Some of the Superior Drummer presets have a Compressor on the Master bus which imparts its own sound as well as a lil glue for the sum of the parts. The drums seem to set/sound better using the stereo method. So, over the last few days I created a song session using Superior Drummer and left all the drum channels in the SD mixer at 1/2, then used the SD mixer to set levels/ effects /pan etc where I want them. Your digital equivalent is therefore going to get a little messy, too. In addition to mic bleed, judicious use of room mics also does a lot for achieving a realistic sound (again, it's SD3 that offers the most sophisticated room mic options).īottom line is to think of your sampled drums as if they were real drums, and how you'd handle those physical instruments in a real space. It's messy.

Each drum sampler has its own way of implementing mic bleed (Superior Drummer probably has the most sophisticated bleed features), but most of them have at least token support for it. That's why many engineers still use old-school methods for recording acoustic drums, using a minimal number of microphones. But that's also why you end up with results that just 'sound off'. The beauty of sampled drums is that each hit is pristine and isolated. One issue you need to confront when seeking a natural-sounding drum track is managing mic bleed. So it'll be the full-fanout template that gets used most often. I also like to route individual drums to a distortion bus, which requires separate tracks. Sometimes I only realize the kick's not punching through after the mix is near completion, and then have to un-freeze SD3 to tweak it. Plus I lose the ability to tweak effects after the drums have been frozen. SD3's internal fx are good, but I have better ones as plugins. It really comes down to how much I want to effect each kit piece. I have two main presets/track templates for Superior Drummer: the simple one where everything's mixed to a stereo out via SD3's own mixer, and the full-on version with separate outputs for kick, snare, toms, overheads and room mics.

Using superior drummer 3 live