Truth drums

[Slap the drummer]

Greetings!

Came across these guys recently:-

Truthdrumsamples.com

The sounds seem basic but good quality and very reasonably priced.  So worth a look if you want
something which can be turned straight into a .dsnd file.

I tried the snare (a black beauty).  For 10usd you get 3 versions of 24 different hits, a "dry" version
and 2 versions with more room ambiance.  Just under 80mb in total when unzipped.  One wav per
hit (which personally I prefer, makes tinkering in sound forge easier).

I like the dry version a lot.  It's a good full sound, very throaty, with plenty of resonance, and
the level of buzz seems nicely judged.  The "dry" is not too dry tho - sounds like the mike was
held up near the drummer's chest! (don't take that too literally), so I got a great realistic impression
of looking down at the drum.

I'll be "triplicating" the files in sound forge to get more velocity layers (adding a little subtle pitch
variation on the duplicates), and raising the lot by a whole tone to get extra tuning options in the
module.  Then it may well be joining the small group of snares I like.  I'm very tempted to
check out the fuller kits at these reasonable prices.

It can be used as is though.  I've been playing a .dsnd straight from the files as they came, and it
works fine.

If I have one criticism it is that the transition to the hardest hits is very obvious in that the tonal
quality of these is noticeably very different to the softer ones.  I would have liked to see more
samples across all velocity levels....  all these kinds of packs seem to make the same mistake of
not offering a wide enough range of samples across the whole dynamic spectrum.....
I mean they've gone to the expense of recording etc etc, why not make more samples?
I just don't get it 

I prefer a close miked sound but a did check out one of the "room" versions.
It is not just an extra mike option that needs to be mixed with the close version in the manner
of the SD set up - but can be used straight from the box.
It's nicely done I thought.  There's a fuller decay and a bigger echo but you still sound like you're close
to the drum itself.  [For myself, I find too much ambiance mixed in SD and you sound like you're
playing a kit that's on the other side of the room from your stool!].

In sum, 3 usuable versions of a good sounding snare for 10usd.

[Slap the drummer]

And while I'm on the subject....

New kits from Analogue Drums now feature 24 velocity layers per instrument -
so that must make them totally 2box ready.  And 25usd per kit is very reasonable
I reckon.

Check out the Buckshot and the Grandioso - if you scroll right down the page they give
full details of what you get in the pack.

[Jman]

Nice find on these Slap .... those all should be easy to convert to 2Box dsnds. Already 44.1 KHZ and 24 hits could be converted as is to dsnds. Definitely a good place for people to get their feet wet making new drum dsnds at a reasonable price. 

[Slap the drummer]

PLEASE NOTE

What I forgot to mention is that the Analogue Drums packs split the different miking
channels across separate files [unlike the Truth Drum packs].

So you could make respectable enough files straight from the close mike hits, but a bit more
"processing" [eg in Soundforge] is needed if you want to combine with the overheads, etc.

I'm going to write up one way of doing this later.


Something which I think many present and future 2boxers would really benefit from would
be a simple app that can merge WAV files in batches, so that sets like these can quickly be
loaded up as .dsnd files.

Wish I could do that!  Anybody know how..... ??

[Pascaldc]

Would be thankfull if soeone can post a sample of the grandioso kit on its own, not mixed with any other music. Its not available on their website... About the the Buckshot kit, on the demo, i found that the bass drum sounded a bit short or dry, maybe with more ambiance that would do it...

[Slap the drummer]

Would be thankfull if soeone can post a sample of the grandioso kit on its own, not mixed with any other music. Its not available on their website... About the the Buckshot kit, on the demo, i found that the bass drum sounded a bit short or dry, maybe with more ambiance that would do it...

The buckshot kick is very short and tight.  To be honest I doubt more ambiance would change
its character too much.  Probably best to go elsewhere for a fuller sound.

[fishmonkey]

Something which I think many present and future 2boxers would really benefit from would
be a simple app that can merge WAV files in batches, so that sets like these can quickly be
loaded up as .dsnd files.

Wish I could do that!  Anybody know how..... ??

what are you after exactly?

[Slap the drummer]

what are you after exactly?

Hi fishmonkey - I was thinking along these lines.......

To recap: a set of (eg) snare samples comprises, say, 25 single WAV files each representing
a close miked hit at a certain velocity - and another 25 WAV files representing the same hits,
but from a room mike or an overhead.

What we want to do is combine these files to get the combination of mikes, but without having
to get into the complexity of mixing via a DAW.  So that something like the new sets from
Analogue Drums can offer us all the option of getting some new .dsnd files without too much
technical hassle.

To "mix" two WAV files in sound forge is very straight forward - just cut and paste one over the
other - and you are even given "mix" options (eg, less overheads, etc).  I believe Audacity offers
the same kind of function.

So if we had just two large WAV files instead of two sets of 25, "mixing" would be a quick and
easy task.

So a basic app that you pointed at a folder of (say) 25 WAVs and said "string these together in
the order defined by their appearance in the folder view, making one long WAV file" - this would
be really useful.

I have googled and auditioned a number of shareware options that claim to do just this - but they
were all a bunch of total cr@p.  I don't know if it had anything to do with the presence of nothing
but single low velocity strikes in many of the files, but the programs seemed unable to align the
WAVs without truncating the files, mixing them up, introducing noise and interference, etc, etc.

It seems to me that if all the program has to do is literally tack one file on the end of another
(without getting clever and trying to read the contents) that should be quite feasible.  Its very
straightforward to do this manually in sound forge, just time consuming.



There is a further point.  The above assumes that all WAV files are exactly the same length.
How much this wd normally be the case I don't know.  When I've experimented with this kind of
thing in the past I have added a first stage, which is extend all files to a specified length.
This can be done in Sound Forge as a batch operation on a folder (although right now I cannot
remember how I did this).

Anyway, this hypothetical App wd first of all convert all files to user defined length (this is just
extra silence at the end of each strike).

So there we have it    Any thoughts much appreciated !

[Pascaldc]

Thanks for the reply Slap.  I will probably go for the grandioso kit as it seems to be more the sound that i want