a Kontakt library and with SSD 4 it becomes a Vi with its own sample player. Basically, Steven Slate didn't update that thing for years and now he has released SSD 5 with the improvements and bug fixes that should come as updates for SSD 4 , new kits and a free version to attract new users to his platform. And that is all the ranting for today! Do I say that all Slate products use Ilok?
On the other hand, Addictive Drums seems a completely different beast and is very versatile. The kits are pre-processed and mix ready as you say but in a non-destructive way, I mean, you can alter the processing of each piece of the kits and even bypass it to hear the raw samples or to process them with your own plugins in separate outputs. In SSD you can't do that, the kits are processed and this is not reversible. Also, in AD you can buy only the kits that you want (ADpaks) and you don't have to pay for upgrades because the sample engine is always updated for free. So... if AD 3 is released some day, you can upgrade to the new version for free while maintaining your old kits. I also like XLN Audio products because their software is not a resource hog. I like Superior Drummer also but 230 gigabytes for 6 kits? Thank you Toontrack but no, at least not for now.
I will take a look at Analogue Drums! I like the companies that provide the samples as Wav and in another formats that don't force you to use Kontakt. Here you can also get very good free drum samples in Wav format if you go at the bottom of the page https://www.getgooddrums.com/.