Toontrack Superior Drummer 3

Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 is a virtual drummer in the form of a VST plug-in. Toontrack has been a leader in the field of virtual percussion instruments for many years. Suffice it to mention such classic products as Addictive Drums, EZDrummer or this Superior Drummer. No wonder that many music producers, who benefit from the advantages of virtual drummers, have been waiting with bated breath for a new version of the flagship Superior Drummer.

The graphic interface of Superior Drummer 3 can be adapted to the demands of different systems in a very modern way. Thanks to the freely scalable window size and variable resolution of the displayed elements, the user interface looks beautiful both on the small screen of a notebook computer and on a large 4K monitor. A plus of long sessions is that the four large work areas, i.e. drums, grooves, mixer and tracker pages, can be displayed in separate windows and thus simultaneously. This gives the feeling of a real DAW, especially in systems with multiple screens, and, incidentally, it only fits into the picture that the software now also supports its own keyboard shortcuts as a plug-in.

One of the obvious innovations in the drums page is that all the drums and cymbals are displayed with individual graphics. If you have built your own small (or large) custom set-up from parts of various other sets, this should not be overlooked. The older SDX libraries also received corresponding graphics through updates, which leads directly to a deeper innovation: instruments from all Toontrack libraries can now be freely combined, and multiple instruments can be stacked together. Superior Drummer 2 was much more limited, or at least less straightforward in this respect. A new search window with extensive filtering options and a preview function provides an overview of the entire fleet of drums and cymbals.

Routing

When importing drums, routing is of course an issue because the drums in different libraries were recorded in different studios and with very different microphone configurations. To simplify channel assignment, the corresponding routing matrix has also been revised. To summarize, the system is completely open and every sample channel can be routed to any existing channel of the Superior Drummer 3 internal mixer. Alternatively, new mixer channels can be created – also for all individual sampler channels. This opens up exotic possibilities. Should the snare drum crosstalk to the volume mics have its own channel in the mixer? Or should the snare drum room channels be handled separately from the room channels of the rest of the drum kit? This and more is no problem with Superior Drummer 3.

You can now also import your own samples! Superior Drummer 3 is limited to individual audio files here. Creating your own complex instruments with alternate samples and crosstalk is not expected, but it will also be so complicated that you can probably do without it.

Finally, as for the new drum page layout, we can say that dialog boxes with additional instrument settings can now be shown and hidden, and you can change their order by drag-and-drop. This workspace configuration can be saved as a preset and can therefore be recalled at any time. The predecessor matching page has been integrated into the percussion page, which I personally need to get used to a bit, since the keyboard is no longer displayed as clearly as before. There are also some improvements in this area. For example, there are new algorithms for more authentic sound behavior when tuning drums, as well as a reverse effect and pitch effect with envelope control.

New features in Superior Drummer 3

It was to be expected: the major new features of EZdrummer 2 have now also been implemented in Superior Drummer 3, and this is especially evident in the Grooves page. Here you can clearly control the 1600 grooves provided by Superior Drummer 3 and any other available material. The Tap2Find feature is used to specifically search for grooves that resemble a pattern, which you can easily “tap” directly with clicks in the user interface. Edit-Play-Style, on the other hand, offers the ability to fundamentally edit existing grooves in an intuitive way. The virtual drummer can easily switch from hi-hat to cymbal or tom, and it’s never been easier to make the drummer play fewer beats or work quieter!

To edit beyond this level, previously in the case of EZdrummer 2 you had to use an external midi track – now you don’t! With the new grid editor, Superior Drummer 3 brings its own midi editor, which personally reminds me of the drum editor from Cubase 11. Basically, not only can you edit existing grooves at the deepest level of detail, but you can also program your own grooves from scratch. Mostly, however, the tool is of course designed to quickly adjust the details of existing grooves, so the lack of ability to set the grid on triplets or swing percentages is not seriously overlooked. Nevertheless, according to Toontrack, swing quantization is planned for the final version or a subsequent update.

Now one might ask why Superior Drummer 3 needs such an internal editor if it was never a problem to drag a groove onto a midi track in the DAW to edit it there. There are several answers to this. The first is that you don’t have to worry about mapping during internal processing. Questions like “What midi note is the bell of the crash cymbal number 5 that was hit with the tip of the stick?” are unnecessary, and should not be underestimated! The second and even more important answer is: the song track! This was also borrowed from EZdrummer 2 and, as a kind of internal midi track, now also offers the possibility of internally arranging a full drum track in Superior Drummer 3.

A small but very functional extension at the moment is that you can now create multiple versions of a song track. By experimenting with the arrangement, you can always keep a backup of sorts on hand. In addition, there is now an internal tempo track, which is especially interesting for offline work, since Superior Drummer 3 as a plug-in naturally adapts to the tempo track of the main software.

In the latter case, the ability to program tempo changes is also very useful, because they can’t be taken directly from the DAW. A song creator, also known from EZdrummer 2, has also been integrated, which offers groove variations or entire song sequences. The bounce feature also makes it child’s play to create different audio file compilations from a song track. Should separate files be created for each channel and should they go through the mixer with its effects or not? Do you prefer stereo files or split mono files? There are many options here!

Mixer

The Superior Drummer internal mixer has always been a powerful tool. The many room channels and the ability to easily control crossover levels speak for themselves. The third version now has a new set of effects with 35 effects that originated from a collaboration with manufacturer Overloud. These are partly based on related vintage stuff like the Neve 1084 EQ or the Urei 1176 compressor. But there are also “more modern” tools such as the Transient Designer, a multiband compressor, and a number of saturation effects.

One of the main reasons the excellent drummer outputs were routed through the multichannel outputs to the individual channels in the DAW mixer was the lack of artificial reverb other than the recorded room channels. For example, to add a little extra reverb to the snare drum, you had to use external buses.

The good news is that this reason for complicated outward routing is no longer relevant, because Superior Drummer 3 now offers six internal reverb algorithms, which can be quite convincing from a sound perspective. There are several presets in the player that explicitly involve internal effects. Very nice: Compared to previous libraries, Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 offers many more such presets. In addition to the default presets, there are 59 sophisticated presets for each of the included drum sets, some of which sound very experimental. The presets of the old SDX libraries have also been carried over to the new algorithms.

Another interesting innovation in the mixer is that release can now be set not only for drum or cymbal, but also for each channel of the mixer.

Conclusions

Toontrack Superior Drummer lives up to its name in its third incarnation. The VST plug-in is filled to the brim with new features and thus becomes a kind of complete solution for the complete arrangement of drum tracks that is almost as big as a small DAW. Despite the fact that Superior Drummer 3 is clearly aimed at users who want more than “just” to get a little “boom” from their computer, the controls remain perfectly clear and intuitive. The quality of the kit sounds, the effects, the many settings, the open architecture and the user-friendly interface make working with this plugin a sheer pleasure.

Installing

Version 3.0.1 comes with first part of archive, there are 5 parts in total. Next you need to download Sound Updater.OSX for Win or MacOS. You will need to put these files into SL-SuperiorDrummer3_SDX_Part(2-3-4-5) folder and run them. They will add the needed part to the already installed one. Maybe you can do it manually by just copying all files from soundb24 to soundb52 and paste it into SOUNDS folder of the first part where files soundb1- soundb23 are located. Be warned, it takes about 4 hours to install the files.