Best drum synth?

[c_voltage]

I see a lot of mention of tremor but it seems to have been discontinued :/

Yes, as well as pair of interesting effects too.

[V0RT3X]

If you’re using bitwig, then check out the included E-drums. They can sound great!

Ableton & Max for live users have the drum synths which sound good.

Tremor is nice, I like the kick sounds you can get out it. the sequencer is pretty awesome but the snare and cymbal sounds can be hard to tame. You can bypass the sounds and just use the sequencer with the midi out for polyrhythmic goodness.

D16 has a nice lineup, and if you want the classic roland Programming experience ITB you can’t do better than checking out their Drumazon and Nepheton products. There is a bit of a learning curve though..

Also As a bonus you can bypass the synth engine and use the midi out to sequence your other drum synths.

Soundwise i think the latest Roland Cloud emulations sound a bit better.


As far as “best” its totally subjective. You’re going to get a lot of Different answers.

Edit: just realized this is an old thread.

[yellowmix]

Well new thing on the block since first post. FAW SubLab is awesome for 808 style kicks. The harmonics generator is really good since it's tuned expressly for the style. Super fast work flow too. You can play it melodically, the kicks sound great across the key range because the processing shifts in sync. Realtime pitch tracking with external FX like MaxxBass, Subsynth, etc.. is not as good sounding.

Would like to hear an update from OP.

[codec_spurt]

I realize this is not helpful since we're not talking Ableton, but:
....

Ah, just reminded me that Wave Alchemy have released a version of Revolution for Ableton Drum Racks.

https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/revolutio ... ve/pid191/

And with this version you get access to the raw wave files to use in other machines. Ok, I know we aren't talking about samples here, but still, nice.

It's on offer at the moment and I'm going to crossgrade for £15. So not only will I get much leaner and faster set up in Ableton and all the benefits of Drum Racks, I get to use the samples elsewhere. Worth 15 quid anyday. They are great samples.

I'd also grab the 90 percent off offer for Synth Drums -
https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/synth-drums/pid100/

That is what impressed me most about their stuff as it has a very nice Ableton Drum Racks set up in there as well. 5 quid on offer!

And while I'm about it, I love these ones too!

https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/sys-100-drums/pid183/

SYS-100 Drums delivers 1,584 beautifully designed, never heard before analogue drum samples; each intuitively crafted and layered from the ground up using an iconic, all time classic semi-modular synth that marked the very start of Japan’s Vintage Synth Era.

Incredible work. Outstanding drum samples.

Sure, those Revolution and Drumvolution plugins are a bit resource heavy. You need GHz and RAM (more RAM than anything), but they aren't too bad. They are very usable. I know some mileage varies with them, but I've found them ok.

Btw, Drumvolution is going cheap too now - https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/drumvolution/pid185/

These aren't Drum Synths I know, but then again, they provide so much variation via knob tweaking, it gets blurry. It's the fact they are sample heavy and reliant that marks them out more as Sampler or rather ROMplers, but the extra control afforded really does blur the edges between the two. If you got the RAM...


Oh and btw, I'm not shilling for Wave Alchemy - I paid the same as everyone else. Though there was a bit of a misunderstanding one time about what was included in what, so they made up the difference for me.

They are a very receptive company and if you are polite, you can always negotiate a good price with them via emails. It helps to have bought some of their stuff first of course.

I'm going to be building a beast of an AMD Ryzen and 32GB machine to deal with their stuff. It already gets by fine on the lowest quad-cores with 12GB of RAM (my friend's machine not mine). So I expect that will fly.

But those Ableton Samples in the Drum Racks are a dream come true.

There are only so many drum synths a man can take. Sometimes you just want to cut the crap. But then again, when it's all loaded up and you can change all those 'parameters' in Drum Racks - what is a drum synth?

To pull it back on topic, if nothing else, check out this:

http://www.alyjameslab.com/alyjameslabvlinn.html

Now, that is a drum synth!

(or maybe not...)

[enCiphered]

I realize this is not helpful since we're not talking Ableton, but:
....

Ah, just reminded me that Wave Alchemy have released a version of Revolution for Ableton Drum Racks.

https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/revolutio ... ve/pid191/

And with this version you get access to the raw wave files to use in other machines. Ok, I know we aren't talking about samples here, but still, nice.

It's on offer at the moment and I'm going to crossgrade for £15. So not only will I get much leaner and faster set up in Ableton and all the benefits of Drum Racks, I get to use the samples elsewhere. Worth 15 quid anyday. They are great samples.

I'd also grab the 90 percent off offer for Synth Drums -
https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/synth-drums/pid100/

That is what impressed me most about their stuff as it has a very nice Ableton Drum Racks set up in there as well. 5 quid on offer!

And while I'm about it, I love these ones too!

https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/sys-100-drums/pid183/

SYS-100 Drums delivers 1,584 beautifully designed, never heard before analogue drum samples; each intuitively crafted and layered from the ground up using an iconic, all time classic semi-modular synth that marked the very start of Japan’s Vintage Synth Era.

Incredible work. Outstanding drum samples.

Sure, those Revolution and Drumvolution plugins are a bit resource heavy. You need GHz and RAM (more RAM than anything), but they aren't too bad. They are very usable. I know some mileage varies with them, but I've found them ok.

Btw, Drumvolution is going cheap too now - https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/drumvolution/pid185/

These aren't Drum Synths I know, but then again, they provide so much variation via knob tweaking, it gets blurry. It's the fact they are sample heavy and reliant that marks them out more as Sampler or rather ROMplers, but the extra control afforded really does blur the edges between the two. If you got the RAM...


Oh and btw, I'm not shilling for Wave Alchemy - I paid the same as everyone else. Though there was a bit of a misunderstanding one time about what was included in what, so they made up the difference for me.

