So, I just purchased Grandioso and requested popsticks for my freebie... that completes the collection barring the Kontakt kits, which I can't use.

They all sound amazing, Grandioso being especially refreshing in my mixes with a flat low rumbly kind of sound. But still, at the end of the day, while each kit has it's own character and uses... the hands down best sounding kit of all, imo, is still the Big Mono.

The only thing it lacks is the versatility of room mics and whatnot... I'd love to trim the roominess in some instances...

I'd be thrilled if it got a makeover with a full array of samples like the other kits... just sayin

I agree with you about Big Mono. It's pretty much my "go to" kit when I'm recording. Where has there ever been a kick that's as fat as the Big Mono one? The only thing I don't like so much is the toms, especially that there's only two of them. I've ended up using some toms from a Kontakt kit and fed through the convolution reverb with a nice drum room impulse from Voxengo they're a great match. That gives me Big Mono and four toms.

I don't know what you mean about the kits you haven't bought being "Kontakt kits". You can use the samples with anything, well, with a bit of tweaking. I sometimes use the free PC sampler Shortcircuit for the kits. I don't know why but Shortcircuit seems to give a more open and clear sound than Kontakt.

If anyone from Analogue Drums still reads these posts I'd like to point out that I missed the 2 for 1 offer because I didn't get the email until 6.45pm (UK time) on the 29th. Doh, my loss. I'm really looking forward to Monotown. The demo sounds great.

I realize I can map the samples myself, I do that anyway with the kits I own since they're not mapped consistently. I also separate the room and close or overhead samples to fade in as needed. I suppose what I mean is that the price tag on the kontakt sets is mostly for the interface and kontakt specific options... useless, to me anyway...

I did casually mention this in the email to request my freebie, and Dylan replied that they were looking into making "lite" versions of the kontakt kits for use with exs24 and others... I really like this. No need to marginalize a loyal customer base. I would gladly drop 25 bucks on just the samples with no exs24 mappings... I think they're worth the full 39, but I'm a bus driver, not an architect.

Say, with that in mind, I would gladly offer to map the exs24 to the entire tape series two, if I got to keep the samples.

I'm not familiar with Shortcircuit. Is is available on Mac? I can run Windows on my iMac, but I don't have an interface, making real recording impossible. I use the Apogee duo... sounds amazing, but very Mac exclusive.

On the topic of convolution reverb, are you aware of any Mac convolution plugins that can run multiple impulses on one instance? I'm using LAConvolver. But it only loads one at a time. I use it primarily for guitar cabs, and if I want to blend mic options, I end up using 4 or 5 aux channels. This is all fine, just a bit of a hassle... wish there was a sleeker way. I'm still new to all of this...

I took a simpler option and repitched the two up to give two more (just by tweaking the root pitch relative to the trigger note). But I'll agree, it could do with more toms. I'm not really that fussed it's mono, though.

My biggest problem with AD kits remains the hi-hats... more detail required...

ah, but Dylan said they intended to keep the offer going for the rest of the month!

No, Shortcircuit is PC only I'm afraid and I know nothing about Macs so I don't know if it would work under Windows on a Mac. Mind you, it's free so you could try it. If you do, get version 1.x as version 2.x was unfinished and a bit buggy.
Hybrid Reverb loads four or five impulses at a time and it seems that you can pan between them. How you'd load your own is beyond me though. It's supposed to work on a Mac but I haven't found anything other than VST.


Yeah, I did that at first but I found the up pitched tom sounded a bit odd. I even tried shortening the decay to get rid of some of the room sound but it never really did it for me. Rockstock toms work OK as well though. It's just a matter of matching the room sound. Anyhow, I've a feeling that Santa may be bringing me Addictive Drums with the Retro Pak (3 Ludwig kits) for Christmas. If he does I just hope they are VERY much better than the atrocious EZ Drummer equivalent. If Dylan & Co get the new Monotown kit out before Christmas I'll be having that as well.


Unfortunately I use a PAYG credit card for web purchases as, in the case of fraud, you can only lose what you have on the card at the time. I didn't have enough on the card and funds take two days to load onto it. To be honest I'm more interested in the new Monotown kit anyway.

Can you elaborate on that please?

As for "trimming the roominess" etc, welcome to the life of basically any engineer that records at York St.

I was the head engineer there for 2 years and while the room is GREAT, there's times when you want a smaller room sound and it can be difficult to achieve without doing things that negatively affect other aspects of the sound.

Anyway, i believe the plan is to record in different studios for the next few so i will suggest maybe doing a "basic" kit in each studio visited since BigMono IMHO is really the character of York St at its most obvious (with of course the vintage/retro focus) and i think good basic kit that really reflects each studio is a nice idea.

Although my relationship to AD has really just been as a hired engineer for the tracking sessions, i will try to be more active on these forums where possible.

Thanks.

The hi-hats only have the common three positions. This isn't very expressive and is one of the things that makes a sampled kit so easy to spot. With CC4 (foot control) having 128 values, there's plenty of ability to select a wider range of samples.

On naturaldrumkit, I have six pads triggering my hi-hats - rim, top, bell for left and right, all with CC4 control with up to 16 degrees of openness and generally over 20 velocity splits. Admittedly, the hi-hat takes 3.5GB of disk space... but it sounds really good .

There's another hi-hat in the kit, which is a mere 201MB, having five degrees of openness. The difference in playability is quite amazing. With even fewer degrees of openness, all other kits feel crippled.

Obviously, I don't expect 3.5Gb of samples for every hi-hat - but limiting to open, half-open, closed really does limit how "real" the kits feel.

Roger. I understand what you mean now, thanks.

Well it's been a while since my last dusting off of the forum here - the latest release has been a bit all-consuming to release.

Anyway - Big Mono!

Yes the hihat detail is lacking, no debate here. It's not totally unworkable, but yes it's far from the pinnacle of a fully realistic espressive hat. We've made an effort to improve our hihat sampling with more recent kits - not quite up to 3.5GB of hihat samples per kit yet, but fairly successful so far and we'll continue to improve the detail with future captures.

As far as de-rooming or any other enhancements I'm afraid we're somewhat limited with what we captured - but I'll look at reviewing the original sessions to see if there's any sign that a drier rendering that might be possible. But please no-one hold your breath, like Hook says, the room at York St studio really does imprint itself into the sound. That was very much our intention at the time.

The closest we came to a dry sound in that same room was with the Kingpin set - where the kit was completely enclosed within the room.

And EXS24 support for the Kontakt kits - we'll there's a plan afoot there