Black Friday Plugin Sales

[FuzzyAce]

I picked up more drum midi packs for SD3. That's probably the only software I'll buy for the remainder of the year.

 

[Jarick]

About an hour in and I have nearly half the drum track built out. It's not the fastest but first time I'm using it so pretty happy with the results. Stock kit sounds decent but the John Tempesta one is really sweet. The velocity and dynamics controls are really cool and the humanize function works pretty well to mimic what I would typically do when playing in terms of dynamics. I may need to mess around and see if I can screw up the timing though so it sounds a little more natural.

I'll be excited to do a before and after clip from the original that we recorded in 2003 vs the updated version I'm building out now.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

caved on Seventh Heaven Professional and Cinematic Rooms Professional. Owned several other LS products so I was waiting for their BF sale as it’s the only sale they really do and you can stack your coupons on top. I had the standard SH and honestly never fully vibed with it.

I had the .FIR Bricasti files for Reverberate and it made me realise most of my favourite Bricasti presets aren’t in the standard SH. Professional allows you to mix and match different early reflection patterns and the control layout is a bit nicer than using Reverberate. I’m still not totally convinced it sounds as good as a real Bricasti but it does sound slightly better than typical IR’s.

Cinematic Rooms Professional sounds absolutely outstanding to me. It definitely had some magic that SH doesn’t, although it’s very much geared towards rooms/halls/chambers and not plates or non-lin type sounds.

 

[FuzzyAce]

I'll be excited to do a before and after clip from the original that we recorded in 2003 vs the updated version I'm building out now.

This made me think of an old plugin I used for a while -- Drumagog. A drum replacement plugin. Pretty fancy at the time, and quick to get good results. There are other fast ways to do it now, and SD3 has similar functions even.

 

[Jarick]

This made me think of an old plugin I used for a while -- Drumagog. A drum replacement plugin. Pretty fancy at the time, and quick to get good results. There are other fast ways to do it now, and SD3 has similar functions even.

Yeah Logic has a sound reinforcement feature and there's SSD Trigger too. In my case I wanted to completely redo the drums because the original tracks were sloppy and overplayed (I was about 20 and recording tracks for a dozen songs in my parents garage while they were out of town one weekend using a Roland VS-1680).

It's really interesting playing guitar to these old tracks. Laying down some volume swells, I kind of shut my eyes and zoned in to the song and it got me feeling like I was a kid again playing with the band in my parents basement a lifetime ago. It's also wild merging parts that were recorded over 20 years apart.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Yeah Logic has a sound reinforcement feature and there's SSD Trigger too. In my case I wanted to completely redo the drums because the original tracks were sloppy and overplayed (I was about 20 and recording tracks for a dozen songs in my parents garage while they were out of town one weekend using a Roland VS-1680).

It's really interesting playing guitar to these old tracks. Laying down some volume swells, I kind of shut my eyes and zoned in to the song and it got me feeling like I was a kid again playing with the band in my parents basement a lifetime ago. It's also wild merging parts that were recorded over 20 years apart.

It can be fun revisiting old songs, especially merging parts with newer material as you say.

 

[DrewJD82]

About an hour in and I have nearly half the drum track built out. It's not the fastest but first time I'm using it so pretty happy with the results. Stock kit sounds decent but the John Tempesta one is really sweet. The velocity and dynamics controls are really cool and the humanize function works pretty well to mimic what I would typically do when playing in terms of dynamics. I may need to mess around and see if I can screw up the timing though so it sounds a little more natural.

I'll be excited to do a before and after clip from the original that we recorded in 2003 vs the updated version I'm building out now.

I love that Tempesta snare, it's also in the SD3 library and I use it quite a bit. I got that SDX just for the Starclassic kit because they're my favorite drums of all time. It's that, the Warlord and the 2 Black Beauty's.

I switched to SD3 before EZD3 came out, but the humanizing is pretty good indeed. I'm still writing my full drum tracks in the piano roll in Logic because at this point I'm just too used to it. It's tricky screwing up the timing without things sounding off and they're at least putting imperfect MIDI files in the sample packs now, which I didn't realize until I sat there pulling shit off the grid for hours, only to load up a drum fill from a MIDI file to find they're already off the grid.

