I prefer real drums. but when I have no choice, addictive drums is my first choice. When played on drum pads they sound great.
They have a immense list of premade paterns and fills too.

pcrecord, post: 454358, member: 46460 wrote: I prefer real drums. but when I have no choice, addictive drums is my first choice. When played on drum pads they sound great.
They have a immense list of premade paterns and fills too.

Hi, and thanks for your reply!

Yes, real drums would have been my first choice aswell, If I could have afforded to pay for a live drummer. I will take a closer look at addictive drums though!

Thanks again!

Best regards/
Markus

Markus Olofson, post: 454359, member: 50977 wrote: Hi, and thanks for your reply!

Yes, real drums would have been my first choice aswell, If I could have afforded to pay for a live drummer. I will take a closer look at addictive drums though!

Thanks again!

Best regards/
Markus

I find addictive drums easy and sounding good right away but if you want you can also tweak them at will... ;)

Welcome!

BFD is my choice but the others are likely just as good.
BFD has excellent kits, including cymbals and options to dampen the kits like dead ringers used back in the day.

Slate SSD4 is my go to, and it has many kit collections that comes with the basic program, though you can purchase additional libraries. It has more than a few 70's kits, dry, although you can mix both OH and Room mics in with the built in mixer. It also has a few John Bonam kits...
The good news is that most of these programs/libraries allow for fully functioning trial periods ... although for Slate stuff, you'll need an iLok.
I think all the major libraries sound good - Superior, Addictive, BFD, Slate... it all comes down to personal tastes, more so if you are looking for something very specific, as you are with The Fleetwood Mac drum sound.

audiokid, post: 454374, member: 1 wrote: Welcome!

BFD is my choice but the others are likely just as good.
BFD has excellent kits, including cymbals and options to dampen the kits like dead ringers used back in the day.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply!
I checked out BFD on YouTube, and the sounds are really good. But to me it looked really complex to work with... I would like a mix between EZ Drummers simplicity and Adictive drummer/BFD sounds...But I realize that somewhere down the line I have to make some kind of compromize...

Best regards/
Markus

DonnyThompson, post: 454379, member: 46114 wrote: Slate SSD4 is my go to, and it has many kit collections that comes with the basic program, though you can purchase additional libraries. It has more than a few 70's kits, dry, although you can mix both OH and Room mics in with the built in mixer. It also has a few John Bonam kits...
The good news is that most of these programs/libraries allow for fully functioning trial periods ... although for Slate stuff, you'll need an iLok.
I think all the major libraries sound good - Superior, Addictive, BFD, Slate... it all comes down to personal tastes, more so if you are looking for something very specific, as you are with The Fleetwood Mac drum sound.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply!

I have been looking at Slate drums, and I really like the sounds. But I´ve read quite a few comments on the cymbals not being that good. A few of these drum plugins has, as you mention, trial periods (EZ drummer, Slate) or you can download a demo (Addictive drums). I think I will utilize these options (I have already downlaoded the Addictive drums demo, albeit without cymbals and toms).

Slowly I will perhaps find what suits me best?

Best regards/
Markus

Markus Olofson, post: 454384, member: 50977 wrote: Hi,

Thanks for your reply!

I have been looking at Slate drums, and I really like the sounds. But I´ve read quite a few comments on the cymbals not being that good. A few of these drum plugins has, as you mention, trial periods (EZ drummer, Slate) or you can download a demo (Addictive drums). I think I will utilize these options (I have already downlaoded the Addictive drums demo, albeit without cymbals and toms).

Slowly I will perhaps find what suits me best?

Best regards/
Markus

Only you can decide what sounds best to you and what will work best for your sonic vision.
Believe half of what you read - and none of what you hear - when it comes to opinion. Ultimately, you're the one who needs to be satisfied with your choice, regardless of what you hear - or read - from anyone else. Give them all a try and make your decision based on what you think.
;)

DonnyThompson, post: 454386, member: 46114 wrote: Only you can decide what sounds best to you and what will work best for your sonic vision.
Believe half of what you read - and none of what you hear - when it comes to opinion. Ultimately, you're the one who needs to be satisfied with your choice, regardless of what you hear - or read - from anyone else. Give them all a try and make your decision based on what you think.
;)

Hi,

Thanks for your reply! I will let you know what kind of drum vsti I will chose and why, when that time comes. At the moment I´m leaning towards Addictive drums with the vintage dry extension pack.
Thanks all for your input!

