Toontrack Drumkit From Hell Superior

One Helluva Concept

Just like every other musician, the team at Toontrack long ago realized the inherent limitations of drum machines, sample CDs, samplers, ROMplers, and just about every other type of drum-oriented tool used in an attempt to program a truly realistic drum kit recording and performance. So they set-out to create an instrument that puts any musician right in the middle of a traditional studio recording session without the typical hassle, expense, re-works, or time restrictions, but with all of the quality and much more variety and control. Let's just say, thank goodness for Toontrack.

Their first adventure was DFH Superior. DFH stands for "Drums from Hell" which is the name of the series of sample CDs they originally released before they leaped into the world of virtual instruments (VIs). They continued their trek by going backwards in time and creating DFH Customer & Vintage, exploring the classic sounds of gear from yesteryear. These two instruments are available separately, and for the most part have the same features. This review covers both and I distinguish between the two when necessary.

Welcome to Hell

Superior is made up of three plug-ins: Drummer (with five drum kits), Cocktail (with one cocktail kit), and Percussionist (home of a myriad of percussion instruments), all of which are installed together but must be opened as separate plug-ins using the same interface. Custom & Vintage only contains the Drummer plug-in (with three drum kits) and can be used as an add-on to Superior or on its own.

I conducted my review using Digital Performer 4.61 on a dual 2GB G5 with 2.5GB of RAM. In the box you get a well-written manual, 5 DVDs (4 of which are double-sided), and a card with registration directions and your serial number. Installation is described as being rather basic in the manual but is made slightly more complicated in reality. I prefer saving all of my sounds to an external firewire hard drive which DFH let me do without a hitch. When I first opened it up (and then fixed my sound directory) I simply told DFH where the sounds were and all was good. DFH is a plug-in for your favorite host that supports VSTi and ReWire for Windows XP/2000 or ME, and AU, VST, and ReWire for Mac OS 10.2.8 or higher. Regardless of what comes on the install CD, be sure to download the latest version of the actual application from Toontrack.com. One very important note is that Toontrack recommends 1.5GB of RAM to properly run DFH. But read my description of DFH's memory management features before gagging or ordering more RAM.

The sound file installation is confusing because of the folders that are created, but in the end it makes sense. Rather than explaining it I have included a couple screen shots in hopes that, if you are installing DFH, you refer back to this review to make sure that your directory looks like these two images.

The manual does a great job of getting you to know this instrument. It's not the most intuitive VI and the tutorial and hands-on approach of the manual is quite welcome. After the detailed tutorial, the end of the manual then provides a variety of helpful indices including: layouts of the individual mic outputs that you should see available in your host if you've enabled this feature; a map of where each sample type resides on your MIDI keyboard; a GM extended mapping; a list of every single kit element and type of percussion used with details for each such as manufacturer, size, type of wood or metal, and the tools used in recording each one (e.g., drumstick, brushes, rods, mallets, beater-type, etc.); and then a list of all of the performance techniques available for each kit or percussion element. All of this information is segregated by each of the three set-ups: Drummer, Cocktail, and Percussionist. The end of the Custom & Vintage manual provides details on each of the vintage kits and the individual drums used for the recording of the samples as well as the vintage studio gear used to record them.

Hot Hot Kits

There are three significant differences between DFH and other drum instruments. While many drum-oriented VIs are open architecture and allow for easy loading of new sounds, DFH is somewhat of a closed architecture. So far, the only way to get new sounds is through a new release like Custom & Vintage which is not only a variety of new kits but is also a stand-alone instrument. The next difference is that the DFH instruments are dedicated to acoustic drumkits and percussion. So you won't find variations for hip-hop, trance, house, or any other electronic genres. And what may seem at first like a narrow focus on just acoustic kits actually gives us DFHs last big difference in that its instruments are MUCH deeper.