 

[Jarick]

It can be fun revisiting old songs, especially merging parts with newer material as you say.

Yeah I'm giving the song a completely different vibe. It's so much closer to the original intent, I think.

I love that Tempesta snare, it's also in the SD3 library and I use it quite a bit. I got that SDX just for the Starclassic kit because they're my favorite drums of all time. It's that, the Warlord and the 2 Black Beauty's.

I switched to SD3 before EZD3 came out, but the humanizing is pretty good indeed. I'm still writing my full drum tracks in the piano roll in Logic because at this point I'm just too used to it. It's tricky screwing up the timing without things sounding off and they're at least putting imperfect MIDI files in the sample packs now, which I didn't realize until I sat there pulling shit off the grid for hours, only to load up a drum fill from a MIDI file to find they're already off the grid.

Starclassics are amazing. I got my original kit when I was working full time living at my parents house with zero bills, after I first dropped out of college and had some disposable income. I had the birch kit which was a little more percussive and less warm than the maple kit. I had come from a Pearl kit that had a lot of tuning issues, and the die cast hoops were incredible for tuning. The 18x22 kick was amazing, super punchy with Evans EQ3 heads and a small pillow inside. I had the 10-12-14 kit and found matching 8 and 16 toms which was a blast.

For snares I used the Pearl Chad Smith signature which is like a 5x14 Black Beauty, TONS of crack. Then I got a 6.5x14 maple snare with die cast hoops, that thing was chunky sounding.

Unfortunately at the time we recorded I was shooting for a big full jazzy sound so the drums sounded muffled as hell over aggressive modern rock music. So it's really cool to hear the songs with big punchy rock drums instead of these super dark drums with too much bad reverb on them.

 

[Jarick]

Finally finished the drum track, took a few hours. Tedious but I think it sounds fairly natural. Did a little adjustment of the levels and panning and I'm really liking it.

Also figured out how to cut up and splice bits of audio with cross fade to change the timing of a part. Our lead guitarist originally wrote this cool part that directly clashes with the lead vocals during the verses. Figured out how to move the part around so it's on the off beat instead and it actually sounds extremely natural!

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Black Friday is finally over and I'm ashamed of how much stuff I've bought this month...

Software:
- Arturia Pigments & Preset Packs
- Celemony Melodyne Editor Upgrade
- Chris Hein Orchestral Brass Compact
- Chris Hein Orchestral Winds Compact
- DDMF Plugindoctor
- Korg Collection 6
- ML Sound Lab Mega 1992 & Mars TV IR Packs
- Neural DSP: every X plugin there is :-O (except the ones I already owned)
- Softube Echoes
- Steinberg Cubase 15 Update
- Steinberg Halion 7 Crossgrade
- Toontrack Infinity Grid EZX
- Toontrack The Drum Factory SDX

Guitar:
- Henry's Snake ST-1 Cobra

So... next week is 'Cyber Week', isn't it?!

 

[Whizzinby]

I ended up with:

Pro-MB Comp
Pro-Q4 (Upgrade from 3)
Archetype Misha
Seventh Heaven

I used my UA freebie on the 1176 to potentially replace my Waves version.

The Middleton plug and Karnivore IR packs never went on sale so I’ll hold off until they do.

I’ve been considering the UA two-plug custom $99 bundle for the Ocean Way Deluxe and Sound City plugs, but I’ll wait to see what their new guitar plug is tomorrow. (And UA always seems to be doing one “sale” or another so I never get too in a hurry for them)

 

[Richard_G]

For me, the NDSP Archetype Misha I've already mentioned was the only plugin per se this time. But "plugin related", I also ended up buying both the Death & Darkness SDX and the Fields of Rock SDX for Superior Drummer 3 and also bought more Tonex collections from Amalgam.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

[…] the Death & Darkness SDX and the Fields of Rock SDX […]