Best regards/
Markus

You may want to work with some natural room ambience... on the surface, much of the 70's drum "sound" was dry, but not completely so...if you listen closely to a lot of those examples, you'll hear a room mic (or mics) tucked into the vibe as well. It's not much, but it is there.
Compared to drum sounds from the 80's and 90's, typical 70's drum sounds were indeed "dryer sounding"... but, there was still a subtle ambience to them.
Rumors was tracked at Sound City in L.A., and they had a great sounding room for drums - and it wasn't even professionally designed to sound that way - before it was Sound City, it was a Vox guitar amp factory... They just got incredibly lucky that the room had an inherent character that sounded really good for drums.
Here's a process you may want to experiment with, which is creating a "faux" room bus/track in your DAW...

Creating Faux Room(s):
Send each of your drum tracks, via aux's, to a separate aux return/bus. Name this aux return "drum room", or "drum space"... whatever you think works best...

On the Aux return channel you have created, insert an EQ, a reverb plug ( my preference is that the verb plug has a "mix" adjustment), a compressor, and a de-esser, in that order
Set the appropriate aux sends for each drum track to a moderate send level.

Open the EQ you have inserted, and push the lows on the EQ - like 60-80hz - by 3 to 4db. Add a little top end silk, (but don't go crazy with it) trim back a little ( 2db to start) between or around 300 -400Hz ( give or take... you'll have to season to taste.

Open the reverb plug you have inserted, and Set it for a good, "natural" sounding small to medium room. Set the pre-delay on the reverb plug to around 30ms, and if the reverb plug has a mix function ( wet/dry), set it for 25 -35% wet.

Open the compressor plug, and set it to a fairly high ratio... such as 8:1 ( or even higher). ( I personally like a good 1176 plug/sim or an SSL bus compressor sim for this). Set the attack for "medium", and the release at its quickest setting. If your compressor has a hi-pass filter setting, set it for 200Hz if your HPF will go that high. If not, then go as high as the HPF will allow... you don't want the compressor to clamp down on your lows, you want those low frequencies to pass through, un-compressed.
If the compressor plug you are using has a wet/dry mix, set it for 50% to start. Obviously, you would increase this mix further towards "wet" to hear more compression.

Finally, add a de-esser to tame back the cymbals and the hi hat. You don't need much....set your de-esser to attenuate frequencies by a db or 2 (or so) around 4 to 8k. Start with a wide Q, adjust and narrow to taste... you don't want to totally kill the hi's, the "silk" frequencies are important; you just want to reign the 4k - 8k region in a bit, and stop the cymbals from getting brittle or harsh due to the heavy amount of compression.

Use this Aux return channel as "parallel" processing; adjust your volume, blend it in, so that there's a nice amount of "room" in the mix.
(I'm using Samplitude Pro X, so auxiliaries and busses appear just as regular channels do, with faders, pans, EQ, inserts, etc.)
You may end up not needing much volume on this aux return in the mix... start from "∞" and gradually bring it up so that you can just hear it, blended in with your dry tracks...send both to your master stereo bus; unless you are using a separate drums bus for processing of the whole kit ( EQ, GR, etc.), at which point your drums buss would be routed to your master stereo bus, along with the "faux room" auxiliary return.