Drummer is the main plug-in and for Superior it contains kits from Sonor, Fibes, DW, Ludwig, and Premier. If you want to maintain the brand integrity of each kit, you typically have a small variety for each type of drum that are produced by the same company with variations typically being in size and shell material. While the kicks and toms are all from those five companies, there is a larger variety of snare drums from varying manufacturers such as Ayotte, Pearl, and Tama. There is an incredible array of cymbal types, sizes, and metals from Sabian, Zildjian, Meinl, Masterwork and Istanbul. Cocktail is a wonderful old Yamaha 3-piece cocktail kit with one tom, a 14" Zildjian hat, a Mikaelsson Custom ride that doubles as your crash, and two snares. Stripped down to only a handful of elements it ensures more efficient programming and memory use. Percussionist is a gigantic variety of mostly Meinl and LP percussive instruments including varying varieties of big shakers, small shakers, bongos, cowbells, crashes, splashes, cajons, chimes, congas, bells, soft shells, crickets, guiro, timbales, tambourines, triangles, udu, vibraslaps and blocks; essentially the common percussion that typically accompanies a drummer. All of these instruments were performed by renowned drummers and percussionists and recorded using elite mics from Royerlabs, Neumann, AudioTechnica, BeyerDynamics, Earthworks & Sennheiser through an unknown list of "some of the best pre amps on the market" without any pre or post processing of the sounds.

Obvious from the name, the drums used for Custom & Vintage are less common, older, and classic drums and cymbals to which most of us don't have access. Custom & Vintage adds three new kits: Camco Oaklawn (1960s), Noble & Cooley Star Series (1989), and Slingerland Studio King (1990s), and like Superior, also has a variety of additional snares, this time from Canopus, Craviotto, Ludgwig (1920s-70s), Slingerland (1940s), and Tamburo. It uses Zildjian and Paiste hats from the 60s to the 80s, and Zildjian and Istanbul cymbals from the 50s to the present. You can checkout some of the stories about the various drums at the Toontrack site. But it's not just the drums that make Custom & Vintage unique. First, they only used vintage microphones including AKG, Sennheiser, Neumann U67’s on the overheads, KM 56’s on the toms, and Neumann U87s for the room. It was recorded at 2KHz Studios in London using an EMI TG Desk (1964 design) with Germanium Transistor mic pres. According to Toontrack, the TG console was EMI's very first transistor design and was used for many legendary recordings of the early seventies including The Beatles' Abbey Road and Pink Floyds' Dark Side of the Moon. And just to show the detail of this classic approach, the room mics were processed with a Helios F760 compressor, the type found in early Helios 1970's consoles as used by Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.

With all of the options available today, perhaps you are wondering why you would want to be limited to eight drum kits. So ask yourself this... How many kits does your drummer have? How many kits do you use when you record in the studio? How good are the drums you’ve used? What kind of gear does your studio-of-choice use? How good have the recordings been? Your answers to these are going to lead you to realize that eight kits, 29 snares, and over 70 cymbals are probably going to be sufficient for your kit programming needs. But there is far more to consider.

The detail of all DFH instruments is the number of different audio files recorded not only for each instrument articulation, but each type of performance on each articulation. For all of the drum kit instruments and percussion instruments DFH provides "soft", "gradient", and "hard" hits with approximately 10, 15 and 10 different recordings respectively included in each category for each articulation. The soft hits are mapped between MIDI velocities 1 to 20, the gradient between 21 and 126, and hard triggered at 127. So you might be wondering why 10 different hard hits are all assigned to MIDI velocity 127. That's because DFH ensures that, if you programmed eight 16th notes in a row, all at MIDI velocity 127, none of them would trigger the same sample, thereby adding to the realism. So where other drum-oriented VIs or sample collections might offer a few samples across the velocity range, and you think that they sound pretty realistic, DFH just takes it that much further.

So forget about how they were recorded. How do they sound? Let me preface by saying that I already have a rather large library of drum sounds, both acoustic and electronic, most of which I know and love and use regularly. That being said, I am blown away by the DFH instruments. Whether you load up a kit preset or begin to customize it with your own selections, the quality and usability are consistent, the articulations within each instrument are plentiful, the access to variation within each articulation is impressive, and the variety of kits is sufficient for nearly anyone's use, especially when you add Custom & Vintage to your arsenal. Giant library sizes such as this not only give you a lot of samples but also very long samples. And in all of the cymbals and toms I didn't find one that had an artificially cut-off decay. Only full tails here, baby.

