Did the saving function ever get fixed in Ocean Way Drums?

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I was thinking of picking up Gold with the 15% off sale, but the lastest posts in gearslutz (about 6 mo ago) still mention the fact that Kontakt doesn't save tweaked sounds in a standard way. You have to save every tweaked sound individually, then globally, and then in Cubase. A pain in the neck in other words.

Was this ever addressed? or is it still the same method?

Hopefully the answer will come today. (one day sale)

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It's still the same. The good part of the feature is that the mix presets are built into the script and all presets can change together for all of the kit pieces. So with a key switch you can flip between the 6 mixes which is GREAT because you don't have to reload the whole kit and wait. The disadvantage is that it is a slight extra pain to save back. But a beautiful unique library of drums. So I'd say that if you want the sound of Ocean Way then that should trump all. Whatever hassle it is it's a lot less time and expense than recording your own drums at a studio like Ocean Way. ;) Let Allen Sides and Steven Miller do it for you. :D Good luck! Great product.

We also have the Ocean Way Drums SE vol. 1-3 on www.esoundz.com which do not have this problem but they are 3 different pre-mix kits as opposed to full discrete mics like in Silver, Gold or Platinum.

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musicdoc wrote:I was thinking of picking up Gold with the 15% off sale, but the lastest posts in gearslutz (about 6 mo ago) still mention the fact that Kontakt doesn't save tweaked sounds in a standard way. You have to save every tweaked sound individually, then globally, and then in Cubase. A pain in the neck in other words.

Was this ever addressed? or is it still the same method?

Hopefully the answer will come today. (one day sale)
This "feature" has made OWD pretty useless for me. At least the whole kits. It's a PITA saving them all the time. (Plus there's too much remains of machine guns in rides and hihats.) Thus I use OWD only for trigger-like drum replacing nowadays.

Why isn't it fixed? OWD2 and a free update for such a basic correction would be decent. Otherwise, the product will die, I think.

You should take our criticism on this matter seriously.

the other, more positive reason for me to use OWD rarely is the Motown MT kit in Drum Masters...and the Copeland snare that came with some group buy... These are marvellous in every way. I also love some kits in Epik Drums.

I wish there was a multitrack version of the copeland sn. Or is there one in some hidden way:?:

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Well I'm kind of glad that I didn't pick these up. I had a chance to play with NI's studio drums package within Komplete 8 yesterday. Awesome sounds, top notch programming and very easy to use and get what your looking for out of. Plus the included patterns are a bonus that can be dragged into your sequence resulting in a work flow similar to Addictive drums of BFD.

I have a bunch of Ocean way kits from a previous group buy but they are of course not the ones with tweakable mics. Lately, I've just come to expect to have the ability to tweak the room sounds, eqs, comps and so on without having to route stuff out or make things complicated.

I still think that if someone was to properly program Ocean Way it could be an awesome product. You could evem probably sell individual kits for like $50-70 a kit and make a bundle. The way it stands right now, this is a funky product that is being surpassed by the competition do to its user unfreindliness.

Sonic reality may do well to take a few lessons in programming from NI:)

... working level indicators.. matching mappings... saving function quirkiness..

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We do learn from NI especially about what can be done in their own format. ;)

But, you gotta remember that these products are made over time and with different people in charge of decisions sometimes. SR was essentially hired to co-create Ocean Way Drums by Ocean Way. But it is their product and they decide what they want to do with it. We licensed the DL material (stereo kits) because it was otherwise going to just be cancelled. So we only have the ability to tweak the performance of that... and we did. The Ocean Way Drums SE kits (we call it SE now instead of DL) have advanced round robin, flexible mapping, easy saving and they sound fantastic. They are even less intensive on the CPU since they are less channels.

The OWD Multitrack titles, which are now distributed by Ilio, are really fantastic and nothing replaces what the main value of the package is: The Ocean Way sound. If you're just looking for an adequate great quality drum product there are a ton of choices and for all sorts of price ranges too. There's so many good ones these days. So, in my opinion, you don't get Ocean Way Drums just to solve your drum needs. You get it because you want drums recorded with some of the best mics in the world by an expert like Allen Sides with a very particular style, unique equipment and on top of that the 6 mixes per kit piece that he and Steven Miller did AT Ocean Way. Not us doing the presets. THEM.

Why is that a big deal? Well, first, Ocean Way is one of the best studios in the world and some amazing albums were recorded there. Like many great studios it has "a sound" to it... particularly that room in Studio B. Now, of course, there are less expensive drum libraries out there recorded at other famous studios too that each have their sound. YES!!!!! Isn't that freakin' AWESOME???? Especially since some of these studios are no longer around even. Ocean Way thankfully still is. But even if there are other libraries for less that also have famous studios... it isn't just that it's a famous studio. It's that it is this particular studio and no other drum library has this studio's sound done in such an over the top deluxe way.

Starting to get closer to what the main value of the product is now... this "over the top deluxe way" business. You've seen the gear, the mics (hand picked out of a luxurious collection) and all that. But what you don't see is their time. The sheer amount of time spent by the engineer/producers themselves on this let alone studio time is enormous. Same as if it was a high end orchestral library. It's one thing to book a session for a couple of days or a week... but for weeks and weeks recording AND mixing the presets there in that environment? Very very rare that they'd take the time to do that and I think if they knew how much work it was going to be to do it to their audiophile tastes maybe they might not have done it. It was brutal.

To have THAT in a box to use on your music is really incredible and we're proud to be a part of helping to make that happen. Otherwise a taste of the beautiful Ocean Way studio drum sound would be reserved only for those that can afford to record there... and even if they do they're not putting up 19 different snares or kicks to test out in their track!!!!

So, the trade offs are this. While it is a pita to save back, and since then NI has developed some cool drum features (and now Studio Drummer) what you do have in there that ironically is one of the reasons it'd be tough to update the MT version is the built-in mix presets. You can key switch between them as well. Just having mix presets for every kit and kit piece that were done as if they were for album productions is enough of a reason, in my opinion, to hassle with extra steps saving it back. It's a lot less hassle than miking up a drum kit!

Hopefully this gives you guys some perspective. Maybe the sound of the studio or the mix presets by the engineers isn't important to you. Maybe having the discrete mic channels isn't crucial to you and you can get OWD SE. Or maybe some other product suits your needs. But, if you're a sound junky and studio lover like me then this is a gold mine of sonic joy. Another thing is, the fidelity of the Ocean Way Drums is some of the best out there. Higher resolution samples than most others. These are guys that grace the cover of Mix magazine and win Tec awards etc. It's so great to have their expertise put into a product for musicians to be able to take advantage of in their music.

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Sorry to say, but that is just a marketing speech. A good one, obviously, but I knew all that already, and I have based my point on my experience using the product itself.

So the case is, there is not going to be any update or option for this "feature"? Or, whether there will or will not be is not your business?

Otherwise, I'm quite happy if you update DM and EpiK kits to be as precise as possible in their round robin sample usage (I read something about this from some Gearslutz thread). I have particularly noticed that some snares have too different sounding hit or two on the same(ish) velocity value. (However, this does not make the products as unusable as OWD at all, it is just that sometimes you have to record the drum and replace those hits that jump out of the picture. I have also Superior, but have hardly ever use for it, DM and Epik sounds are... well, superior.)

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