I found this video that you might find more useful than my written instructions.... this vid uses Slate plugs for this method, but you can use any good quality plugs to do this, even native/stock plugs that are resident in whatever DAW you are using...
In the vid, he is also using an existing mono room mic ( but... you don't have to have an actual room mic track, you can simply do aux sends with all of your drums to a new aux return, as described above).
You can adjust any or all of these settings above to greater or lesser degrees; but you'll want to adjust this balance in context with your dry drums, and ultimately, with the other instruments as well.
There are many variables to consider, but these settings are a pretty good starting place.
:)

Here's the vid:

I dived in and got superior drummer 3 , so far i really love the sounds , lots of choices and they all sound really good.
The cymbals sound better than SDrummer 2 IMHO

DonnyThompson, post: 454418, member: 46114 wrote: You may want to work with some natural room ambience... on the surface, much of the 70's drum "sound" was dry, but not completely so...if you listen closely to a lot of those examples, you'll hear a room mic (or mics) tucked into the vibe as well. It's not much, but it is there.
Compared to drum sounds from the 80's and 90's, typical 70's drum sounds were indeed "dryer sounding"... but, there was still a subtle ambience to them.
Rumors was tracked at Sound City in L.A., and they had a great sounding room for drums - and it wasn't even professionally designed to sound that way - before it was Sound City, it was a Vox guitar amp factory... They just got incredibly lucky that the room had an inherent character that sounded really good for drums.
Here's a process you may want to experiment with, which is creating a "faux" room bus/track in your DAW...

Creating Faux Room(s):
Send each of your drum tracks, via aux's, to a separate aux return/bus. Name this aux return "drum room", or "drum space"... whatever you think works best...

On the Aux return channel you have created, insert an EQ, a reverb plug ( my preference is that the verb plug has a "mix" adjustment), a compressor, and a de-esser, in that order
Set the appropriate aux sends for each drum track to a moderate send level.

Open the EQ you have inserted, and push the lows on the EQ - like 60-80hz - by 3 to 4db. Add a little top end silk, (but don't go crazy with it) trim back a little ( 2db to start) between or around 300 -400Hz ( give or take... you'll have to season to taste.

Open the reverb plug you have inserted, and Set it for a good, "natural" sounding small to medium room. Set the pre-delay on the reverb plug to around 30ms, and if the reverb plug has a mix function ( wet/dry), set it for 25 -35% wet.

Open the compressor plug, and set it to a fairly high ratio... such as 8:1 ( or even higher). ( I personally like a good 1176 plug/sim or an SSL bus compressor sim for this). Set the attack for "medium", and the release at its quickest setting. If your compressor has a hi-pass filter setting, set it for 200Hz if your HPF will go that high. If not, then go as high as the HPF will allow... you don't want the compressor to clamp down on your lows, you want those low frequencies to pass through, un-compressed.
If the compressor plug you are using has a wet/dry mix, set it for 50% to start. Obviously, you would increase this mix further towards "wet" to hear more compression.

Finally, add a de-esser to tame back the cymbals and the hi hat. You don't need much....set your de-esser to attenuate frequencies by a db or 2 (or so) around 4 to 8k. Start with a wide Q, adjust and narrow to taste... you don't want to totally kill the hi's, the "silk" frequencies are important; you just want to reign the 4k - 8k region in a bit, and stop the cymbals from getting brittle or harsh due to the heavy amount of compression.

Use this Aux return channel as "parallel" processing; adjust your volume, blend it in, so that there's a nice amount of "room" in the mix.
(I'm using Samplitude Pro X, so auxiliaries and busses appear just as regular channels do, with faders, pans, EQ, inserts, etc.)
You may end up not needing much volume on this aux return in the mix... start from "∞" and gradually bring it up so that you can just hear it, blended in with your dry tracks...send both to your master stereo bus; unless you are using a separate drums bus for processing of the whole kit ( EQ, GR, etc.), at which point your drums buss would be routed to your master stereo bus, along with the "faux room" auxiliary return.

I found this video that you might find more useful than my written instructions.... this vid uses Slate plugs for this method, but you can use any good quality plugs to do this, even native/stock plugs that are resident in whatever DAW you are using...
In the vid, he is also using an existing mono room mic ( but... you don't have to have an actual room mic track, you can simply do aux sends with all of your drums to a new aux return, as described above).
You can adjust any or all of these settings above to greater or lesser degrees; but you'll want to adjust this balance in context with your dry drums, and ultimately, with the other instruments as well.
There are many variables to consider, but these settings are a pretty good starting place.
:)

Here's the vid:

Hi, Donny!