They are a very receptive company and if you are polite, you can always negotiate a good price with them via emails. It helps to have bought some of their stuff first of course.

I'm going to be building a beast of an AMD Ryzen and 32GB machine to deal with their stuff. It already gets by fine on the lowest quad-cores with 12GB of RAM (my friend's machine not mine). So I expect that will fly.

But those Ableton Samples in the Drum Racks are a dream come true.

There are only so many drum synths a man can take. Sometimes you just want to cut the crap. But then again, when it's all loaded up and you can change all those 'parameters' in Drum Racks - what is a drum synth?

To pull it back on topic, if nothing else, check out this:

http://www.alyjameslab.com/alyjameslabvlinn.html

Now, that is a drum synth!

(or maybe not...)

+1 for Wave Alchemy software and sample content.

Sorry if this was already mentioned before in this thread but if you want even more high quality drum samples you can buy the complete Sample From Mars collection for the insane price of $39.

https://samplesfrommars.com/products/al ... -from-mars

I bought it and the audio quality is very good, really worth to support them.
I will never be able to use even 30% of what this bundle has to offer but its good to have such a solid library.

[codec_spurt]

I see a lot of mention of tremor but it seems to have been discontinued :/

Yes, as well as pair of interesting effects too.

FXpansion always seem(ed) to follow the model of

1:
Build for the latest and greatest machines we can expect people to have in a year or two's time when we release.

2:
Be prepared to do some fire fighting and bug-fixing for the worst of the stuff in the short-term, after it gets released, but let's not get silly about it.

3:
Move on to the next cycle and new innovation. See step 1.


Brutal and to the bone. And it leaves a lot of people left out. Of course.
But many people still have perfectly working machines and software.

They could have definitely dealt with complaints better though and at least made some kind of effort with their totally spammed forum.

I'm going to be using Tremor and Geist and Guru and BFD and whatever though for the years to come, all on locked down machines that stop working anyway after a while.

Their products are built for specific machines and OS's and CPU's and instruction sets. What worked doesn't just stop working. If you got it going then it will still be going in 10 years time as long as the hardware does not go kaput and you got shit imaged.

For those that never got it going... well, even if you were in a minority then that sucks and yes FXpansion should have dealt with you better. Lots of pissed off customers out there that bought their stuff.

But for such bleeding edge software, there's a very large unvocal majority, it seems to me.

They still need to up their game though.

I must be lucky I guess. Most of their stuff works pretty good most the time on all my machines and OS's.

[codec_spurt]

+1 for Wave Alchemy software and sample content.

Sorry if this was already mentioned before in this thread but if you want even more high quality drum samples you can buy the complete Sample From Mars collection for the insane price of $39.

https://samplesfrommars.com/products/al ... -from-mars

I bought it and the audio quality is very good, really worth to support them.
I will never be able to use even 30% of what this bundle has to offer but its good to have such a solid library.

We are reaching in to new territory here. We are talking about samples of DRUM SYNTHS, that are still samples, but will be used in new DRUM SYNTHS, that can load samples.

And never the twain shall meet?

I don't think so.

Though it's true plugins like Drumatic and Drumaxx and Tattoo and all the rest of them can't incorporate external samples. Still, many modern DRUM SYNTHS can, and you get the added bonus of being able to work on them via VCA's and VCF's and whatnot.

Even good old, and never bettered, Battery 3 allowed you to go to town in that regard. How old is that now? 12/13/14 years old?

The only reason Behringer didn't include an 'insert your sample here' button on their latest and greatest Drum Synths was because, apart from raising the price a bit, it would have killed off any other future sales. Well, dented them a bit for sure.


It's probably a bit too off topic to talk about pure drum samples in a drum synth thread. Oops. And I think most people have worked out that there's a fine line. But still...

The samples from mars stuff is great.

[himalaya]

Well, we were trying to get away from that 'triangular' and a saturated kick sound, in Tremor, right?

However, I take you comments on board and have just looked at the sound again, and here is another attempt.
4 beats from Microtonic, 4 beats from Tremor, and repeat:

www.electric-himalaya.com/stuff/tremor/ ... tTEST2.wav

What has changed is the env pitch range mod, but also, the amp 'hold' envelope stage has been reduced. This is a cool parameter that can give a lot of sounds, and in the first test example it gave a slightly 'longer' body decay, but in this example, it's reduced and thus it allows for the initial decay to come through with greater 'immediacy'. But again, there is no trace of any 'triangular' sound or saturation. A pure, deep, bassy kick. I think

Hmm, you know, yes - now better (a much closer). File please ?

Ah, sorry, I forgot to attach the preset. It's here.

[NatLife]

Korg Volca Drums)

[c_voltage]

@himalaya thanks ! Will explore it better tomorrow.

[Milimart22]

Microtonic all the way.

[dezma]

For the Stix users: is there a way to authorize a second computer so that you don't need to switch USB dongle every time?

[digitalboytn]

Best drum synth ?

That's easy...

BFD3

[Ploki]

BFD3 is a sampler not really a synth

[antic604]

Modo Drums seems good, but is focused on synthesizing regular drum kits, i.e. normal, non-electronic music.

Drum Designer (from UVI) is technically based on samples, but the source sounds are very broad and actually there's a lot of control over how they're played and effected. Still, this one's geared more towards electronic music.

Drum Computer (from Sugar Bytes) is a mix of synthesis and samples (or wavetables, to be more precise), but seems pretty limited to narrow range of percussive and weird sounds.

Punch2 (from Rob Papen) has everything covered from samples to various synthesis methods, but I found the GUI overcrowded and not inviting (obviously very personal thing).