I intended to describe the sound of each kit but quickly realized that words won’t do them justice. So I highly recommend visiting the Toontrack demos page where there are audio clips of most of the kits. Also remember that there are other individual drums available to customize your own kits.

What I can do is tell you that the variety of Superior kits, their particular drums, and the entire array of cymbals, are enough to satisfy your kit needs for just about any style. Add to that the alternatives provided by the Custom & Vintage kits and the majority of musicians will never want to go back to the studio again. I’m quite picky about my drum sounds and there wasn’t a single drum or cymbal that wasn’t completely satisfying. There were minor articulations that could be more diverse, such as some of the brushed snares, but that’s just my spoiled side talking. The kit elements range from tight and bright to low and loose. Rich, wonderful tom tones, various drums sizes and materials to choose from, with overall impact ranging from round and supportive to punchy and cutting. The hi-hats are incredibly realistic and the cymbals are as expressive as I could ever want. I can definitely imagine everything from sparse, back-of-the-room grooves to bombastic rocking. In general, Superior would probably get most of its use in rock, pop, and funk styles while Custom & Vintage kits add blues, soul, and “warmer” styles to the range of possibilities. They are all highly dynamic and the recording quality is as impressive as the list of gear they used.

Among the variety of snare articulations are "FX" which are mostly played on the snare rim and very edge of the head. While obviously not needed all of the time, it is these types of nuances that are an important factor in making a DFH performance that much more realistic.

The Cocktail kit is an absolute gem. It sounds exactly like you’ve walked into an empty club as the drummer is warming up before the rest of the cats arrive for run-throughs. It is the perfect kit for old jazz of nearly any kind and could spice up songs of other genres with an unexpected twist. Everything is big and dirty from the flopping snare wires to the ring on the one tom to the huge Mikaelsson ride and the thumpity-thump kick. This kit could definitely inspire your next tune.

The variety, articulations, and recording quality of Percussionist instruments are fantastic and will definitely find use, but in the end, Percussionist is not the reason to consider Superior. Instead it is a well-executed bonus that marries perfectly with the DFH sound and doesn’t consume too much RAM. The selection is intentionally limited to the type of percussion that you would normally see performed with a drummer, so you would not be coming to Percussionist for exotics or rare world percussion. Despite the variety of percussion sources that I have, I am certain that I will first turn to Percussionist for most of my standard percussion needs.

The Interface

In your host you will see separate plug-in titles for Drummer, Cocktail and Percussionist. When you first open one of these you will first see the Pad Configuration Window. From here you make selections for a variety of general and self-explanatory settings as well as establish the path for your sound files.

The majority of your time will be spent in the Construction window, where you construct your kit and set-up your microphones, and the Main window where you control all of the instruments and mics that you selected in the Construction window. Most of the time in this review I'm referring to the layout of the Drummer plug-in (which applies to both Superior and Custom & Vintage) and will separately address the differences with Cocktail and Percussionist.

Construction Window - Your Custom Drum Shop & Studio

Since it's dedicated to acoustic kits, DFH commits the majority of the Construction window to the various elements of a kit. Whether you use a preset or create your own, kits are built using 23 drop-down slots for kick, snare, 3 rack toms, 2 floor toms, hi-hat, 6 rides, 6 cymbals, splash, spock, and special. Even if you are using a preset kit, you simply click on each slot to bring up a menu that provides you with all of the instruments available for that slot. Below the column of instrument slots there is a basic yet cool feature, Tool Select. Many of the instruments were recorded using various types of sticks and beaters. So before you even build a kit you can select whether you want your virtual drummer to be using drumsticks, rods, brushes or felt mallets, as well as felt, plastic, or wood bass drum beaters. You can even turn the bottom snare wires on or off. While all of the drums and cymbals were recorded with drumsticks, I was little disappointed in the limited number of snare and toms that use rods and brushes, and the limited number of kicks that use plastic and wood (as opposed to all that use felt). If your selected tools are not compatible with a particular instrument you will immediately know it because there will be an asterisk preceding the incompatible instrument's name in each slot drop-down list. And though a drummer can quickly change tools during a performance, the tool selection is global for the entire kit.

