Best Superior 2.0 library for tight hi hats?

[ArKay99]

Originally Posted by Funkster

Hi all!

I'm a super Superior 2.0 fan. I have the original Superior 1.0, 2.0, New York Studios, the smaller vintage add-on pak, and the ez Jazz exp.

I'm looking to expand my collection. Ultimately I'd like to get the Music City and the full Custom and Vintage. But right now I'm mostly looking for a better tight clean hi hat sound for a song I'm working on.

Anybody have a suggestion which library would be good for that? Or, which library might be best to add next based on the the libraries I have? Other than the project I'm working on now, most the music I use Superior for is pop/rock/worship.

Thanks!

I've got a few of the expansion packs and the ones I have all have a few hi-hats in each and a few of those hats have several different types of hits and various open vs. closed hits. But I know what you mean. Have you tried tweaking the X-Drum Envelope of the hats? I've had good success with that and it won't cost you a cent. Also tweaking the tuning can make a huge difference.

[Funkster]

Thanks arkay99, that's a good idea. I hadn't thought of messing with the tuning and envelope.

I'll give that a try.


I was just on the Toontrack site listening to the demos.

Anybody have ez Jazz and the Roots sdx? They are very similar. I was wondering how much difference there is.

[Oli P]

The Metal Foundry has good all-round hats, and the velocity layers are plenty enough to make it sound natural (if you choose enough layers in the browser)

The Jazz or Roots SDX has only one hat...and it's not all that versatile. But it sounds nice...but not for rock.

Generally I'm voting for Metal Foundry ...and I don't do metal at all

And I have all their SDX packs.

[emitsweet]

I find high passing the hihats/cymbals tightens them up. The superior and ezdrummer libs are great but they need some tweaking.

The hihat feel and velocities differ greatly from library to library. You may program a song with one library and the hats sound good. Then you switch libraries and suddenly the hihats are too loose or too loud. IMO the toontrack open/med hihats work best with a velocity much less than 127. Sometimes as much as 1/2 that. Closed hats are ok around 100. This tightens them up greatly in context with the drums

I use two instances of superior or drums, one for hats and one for the drums. I eq the hats with at least a high pass filter occasionally a high shelf. It gets the lower mid hard 'metallic' timbre out, and makes them smooth and tight. I do this often with real drums too.

For toontrack I really like the Nashville hats on ez and the music city for superior. also the EZ vintage kit has some nice sounding hihats. very realistic. But it's all preference. Metal foundry hats sound really good.

[Pucks]

I would never buy a SDX for just one hihat... I could for a snare though... I bought all SDX's for the room they were recorded in.

Create multiple outputs for every instrument and tweak the eq of the hihat channel in your DAW. Filtering out everything lower than 200-300Hz allways does the job in my music. If you like a thinner sound filter out up to 500Hz.

[Funkster]

Cool. Thanks for the replies guys.

I would have never thought of checking out Metal Foundry because I don't do metal. That's a good tip. I'll give it a listen. One of my complaints from the original superior 1.0 was several of the sounds were too focused towards metal and useable in most other genres.

I like the hi pass idea too.

This songs a little mellower than what i typically do. I just did a midi velocity limiter on the whole drum part (played w/v-drums) and it made a big difference. I set the limiter to a midi value of 115 and the whole kit and cymals seems to gel together a little better.

This is still a perfectly good opportunity to expand my SDX library though.

[emitsweet]

Originally Posted by Funkster

Cool. Thanks for the replies guys.

I would have never thought of checking out Metal Foundry because I don't do metal. That's a good tip. I'll give it a listen. One of my complaints from the original superior 1.0 was several of the sounds were too focused towards metal and useable in most other genres.

I like the hi pass idea too.

This songs a little mellower than what i typically do. I just did a midi velocity limiter on the whole drum part (played w/v-drums) and it made a big difference. I set the limiter to a midi value of 115 and the whole kit and cymals seems to gel together a little better.

This is still a perfectly good opportunity to expand my SDX library though.

