One of the key strengths of Steven Slate Drums is its ease of use: you don’t need to get bogged-down in further processing. It’s still very much rooted in the world of classic/hard rock and metal overall, but that covers a lot of ground for many. With this version, we’d suggest that SSD positions itself nicely as one of the go-to products for drummers looking for high-quality, yet still affordable sounds with which to expand the scope of their e-kit. This means tougher toms, beefier kick drums, and. up to 127 velocity layers per instrument and up to 127 alternation hits per velocity. With one instance of this nearly universal plug-in on your drum track, you can trigger up to eight stereo samples at once all with freakishly accurate phase alignment. Steven Slates TRIGGER 2.0 is the next generation drum replacement. It’s at this point that we should note that SSD 5 comes in at around £100 less than Superior Drummer 3, so while they might seem like a natural comparison, this isn’t really the case any longer. Steven Slate Drums Trigger 2 EX streamlines the plug-in that producers Chris Lord-Alge, Mike Shipley, and Dave Way swear by.
With Slate’s Trigger being an industry-leading application for sample replacement, we wondered if it might include some of the technology in SSD 5, but sadly not. Since the last SSD release, Toontrack has raised the bar significantly by combining a mammoth library with additional features such as effects processing, sample replacement and more. Another welcome addition is that of hand claps, cowbell and tambourine, which while simple are a handy inclusion. But even with the inclusion of some more jazz and vintage-oriented sounds, there’s still a signature flavour of SSD’s modern sonic aesthetic. There are some phenomenal kits included within the new Deluxe 2 sample set ranging from pointy, weighty kits brimming with clarity and cut, to big, open, roomy-sounding drums. Steven Slate Drums has always been known for its heavy, rock-friendly sound, and this is no exception. There’s a lot of flexibility for sound properties such as pitch, close/room mic position blending, dynamic response and an adsr envelope for each kit part Likewise, whatever is going on under the hood has worked: the samples feel and sound more ‘organic’ in response to our hits, with a much more natural, less mechanical sound between velocity levels, even with the kits and samples from earlier versions. We were pleased to see though, that the presets mapped perfectly to our Roland kit’s default MIDI notes straightaway, where in previous versions there was an element of rearranging the mapping. While there are certainly a number of changes in the interface, the first impression is definitely one of familiarity if you’ve used Steven Slate Drums before.
STEVEN SLATE TRIGGER VELOCITY DOWNLOAD
In all it was about two hours from our first download starting to us hitting a pad. While it did take a while for us to download and get set up, it was painless, and we’d suggest setting your computer going while you’re doing something else. It’s worth noting that all of Slate’s products require an iLok dongle, or iLok account to authorise.
STEVEN SLATE TRIGGER VELOCITY PLUS
The library is split into eight parts, plus the plug-in itself. If you have multiple samples you want to blend you need two audio tracks with 1-1 trigger instances on them because you cannot delay the samples inside the plugin's mixer to phase align them.We started our review by downloading the samples from the company’s site. I didn't really use it for real-time triggering only when recording triggered kick drum I using it to feed a kick sample sound to the drummer's headphones.Ĭons - The "tune" funcion could come in handy sometimes but it's not that great - you better looking for other plugin (waves) for that. Pros - it can create MIDI of your audio peaks (drum hits) so so much more accurate than the DAW's built-in Audio-to-MIDI function! Makes work much faster and easier to set up my MIDI for gates!Īlso I like the way it handle samples - the built-in mixer. It's a great tool in the studio! I use it in every single project even if I'm not using drum samples.