Any kit you build from scratch or from an existing preset can be saved along with the other presets, which includes every single setting you've made in both the Construction and Main windows. And because the instruments are exactly the same for every installation of DFH, presets can easily be shared with other DFH users (which I’ve already done and it works perfectly).

One of the most incredible features of DFH that makes it stand out from almost all other drum instruments is the ability to control mic bleed. To the right of the kit construction section is a 12 column matrix of buttons, each column representing a different microphone. This feature puts you right there in the studio, but allowing you to change the mic set-up in seconds. Keeping it realistic, DFH provides a mic for Kick, Snare Drum Top, Snare Drum Bottom, Rack Tom 1, 2, and 3, Floor Tom 1 and 2, Hi-Hat, Kick External, Overheads (stereo), and Ambient (stereo). With these buttons you can select which mics you want each instrument to output through, bringing DFH closer to a real drum recording environment than anything I've heard before. But I have to address one minor gripe. The close mic for each kit element (e.g., the Kick Drum mic on the Kick, the Snare Drum mic on the Snare) can not be turned off. This makes sense most of the time, but sometimes you want an alternative sound of various drums or cymbals going through “unexpected” mics. But I did find a work around. Using the mic leakage controls on the Main window (described further below), you can customize the volume of each drum and cymbal n each mic, even completely turning off the Kick Drum in the Kick mic as an example. I’m lovin’ that.

For each row of mics and for each column of mics there is a toggle switch that can turn the entire row or column on and off. Then in the bottom right corner of the window there is a toggle that will turn all of the mics on or clear them all. As I discuss more below, your selection of mics will affect your available RAM so this Select All switch can be dangerous if you don't have sufficient RAM as it could very well lock up your computer.

The Main Window - Total Control of Your Drummer, Drum Tech, and Engineer

The Main window is where all of your edits are made. It is laid out in three sections: Superpads, Edit section, and Mic Control. This is the part of DFH that gets much deeper than most other drum-oriented tools and therefore has a steeper learning curve.

In the Construction window, each slot that contains an instrument has a corresponding pad in the Edit window which are called Superpads. It gets a little confusing, but each instrument is made up of one Superpad and a variety of Sub-Pads. A Superpad is the visible pad for each instrument which contains a trigger area and a few controls. As discussed previously, each instrument has a varying number of articulations, like the snare has right-hand hit, left-hand hit, rimshot, flam, rolls, and ruffs. Edits that you make to the Superpad affect all of these articulations, but each articulation is also assigned to its own Sub-Pad. A Sub-Pad is not a visible pad on the interface but should instead be thought of as a layer below each Superpad. It is the editing of these pads that provide unprecedented control over each instrument.

In the Edit section you can select which Superpad (i.e., instrument) you want to edit and then select from a drop-down list which Subpad (i.e., articulation) you want to edit. Selecting a Sub-pad makes its corresponding sound available for triggering on the Superpad and editing only the Subpad is as easy as flipping the "Edit Subpad Only" switch. The reason for segregating Superpads and Sub-Pads is because it allows for the ability to edit the entire instrument at once, or finely edit a single chosen articulation. So if you want the snare rolls louder without increasing the volume of the sidestick, no problem.

The depth of control is most evident in the mic and drum volumes. One of the general settings you can configure in DFH is whether you want each microphone to output to your host through a stereo mixdown or each through its own channel. So let’s say you select separate output channels for each of the microphones and you want to turn the cymbals down. Your first inclination may be to go to the Overhead output channels in your host and lower their faders. But doing this simply turns down the volume of the overheads, thereby reducing the volume of the cymbals and everything else that is coming through the overheads. It doesn't adjust the volume of the cymbals in all of the microphones. But don't worry, DFH gives you control of that too, and even more than you first realize.