Metal Foundry is one of the best libraries. It is really not 'clicky' metal like the ezx metal machine or the metalheads libs. The metal foundry I think has the tom toms and best floor toms. They are thunderous. The hihats, rides and cymbals are amongst the best of all the libraries. I didn't like the Metal foundry snare drums. Kick is a little thin but with some eq you can beef it up.

Most realistic hihats are "vintage" ezx. But they sound similar to sounds reminiscent of sdc x/y micing. They don't have a huge roomy sizzle like LDC mics will get you. Some of the other libraries have this type of big sizzle hihat sound but they can be very "metalic" sounding. Hipass is they key there. Metal foundry is somewhere in the middle. Best of both worlds of sizzle and tightness.

I don't know why they call it metal foundry. The kits reminds me more of neil peart or nicko mcbrain (pat travers era) who are not at all metal drummers.

[chrisso]

Originally Posted by emitsweet

Most realistic hihats are "vintage" ezx. But they sound similar to sounds reminiscent of sdc x/y micing. They don't have a huge roomy sizzle like LDC mics will get you.

I'm not sure what you mean, but the 'vintage' hats were recorded with km84 close mic, pair of u67 overheads, Royer 121 room mics and an additional u87 room mic.
As for the discussion in general, don't forget many don't use a close mic on hi-hat, or have it quite low in the kit mix. So I guess it's best to find the right sounding hi-hat pair from the get-go, or use Superior's kit piece editing and fx to shape the hats.

[emitsweet]

Originally Posted by chrisso

I'm not sure what you mean,

what I meant was the vintage kit OHs are a little "confined" not very open or more focused not very ambient.

room is 121s? I guess that explains why I don't really like the sound of the vintage kit room mics, very hollow sounding. Im not fond of 121s. However I really like the sound of the vintage close miced drums. Excellent sound. I usually trigger a room sound from other libraries along with the vintage kit to open it up and add some thunder.

[chrisso]

I'm not a fan of 121's either. They were someone else's choice. The room is not amazing itself either.
C&V and it's ezx 'vintage rock' are not designed to be roomy drum samples, open or ambient.
They are close mic'ed drums in a dry room, that is the point of the library.

[JohnRick]

Even though I generally use Metal Foundry exp (and Joe Barresi, and C&V and Avatar) for the drums, the hats in Music City USA are brilliant, in both senses of the word. Shiny, clear and easily the best I've heard in software so far.

[Funkster]

Thanks John!

Love your playing and examples on your site btw. Very nice! I love fusion stuff like that.

[MisterCrayle]

Music city usa

[emitsweet]

Originally Posted by chrisso

They are close mic'ed drums in a dry room, that is the point of the library.

oh, they sound nice and warm though, love the kick and snare and hats

what console was this record through? also were they tracked analog or digital?


thanks

[chrisso]

Originally Posted by emitsweet

what console was this record through? also were they tracked analog or digital?

EMI TGI
Tracked into PTHD

[emitsweet]

Originally Posted by chrisso

EMI TGI
Tracked into PTHD

wow, love the TG sound

[chrisso]

It's amazing for drums.

[emitsweet]

Originally Posted by chrisso

It's amazing for drums.

So was that vintage kit recorded at abbey road? aren't there only 2 of those consoles?

[Felix_Tod]

What superior hats do you think feel best to trigger? The Roland internal hats on TD20 always more responsive although they don't sound as good.

[chrisso]

Originally Posted by emitsweet

So was that vintage kit recorded at abbey road? aren't there only 2 of those consoles?

There are several.
We knew of two at the time (apart from Abbey Rd). We chose the one at a small studio called 2khz, at White City.
It's since closed down I believe.
There is also an EMI TGI in South West London.

[emitsweet]

Originally Posted by chrisso

There are several.
We knew of two at the time (apart from Abbey Rd). We chose the one at a small studio called 2khz, at White City.
It's since closed down I believe.
There is also an EMI TGI in South West London.

well regardless, nice work. You guys really captured that warm vintage drum sound.