Share your drum synth vsti recommendations (was: Why are drum synth vsti so sparse and lackluster?)

Also forgot Psylab:

“Psytrance Kick Bass – Cubic Bezier Synthesizer”

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Thanks. Drum synth 500 looks pretty decent, on a par with tremor and microtonic at about the same price $99…Its so hard to tell which is the ‘best’ just because they have such varied sounds. Demos sometimes make them sound much better than they actually are, sometimes the demos dont really show the full capablilities and make a nice drum synth sound like shit.

Heres a sound demo from 1.40, seems o.k. I wish all these companies would all upload demos of ‘sounds only’ before in depth tutorial stuff.

Ephemere sounds pretty good, more interesting, better price too. I might get that for 49 euro.

Hard to say which is best without trying.

Seems like you can get much more varied sounds out of vsti but good hardware drum machines do sound much better overall…more punchy, more crunchy and some other qualities which are better, like tempest, nord drum 3. So tired of the same old 808 and 909 sounds again and again…quite tired of all the distinctively roland sounding drums.

Thanks.

If I could buy 4 Id probably get tremor, microtonic, drum synth 500 and ephemere.

8 instances of chipsynth MD might make a pretty damn cool FM drum synth too.

Can i trigger 8 instances of a vsti (8 renoise instruments) from 8 pads on my drum controller in renoise?

Let us know when Kick 2 goes on sale. If that ever has a flash sale for something like $19, or $24… I’m in!!

afaik it’s normally 30% off but I think I saw it go for 50% off on Black Friday or something…

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I have a folder on my machine called Bambooli’s Museum of Drum Machine Samples. I must’ve downloaded it somewhere along the way, but searching today I can’t find it. It is a HYUUUGE collection of old and obscure drum machine samples. The sound quality is just OK but sometimes you can hit on some inspiration with these. Happy to share a link if anyone’s interested.

Also, I recall the drum sounds that come with Hyrdrogen as being pretty good.

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Those nice old school drum machine samples sound way better than any of the drumsynth vsti in my opinion. More bounce to the ounce, more punch. Its sometimes quite subtle but the hardware drum sounds are still better than any vsti drum synth out to date i think. I like the old rhythm boxes. Sizzly hihats, old school, like frying bacon or something. Some oldschool valves from the 50s.

Seems like the answer is to have a nice signal chain specifically for spicing up dull drum samples. I routinely tend to run them through eq, maximizers, compressors, limiters, and reverb to get more oomph out of them. One day I’ll get smart and create a doofer of my chain.

Have used this since version 1 and it’s fantastic. Geared towards kicks obviously but can make other percussion sounds too.

For Linux users there is Geonkick. It’s available as an LV2 or a VST3 plugin and also runs standalone for use in a Jack patch directly if that is preferred. It also happens to be open source and free.

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I actually find Rob Papen Punch pretty good sounding…

Its actually pretty interesting… Predator was dope. I had v1, but i sold the license… shame, cuz that was a dope synth.

Now I wish I had v1 to check out. That and tone two fireface? Firehawk? lol… were like two of my first ever vsti

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i checked out the demo to ephemere by linear display.
Thats quite nice. Can get some interesting sounds out of it. Good price, but I wish for lock to semitone per drum. Pitch seems to be controlled only by carrier and modulator knobs, thats a little strange but o.k.

punch 2 looks pretty cool…reasonably phat. i will have to go check it onetime.
Seems like none of them sound as good as real hardware drum machines though, not even the ones which combine samples and synthesis like punch2?

crazy history in the rhythm boxes sample pack…finding out about how ‘korg’ used to be ‘keio’, ‘roland’ used to be ‘ace’.etc.

earliest drum machines from the 50s with real valves, tubes or whatever…sounds better than modern vsti for me. maybe its crunchiness from real components, or faulty components or something. even, some companies go back as far as 1800s like kawai and yamaha. handed down generation to generation…so the drum machine studies go way back. they know how to craft a drum sound, master engineers in japan. I really felt like sometimes the oldfangled stuff can be the better stuff too.

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For anyone on OS X (or 11!), I would recommend Drumspillage. Great and interesting drum synth. Love it.

Surprised nobody mentioned Softube Heartbeat or Uvi Drum Designer.

But, short answer is drum synthesis has peaked a looooong time ago. All VST sound roughly the same and analog drums are hella dated (albeit some people like dated). 2020 analog drums VST sound like 2005 analog drums VST which sound like 1980 drum machines.

The only new stuff around is the acoustic modelling stuff that’s still heavy and in its infancy (mododrums)

I really like Drum Computer and ATD.

The native kick generator instrument in Renoise is pretty solid. You can get a lot of mileage out of that.

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Microtonic processed by D16 devastor can sound pretty fat real quick.
Microtonic and Ephemere are my favorite.IMO Microtonic is all you need.

Breaktweaker can be really fun too, with automated wavetable and FM in the engine layered with samples.
In renoise you can just render them in audio and make new samples out of them and layer all the way.

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Do you have reaktor ?
If so , Ire-created microtonic and it has the partial oscilator ( which you refer to as a cloud osc )
it’s pretty good , it also has a comb filter for the noise section and a few extra distortion curves (sine tanh shaper ) , even magnus himself likes it ( microtonic coder )
Here you go …it doesn’t have sequencer


1781422_6423.clonetonicblac
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