VST drum machines

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collide
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by collide »

More Drumspillage users in here? ... or what do you think of it?

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Re: VST drum machines

Post by ekwipt »

I use Dumspillage as well, it's great for bass sounds and FM clang, can do hats or masses of white noise that can be shaped. It hasn't been updated in a while, just a warning.

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Re: VST drum machines

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HowieRis wrote:I've spent the last hour dicking about with the Microtonic demo and yeeeaaah.... it's pretty roundly exceeded any expectations I had for a drum synth when I started looking.

So far this thing splats the D16. The loops I'm coming up with sound thick and vibey and it's definitely what I was craving - something really fun that sounds effortlessly good and doesn't have a bazillion different interfaces and modes.
Microtonic's bad ass, been using it for a while, got a lot of sounds that started life in that and have been revisiting it for some electro/techno stuff I want to do. I haven't stumbled upon any other software drum synth that I find useful. There's not much to dislike really, yeah you can end up with a certain sound which is very 'microtonic' but it's not hard to process something. Some conga/bongo patches running into a waveshaper for instance gets some really punchy FM-like clangs. 8-)

I didn't really gel with a lot of the stuff mentioned. The D16 stuff, the TR emulations didn't inspire me but I do like the TR style sequencing. I just prefer the sound of samples if I want TR sounds. As an Ableton Live user, I cannot find a better option than Drum Racks, but what I want to do at the moment is purposely try to get a drum machine feel, at least in terms of velocity. A fixed choice of soft/med/hard velocity levels as well as a global accent which affects all sounds within the rack. So basically, something which offers TR style step sequencing and pattern storage but which uses samples with the option to go in and have an extensive amount of control over them.

Does anything like this exist? One option I came across was to use one of the D16 groups TR plugins but just for the midi out. Route that to a drum rack or Battery and I have a TR style step sequencer for them. I also looked at Xfer Nerve but as far as I can tell, there's no option to resize the GUI which just looks uncomfortably small for my liking. For sample sequencing and stuff, it seems really interesting.

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Críoch
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by Críoch »

Someone mentioned about updates for drumspillage.. it sucks when theres a move towards legacy.

Happened with Dcam Synth Squad. Tbf.. Microtonic is fine & current. I'm sure all the other big software companies like NI aren't gonna get rid of Battery anytime soon.. but Ableton Drum Racks just work.
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Re: VST drum machines

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Have had Microtonic for years, actually kind of forgot about it... Might just dig it up for when I finally have my new system, from what I remember it's insanely flexible. Though in the end it doesn't really matter all that much when you get into the sampling side of things, for example its easy to spice up weak samples with pitch/volume envelopes, distortion/combs and some other basic effects.

Also been using some older drum synths the past few weeks, some of the more interesting ones are Ironhead and Groove analoger (really an effect with pitch/env tracking that acts like a synth, but still kinda funky).
how far do you want to go

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Re: VST drum machines

Post by HowieRis »

Lost to the Void wrote: Tuning the wet\dry between noise and osc, tweaking the noise and the noise filter and then being gentle with the drive gets wonderful results.
Holy shit, great tip - sounds immense.

I will be buying Microtonic before the trial is up, every time i have a fiddle with it I become surer of that.
vo0doo wrote: Also been using some older drum synths the past few weeks, some of the more interesting ones are Ironhead and Groove analoger (really an effect with pitch/env tracking that acts like a synth, but still kinda funky).
Quite like the look of Ironhead but Windows only, booooo!

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Re: VST drum machines

Post by Lost to the Void »

I used to use Ironhead loads. It was one of my secrets weapons I told no one about.
But it's 32 bit :(
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by Neal »

I use Tremor a little here and there, sounds pretty decent but mainly use 808 and 909 samples.

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Re: VST drum machines

Post by celome »

Microtonic lovely one really user friendly sounds really good. Patternarium feature is really great !

And also Tremor which I finally preferred after few months, workhorse device. Sounds amazing but need more time to grasp !
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by over9000 »

i checked out the microtonic feature video and i was impressed. gonna dl the demo soon!
can all these parameters be automated also in ableton?
i mainly use samples with a lot of processing for my drums. Though i would like the idea to have more of them in one device, instead having it all in single channels with midi. Sequencing could be nice too.
thx for all the recomendations!

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Re: VST drum machines

Post by HowieRis »

over9000 wrote:i checked out the microtonic feature video and i was impressed. gonna dl the demo soon!
can all these parameters be automated also in ableton?
i mainly use samples with a lot of processing for my drums. Though i would like the idea to have more of them in one device, instead having it all in single channels with midi. Sequencing could be nice too.
thx for all the recomendations!
Each of the 8 instruments is like a standalone synth on it's own and you can automate every parameter independently for each element. It's multi-out too so it's super easy to send to 8 separate channels for processing. Even if you wanted to stick to your usual workflow with a sampler or something it's worth having just from a sound design standpoint to record single hits or short loops.

