Destructor vs. Satin Experiment

[Tappistry]

Alternative title:
"Can I use EQ curve matching to make Destructor sound like Satin?"

So I finally got around to this little experiment! Time to crush those gorgeous SD3 drum samples with some TAPE.

Specs of this experiment:

• Superior Drummer 3 with the clean Ludwig Concert Kit. Totally dry, no internal effects in SD3 whatsoever. So we're just hearing the raw samples which will then be affected with each "tape" plugin. The drum groove primarily consists of Oddgrooves MIDI files.
• Satin is running on the "Multitrack Drums" preset.
• Destructor starts with the "Color Tape" preset.
• Hornet VUMeter Mk3 with autogain for easy mode gain staging.
• Blue Cat Protector on the master bus

The "Color Tape" preset on Destructor seemed to sound the closest to what Satin was doing, so that seemed to be a good starting point. I used FreqAnalyst Multi to create the reference eq curve, then imported that into the post-filter (IR) section into Destructor.

Can you guess which plugin was used on A/B?

Since this is totally science, we need a control group. This is the completely dry drum track for your perusal:

https://soundcloud.com/user-9140904/raw ... d3/s-kd0wN

And here is the A/B test:

https://soundcloud.com/user-9140904/des ... in/s-XXWof

Update: I went back and played with the post-filter curve a bit more to try and achieve an even closer match from the reference curve.

[Tappistry]

One more update:

I also posted this thread in the main Effects forum. Some folks noticed that Soundcloud seemed to be compressing the A/B track to mush, and potentially creating some strange artifacts. So here's a link to the full resolution .wav file from the rendered session:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xLPFJ ... UsLD6jv67f

[Tappistry]

Copy/pasting the latest reply from the other thread:

Oh what a huge difference between soundcloud and the wav files. The soundcloud version is full of artefacts. Actually it made me questing soundcloud completely as a service when the quality is so bad!


I still think that both versions sound completely different. When this is the closest you can get to satin than I would say, no. You can't replace it. But which version is better? Which part is Satin? No idea.

The first part has way more bass, but I like the added more focused mids in the second part better. Sounds like two very different colored EQ versions.

I would prefer the first version with a bit more focused mids, like in the second part has. But I don't think that one sounds really better. It's more a question of context what's better and what you want to archive.

I agree! I'll admit that I was confused between what was happening with the Soundcloud post and my rendered wav files. I went back and did another round of tweaks, and here's one more version. I'm pretty happy with this version. I made some adjustments to try and fix the bass cut in part B. I found that I had to set the autogain adjustment on the Hornet VUMeter a couple of dB lower on Destructor. Something about the output (and maybe because it's essentially a big compressor?) was making the track sound a bit louder than Satin, so I tried to compensate for that without being too heavy handed.

I guess I'll let the cat out of the bag now. Part A is Satin, and Part B is Destructor. Here's a screen capture of what Destructor is doing in the second part of the audio clip. This applies to the new audio link below.


The preamp section is mostly flat, and I flipped to the expert mode on the post filter section so you can see what Satin does to the signal. The gray line is my attempted match over the pink reference curve. Notice the complexity of the pink reference curve? It was difficult to use the given filter adjustments to get an *exact* replica (aka impulse response) of what Satin is doing. (But that's not entirely what Destructor is meant to do, nor is it entirely able to do.)

Alright, here's the latest link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xLPFJ ... UsLD6jv67f


More for the purposes of this forum:

Regarding the screenshot above, I'm open to any suggestions to getting that filter curve to match even more closely.

So far, from what I can tell, I can get fairly close to what Satin is doing, but definitely not exact. Any feedback is welcome.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Nice! I guess you might want to increase the frequency of the comb filter a little bit if you want a closer match of the response curve.

[Tappistry]

Something more like this?



Not sure if this sounds "better" than my previous preset that I made, just different. But this was a fun experiment nonetheless.