In the Edit section of the Main window there is a "Pad" volume slider. So when you select a Superpad, you can use the Pad volume slider to adjust the volume of that instrument in ALL microphones. To take it one step further, you can turn on "Edit Subpad Only" and then use that same slider to adjust the volume just for the selected articulation. And when you think that's enough, there's more.

At the top of the Main window are a few out-of-place data fields for Mic Control. Though they seem to be minor due to their location, this is where DFH takes drum tracking beyond what is possible with a drum set in the real world. In the first field you can select any of the available microphones. The next field seems to be the volume for that microphone but it's not (that is what you control with your host mixer as described above). Instead, it displays the volume of the selected instrument (i.e., Superpad) that is being projected into that microphone. On each of the Superpads there is a volume slider that controls the overall volume of that instrument (including all articulations) as it is projected ONLY into the selected microphone. So maybe you want the kick louder in the Overheads, but not in the Tom mics. Select the OH mic, and adjust volume slider on the Kick Superpad, voila. This is incredible control. While this is considered an "advanced feature", that doesn't even touch the next two little fields. With the "Fade" field you can control the fading of each microphone output which pros may slobber over if unwanted noise begins to appear as a particular instrument is affected heavily. Then there is the Ambience control which essentially allows you to control the location of the ambience microphones from the selected instrument (adjusted in milliseconds) creating a looser or tighter sound. Lastly, you can also reverse the phase of each microphones output. In short, these four fields replace and go far beyond the typical EQing and gating that is normally required to isolate drums in a studio recording session, creating options that are not available in the physical world. And you can make all of these adjustments separately to each instrument and each microphone. Unreal.

If I am to find a gripe it’s that all of the Superpad volume sliders default at the max volume thereby limiting your options for greater gain in each mic.

So to recap, a) your host mixer controls the output level of each microphone regardless of what instruments are going through it; b) the "Pad" slider in the Edit section controls the overall output of the selected instrument regardless of which microphones are being used to capture that instrument; and c) in combination with the Mic Controls, each Superpad volume slider controls the output of its instrument only as projected through user-selected microphones. While this level of control is a major upside, the downside is of course the amount of knowledge and time it takes to set all of this up. But think of it this way...when you've done it once, that entire kit can be saved and used later as is or as the starter for a new song; as if you've stepped back into the studio and your drums, microphones, and mixer are instantly set back up exactly as you had left them in the last session. And besides, all of the time you would be spending would be your own and not $100 an hour at a studio.

The remainder of the Main window may look pretty basic, but its features are quite advanced and are essential in achieving a realistic kit performance.