Thanks a lot for your indepth answer! Yes, I see what you mean with a slight room reverb, and I will apply that when I finally mix the drums (which I save for last). I think the kits in the seventies were dry much because of the close miking, but still there must have been some room ambience aswell.

I will print out your tip and try to apply it when that day comes!

Thanks a lot again!

Best regards/
Markus

Smashh, post: 454421, member: 45856 wrote: I dived in and got superior drummer 3 , so far i really love the sounds , lots of choices and they all sound really good.
The cymbals sound better than SDrummer 2 IMHO

Hi, Smashh!

Thanks for your input! I´ve been looking at superior drummer aswell, but can´t manage it on my budget, sadly!

Best regards/
Markus

I would attribute a lot of that 70’s dry drum sound to the fact that it was common to remove the bottom heads of the toms and shove a mic inside, typically a Sennheiser 421. The snare drum was often the only drum wth both heads still in tact. The toms and kick drum were often deadened to the point all they made was a “Putt” sound, and the absence of the other head eliminated any resonance, sustain, tone associated with a drum and made it sound more like hitting a cardboard box.

Watch old concert footage and you’ll often see a kick drum with no front head, and 4-8” of pillows or blankets lying right up against the head to mute it.

dvdhawk, post: 454431, member: 36047 wrote: I would attribute a lot of that 70’s dry drum sound to the fact that it was common to remove the bottom heads of the toms and shove a mic inside, typically a Sennheiser 421. The snare drum was often the only drum wth both heads still in tact. The toms and kick drum were often deadened to the point all they made was a “Putt” sound, and the absence of the other head eliminated any resonance, sustain, tone associated with a drum and made it sound more like hitting a cardboard box.

Watch old concert footage and you’ll often see a kick drum with no front head, and 4-8” of pillows or blankets lying right up against the head to mute it.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, I love that "dead" sound! There´s a few films on You Tube where they demonstrate how to get that 70´ies sound on acoustic drums. Some put towels over the drume heads, and it sounds great.
I think EZ drummer has a "Toweled kit", but I just didn´t like the sound quality of EZ drummer, the kits were all very "ringy" and processed, In Addictive drummer they are much more dry, and I can decide myself what kind of effects I want to use (if any...).

Well, I promise I will let you hear the result when I´m finished with the first song.

Best regards/
Markus

A good example of that sound is the Eagles' Victim Of Love, or Those Shoes... and that was Bill Szymczyk producing. Like it or not, he, Henley and the engineers had that sound nailed.
But still... Tucked in there, very subtly but there, was room ambience.

DonnyThompson, post: 454442, member: 46114 wrote: A good example of that sound is the Eagles' Victim Of Love, or Those Shoes... and that was Bill Szymczyk producing. Like it or not, he, Henley and the engineers had that sound nailed.
But still... Tucked in there, very subtly but there, was room ambience.

Hi, Donny!

Yes, let there be room ambience:)

I´m getting more and more insecure about these drum-vst`s... After using the demo version of Addictive Drummer I´m not so sure any longer. I´ve got Sennheisers freebee "Drummica", and that is actally not bad at all. What I lack in Drummica (which actually wasn´t made first hand for the drums, but for demonstrating Sennheisers microphones...) are more snare, bass drum and tom options, that I can only get with the likes of Addictive drummer.

If I had money I would go for Superior drummer, or possibly Abbey Road drums. Best of all would of course be a real drummer, but as a bedroom producer that is also impossible.

Best regards/
Markus

I don't use any VST drums myself, but I did recently buy Slate Drums Trigger, to experiment with enhancing drums that are already recorded. The great thing about the current technology is that you can layer and mix multiple samples that have different characteristics and then adjust the sustain and release to have as much (or as little) of the drum resonance as you want.

That was the point of my previous post, which I never got to finish until now.