Planet Gear
TOONTRACK SUPERIOR DRUMMER 2.0 From the company that brought us dfh and EZdrummer comes a new release. Miguel Mascolinas gives it a Superior beating.
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£189 Dolphin ID 37573
FEATURES
For most musicians, getting a great drum track for their recordings is one of the trickiest production tasks they face. Even if you have (or are) a great drummer you’re going to need a big mic collection and a superb-sounding room just to get your drums in the right ballpark to compete with professionally produced recordings. To make things easier Toontrack has been sampling drums in one of the most incredible studios in the world. They also provide you with the tools to manipulate these samples into your recordings, so that they not only sound great, but also natural as if played by a real drummer, live in the studio. Superior Drummer 2.0 builds on the unprecedented level of control provided by its predecessors, providing you with a huge selection of drum pieces to play, and the ability to control exactly how the kit sounds in your recordings, as well as providing a means to compose and arrange your drum tracks, either using pre-supplied MIDI drum loops played by Nir Z, or by playing in your own drum parts with a MIDI controller or e-Drums kit.
TOTAL CONTROL
Subtitled The New York Studio Legacy Series, the tracking for the Superior Drummer 2.0 samples was done at Avatar Studios in New York by producer Pat Thrall (Black
➔ 20GB sample library ➔ Five built-in effects ➔ Three kick drums ➔ Eight snare drums ➔ Three hi-hats ➔ Five toms ➔ Five cymbal set ups ➔ Four Rides ➔ Cowbell
ACCESSORIES Essential add-ons
Toontrack EZdrummer to Superior 2.0 Crossgrade £129 Dolphin ID 37575 If you’re a registered EZdrummer user, you can crossgrade to Superior 2.0 for £60 less.
Crowes, Beyoncé), and engineer Neil Dorfsman (Kiss, Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits and Sting) with session drummer Nir Z (Genesis, Joss Stone and Chris Cornell). The collaboration of these three individuals with Toontrack has brought some of the finest sampled instruments we’ve ever heard. However, the final say on how the instruments sound is entirely down to you, and controlled from within the Superior Drummer software. The mixer engine has a staggering amount of mic’ing options for each instrument. There are four direct mics on the snare drum, including both top and bottom, a side mic and a separate channel for the top mic through a Neve 1176 compressor. You can also control how much bleed from other instruments comes through into each microphone, as well as routing the channels in the mixer through their own busses and adding effects either directly to the channel or to busses. One of our favourite discoveries from the mic’ing options was the Bullet Mic, a Shure 520D placed about a metre from the kit running through a Mesa Boogie amp, which gives a crunchy, filtered sound without any of the phasing issues commonly asscoiated with postprocessing through distortion.
MIXING DOWN
Within the mixer you have five effects from Sonalksis alongside the traditional five-band EQ. These include Highpass and Low-pass Filter, Gate, Compressor and Transient Designer, which enables you to emphasise or hide the attack phase of each instrument. The effects have a great sound all of their own, and are far more advanced than many of the built-in effects we’ve seen in other plug-in instruments. While the EQ and Compressor don’t have quite the flavour of an SSL or Neve desk, we’d be happy to mix the drum sound on one of our recordings entirely within the Superior Drummer environment.
TWEAKER’S PARADISE
With so many different options to choose from, Superior Drummer 2.0 can be a little overwhelming for anyone new to drum mixing. If, however, you have the time to invest in learning your way around it, or you already know your way around a professional studio, SD2.0 offers the flexibility to produce everything from incredibly clean, tight drums, to big, pounding roomy sounds or dirty, biting hits. And if all this does seem a bit too much for you, Toontrack’s EZdrummer has a similar amount of quality in a less-advanced and easier-to-use package. EZ also offers a great way into SD2.0 at a later date. MP
➔VERDICT ● Incredible-sounding drums ● Massive creative potential ● Flexible mixer ● Great-sounding effects If you like to stay on top of your drum sound, this is the software for you. Superior Drummer 2.0 gives you control of every facet of your drum track, from the rhythm itself to the kit used and the tone of each piece.
››› BUY NOW
To buy, or for expert advice call
0844 248 8117 Or logon at www.dolphinmusic.com And enter the Dolphin ID in the Search box at the top-left of the screen. 62
MusicPlanet
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Autumn2008
www.dolphinmusic.com 0844 248 8117
18/8/08 13:49:38