• Panning. As a default, the stereo imaging of each drum kit is from the drummers perspective. But Toontrack was thoughtful enough to provide a "Stereo Reverse" button that switches it to the audience perspective.
• Velocity Control. Whether your MIDI hardware has limited velocity sensitivity, or you would just prefer varying reactions from each drum hit, with a couple of sliders you can easily customize the velocity threshold at which the triggered sounds switch through the various soft, gradient, and hard hits. Better yet, with a couple clicks of the mouse, this can be set for the entire kit or simply one instrument at a time.
• Pitch. If you have recorded drums in a studio before, you know that, regardless of how you like your drums tuned, sometimes you just have to tune them differently to best fit a particular song. Well, you can do that here too. One thing to note about DFH is that, because of the number of audio files associated with each drum and percussion instrument, when you start playing with pitch, the sound you hear is what they consider to be a "low resolution interpolation". In other words, it doesn't actually change the pitch, nor sound as good, until you hit the "Fix" button, at which point it processes the pitch change for all of the audio files for that drum or percussion element. But don't worry, this doesn't permanently change any audio files on your hard drive or the preset drum sounds.
• Fade (read: Choke). So in your playing style you periodically need to choke a cymbal. Too often this is very difficult during drum programming, but is now another reason to love DFH. The Fade function allows you great flexibility. First, you can set the Release and Hold parameter (based on Ratio or Time) for any number of selected Superpads. Then assign the actual triggering of the fade to either MIDI Note On, MIDI Note Off, or Aftertouch. So whether you are programming using a MIDI controller or an electronic kit, you can decide whether you want to actually grab your cymbal to choke the cymbal you already hit (if your kit allows for that), or simply hold a key down on your controller for the amount of time you want the cymbal to decay. Of course, this Fade feature can also be applied to any other sound, but is obviously most effective with cymbals or percussion with long tails.
• Humanize. If you are programming DFH rather than having it performed by a drummer, one of the most important features needed to ensure a realistic performance is humanization. An appropriate name since you are essentially replacing a human with a computer, and DFH presents five simple selections to help fool your audience. Each of the following can be set-up for each instrument or a group of selected instruments.
  • Cycle. For each hit, DFH will automatically cycle through the available samples for the selected instrument.
  • Random. If you trigger a soft sample or a hard sample (i.e., does not apply to gradient samples), DFH will randomly select from the samples within each of those categories.
  • Alternate. Especially important for Snare and Toms, this will alternate between the left and right hand samples with each trigger of the same kit element (avoiding the age-old "machine-gun" effect). Though some e-drum kits allow for this control, those without such hardware will be quite pleased having this little button.
  • Semi Seq. This does for gradient samples what Random does for soft and hard samples.
  • Vel 2 Vol. This handy little feature ensures that, if you record two MIDI values for the same sample at the identical velocity, the volumes will be adjusted slightly so that they don't sound exactly the same. Certainly with subtle results but quite vital for realistic performance results.

Cocktail & Percussionist

The interface for Cocktail is essentially the same as Drummer but on a much smaller scale with only seven instrument slots and five columns of microphones. There is one kit preset and no other instruments available for each slot, but the snares and cymbals offer the same good variety of articulations as Drummer. The Cocktail kit does include separate slots for a Kick that does and doesn't include snare bleed; you can select from only drumsticks or brushes; and selecting all microphones only uses up 431MB of RAM. The Main window is identical to Drummer and offers the same depth of control.

Like Cocktail, only the Construction page differs for the Percussionist plug-in. Twenty-four slots give you access to all of the offered percussion varieties. There is one Demo preset and otherwise you simply select your chosen percussion from each instrument slot. Each instrument offers between one to three types with the tambourine, shakers, and cowbell offering a much greater variety. There is no tool selection and, depending on the type of percussion, each has its own unique list of articulations which truly add to the ability to create a realistic performance. There are eleven available mics with the overheads being stereo.

Keeping Drummers Behind the Kit

My need to program drum kits is not because I want to replace my drummer but for convenience since he doesn't live in my studio. And while the intent is typically to replace the programmed drums with live recordings, sometimes we really like the sounds of the programmed kit. The usual problem is that programming is very difficult to compare to the performance of a live recording. That is where I believe DFH wields great potential.

I’m certain that DFH is made for the musician that wishes to use a MIDI controller to create a very realistic kit performance. But I'm picky and I appreciate the style and nuance that a drummer brings to the music. I am therefore quite excited about DFH's support for e-drums even if it’s in its infancy. It was undoubtedly designed with e-drum kits in mind as it comes with a number of preset configurations for most of today's popular e-drum kits. But as my drummer can attest, it has a long way to go to replace an acoustic kit.

During my review I convinced my drummer to purchase DFH Custom & Vintage and, believe it or not, it convinced him that he needed to fork over the dough for an electronic drum kit. Having tried out a bunch of them at NAMM, he armed himself with a Hart Studio Master, a Roland TD-6V drum brain, and a desktop Mac with DFH Custom & Vintage. It took him weeks of working every night to set it up to his liking but he is certain that it was worth it.