Yeah the sequencing is something I'm having fun with. 12 banks - program a progression of patterns, assign the bank buttons A-L to pads or keys on your controller, set the channel to 'write' and jam it out.

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Re: VST drum machines

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Re: VST drum machines

Post by kertikristof »

In a drum machine, drum sequencer, is there any global parameter changes you like or use? For example the speed of the samples in impulse.
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over9000
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by over9000 »

HowieRis wrote:
over9000 wrote:i checked out the microtonic feature video and i was impressed. gonna dl the demo soon!
can all these parameters be automated also in ableton?
i mainly use samples with a lot of processing for my drums. Though i would like the idea to have more of them in one device, instead having it all in single channels with midi. Sequencing could be nice too.
thx for all the recomendations!
Each of the 8 instruments is like a standalone synth on it's own and you can automate every parameter independently for each element. It's multi-out too so it's super easy to send to 8 separate channels for processing. Even if you wanted to stick to your usual workflow with a sampler or something it's worth having just from a sound design standpoint to record single hits or short loops.

Yeah the sequencing is something I'm having fun with. 12 banks - program a progression of patterns, assign the bank buttons A-L to pads or keys on your controller, set the channel to 'write' and jam it out.
Hey thanx!
that sounds really great, might get that thing soon!

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tsaro
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by tsaro »

Been looking at Ephimere by Ineardisplay, might just get it if I have some cash to spare when my new computer is done... Having a lot of fun just sampling kits I made with the demo.
https://www.ineardisplay.com/plugins/ephemere/
how far do you want to go

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Re: VST drum machines

Post by Críoch »

Just a thought..

The bundled m4l drum synth is pretty cool.. fitting neatly into a drumrack.
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by Belka »

first things came to my mind are:

Drumazon or Punchbox by D16
http://d16.pl/products

Waves Alchemy Revolution
http://www.wavealchemy.co.uk//revolution/pid179/

Softube Heartbeat
https://www.softube.com/index.php?id=heartbeat

Sonic Academy Kick2
https://www.sonicacademy.com/products/kick-2

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Re: VST drum machines

Post by sergiobR1 »

I completly recommend to use the samples of ableton suite.

But I own kick2 and microtronic and are reaaaaaaally good. Drumazon is not worth it (the hats are good tho).
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by Root »

Is anyone using Machine 2? I bought Machine 1 when it came out, because i thought this will be the mpc alternative I always wanted, after selling my 2000xl for lacking digital connection. Then I realised that it's not what I expected it to be, nothing I couldn't do with drumrack in live. Is there any reason why I should go for the update to Machine 2? Is the drumsynth worth it? Youtubevids say no to me :D
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Re: VST drum machines

Post by Oktagon »

Couple of Microtonic things...

There's a new JS version of the patternarium out with some new features. Cool to see that they're keeping it alive.

https://soniccharge.com/forum/topic/133 ... m-2-0-beta

One thing I've been looking at is getting Microtonic working better with Push. I love the simplicity of the drum synth and the huge variety of presets you can use as a starting point, but I wanted the feel of a hardware drum machine for programming beats. It feels perfect to expose as a generic drum synth within a drum rack in Push and make all the synth controls available for tweaking.

There are a bunch of people out there with different approaches to this, none of which were quite what I wanted. The important things I wanted were:

- Easy per drum preset browsing (not interested in entire kit/pattern presets, just individual drums).
- Full control of the drum synth per drum.
- Easy navigation on the Push (no more button pushing than needed).

In the end I've ended up with 16 separate instances of the VST per drum, and I only use drum channel 1 for each instance. I've used the excellent PrEditor utility to customise the Push display of the VST to show only the synth controls for drum channel 1 organised into 4 banks. So when I hit a pad on the Push the controls for that pad are immediately accessible.

The preset browsing was a bit harder to set up. Turns out there's no way to control the preset changing in Microtonic via midi or direct mapping. The only thing you can do is program change (from 16 programs). To drive the program change I have a simple Max device that just is a dial with the range 1-16 that sends program change messages to Microtonic. I put one of these before each Microtonic instance in the rack. That means I can now select this device on the Push to change the preset for a specific drum, then tweak it's values from there.

I've customised the 16 programs for each VST instance individually to be 16 manually selected presets for a specific drum sound (16 kick drums of my choice etc). Finally I then save the whole containing drum rack in Live (which retains all the Microtonic programs/settings).

This seems to work pretty well. I can drop an instance of this rack, program a beat on the push then use the preset devices to scroll through a range of options per drum. From there I can customise the sounds further and add parameter locks per step using the standard Push method.


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