The majority of the time was spent on getting the hi-hat pedal to react correctly to all of the subtle foot movements that are managed by DFH using continuous controller messages. Understanding the quality and features of his Hart e-kit, my drummer admits that much of his ability to coax a realistic performance out of DFH not only relies on DFHs realistic sound and feature set, but also on the very detailed features of the kit (i.e., dual and triple zone drum pads and cymbals, varying hi-hat controls, etc.).

As for issues, there are a few. While default maps are provided for each type of kit, the documentation doesn’t really explain how to properly edit those set-ups when the kit, brain, and DFH aren’t speaking to one another as Toontrack may have expected. For example, the ride bell was not automatically mapped to the cymbal bell trigger so he had to figure out how to set that up. Also, he was experiencing significant latency, but he is certain that was due to his USB audio interface because changing over to a MOTU 828MkII firewire interface resolved this issue. Lastly, he found the performance sensitivity with the Roland brain to be excellent, but switching over to DFH resulted in less dynamic sensitivity. He has not yet determined whether the issue is with DFH or the kit, but it hasn’t curbed his enthusiasm.

If you're interested in this I would recommend looking through the forums at toontrack.com, edrumming.com, and vdrums.com to check-out what others are experiencing in this regard. I have seen a number of extremely valid points that demonstrate why DFH and similar virtual instruments are not yet ready to replace an acoustic kit, and I agree with them all. However, the bottom line from my drummer is that he has been relatively successful at being able to get DFH to react appropriately to his very dynamic soul, jazz, and blues styles. Though it will likely take a while to completely dial it in and then get used to playing an electronic kit differently, he is thrilled enough with the possibilities that we’re considering using it on our next album rather than going into the studio as previously planned. And that is huge.

Memory From Hell

Unlike so many sampler-based instruments nowadays, DFH reads from RAM without the option to read from disk. Reason being that with the potential for so many percussion sounds being triggered at once, performance would actually be slowed if having to access all of those files from the hard drive. While 1.5GB of RAM are recommended, a big DFH kit can easily consume 3-4 gigs of RAM. However, Toontrack seems to have taken significant strides toward creating options for those with less memory.

• The most significant is the "Cache" button. When activated, an audio file is only loaded into RAM when it is triggered, and DFH shows you the exact amount of RAM needed to support all of the sounds that you've triggered. The huge advantage is that you only load what is needed for each particular performance. The somewhat significant downside is that loading audio files into RAM creates a subtle click each time you trigger an audio file for the first time and then you must trigger it again to actually hear it. Turning Cache off loads the entire kit into RAM but it is fully playable as soon as it loads. The biggest preset kit is just under 500MB.
• Another option is to reduce the quality of the samples to 16-bit. While some of us gasp at such an option, this only affects quality during playback and is a great option when a drummer is using DFH to perform live. Rendering the drum part to an audio track will not be affected by this selection.
• Knowing that many users will not be able to upgrade their RAM, but may want to maintain the 24-bit quality, Toontrack created their proprietary Toontrack Percussive Compression which is noted as TPC on a button on the Construction window. Toontrack describes it as “a revolutionary on-the-fly compression/decompression technology that helps to keep the sampler memory footprint low”. The affects were obvious while not having any noticeable affect on playability. To demonstrate its significance, the Fibes kit with TPC on consumed 423MB versus 1.4GB without it. Likewise, the Noble & Cooley kit consumed 486MB versus 1.7GB. Even though I have plenty of RAM I kept it on for my entire review and applaud Toontrack for its implementation.
• Then there is drum kit composition. The more drums you pick, the more RAM you use. So by only loading instruments you absolutely need, especially cymbals, the less memory you'll need. And kit configurations can always be saved and loaded with ease so you only have to do it once.
• The more mics you turn on, the more memory you need. So you can also conserve precious resources by activating limited mics while programming, and then create your final configuration right before rendering the performance to audio.
• And lastly there is "optimizing" a kit. As described, there are many articulations for each kit instrument. Well maybe you don't need all of them for your new song. You can turn any of them off that you won't use, freeing up that memory. In fact, DFH even offers an auto-optimization that will remove from memory any samples that are not being used.

Another wonderful option is DFH's own Offline Bouncing function. Of course your DAW has a bounce function for its tracks, but DFH offers the same feature for each of the microphones in your MIDI-recorded kit. This is related to memory because it allows you to a) first only select the number of mics that your system can handle; b) first record your drum parts as MIDI events in your host; and c) when you are at the point that you want to work with the sound of the drums with your preferred mic set-up, create your mic set-up and then use this feature to bounce each kit element to as many audio tracks as you've set-up in your host. The resulting audio tracks will contain all of the mic bleed based on your mic set-up and you didn't have to tax your computer the whole time that you were MIDI recording. And let's talk flexibility. When you bounce, you can even split each element to record onto two tracks, one with mic bleeds and one direct without any mic bleeds. Kinda like a real studio, eh?

Hell is Actually Quite Heavenly

So to begin my review of the sounds, programmability, and ease of use, I started with the very basics. I opened one track for DFH and one for Battery. I loaded the Noble & Cooley preset kit into DFH and assigned brushes and a wood beater. Into Battery I loaded the Jazz Brush Kit preset. I made no changes to any of the sounds in either plug-in. I then programmed 32 bars of a mid-tempo jazzy feel using Battery and then reprogrammed it using DFH. The differences were immediately apparent. Regarding the sounds, at the same levels in my virtual mixer, the Battery sounds were much louder than DFH and had much more headroom available on each sound than DFH. The Battery sounds also had a little more atmosphere built into them while the DFH drums were dryer. Each instrument in both plugs, when played on their own, sound incredibly realistic and have a lot of subtlety to them. But when putting them together into a performance I took a liking to the overall DFH sound. The Battery sounds seemed more in-your-face (not because of volume) with a little more of an edge. That's not always what you want when working with a brush kit. I also realized that the DFH instruments have significantly more character and, too often overlooked, they also had much more realistic sustains in the cymbals and cleaner samples in the noticeable instruments like the kick. Battery offers three snare-brushing variations all of which are quite nice while DFH only offered one and it's not necessarily the most useful performance. So they both definitely have their pros and cons. Granted, this test was limited to one kit each, so let's move on.

Focusing on programmability, DFH is significantly different just based on its overall purpose. Regardless of whether you are working with a kit or percussion, DFH succeeds at offering an incredible variety of articulations for each instrument which are essential in trying to create a realistic drum kit performance. So much so that it's got quite a steep learning curve compared to the simplicity of Battery. When you are used to having nearly an entire kit arranged on your controller within two to three octaves, DFH's eight octave layout can throw you for a loop. Depending on the selected kit and tools, you can have an entire octave devoted to the snare, another to toms, an octave and a half each for hi-hat and crash cymbals, and then almost three octaves for ride cymbals. Memorizing where each articulation resides can be daunting, but the very cool part of this issue is that the layout is exactly the same for every DFH kit. That means you can program an entire part and if you want to hear what it sounds like using a different kit, just load it up and hit play. I tried that and what you have to get used to is that you have to first play through the entire track so that DFH can load into RAM all of the needed audio files. After that, it will play back without a problem. Also, not all of the kits and individual instruments offer the same cadre of articulations resulting in some missing notes here and there.

So unlike Battery, DFH is not the type of tool you just load, tryout, and program. Then again, DFH goes to depths that Battery and most other drum-oriented VIs do not attempt. That is because all of the features that I've described are for one particular purpose, to allow a musician sitting at a computer to create a drum kit performance that most listeners would believe is a real drummer. I began noticing this in the track I created to try-out all of the kits. I programmed a part using all of the common kit instruments so that I could use that same part as I switched through the kits. What I noticed is that, without even trying, there were nuances to each instrument that I didn’t perform but instead were obviously results of the Humanize features on the Main window. I could actually hear each hit of an instrument varying slightly. So I turned off the Random and Vel2Vol, and that subtle realism was greatly diminished, with only the varying velocity that I played being the remaining nuance.

I really enjoyed playing around with the microphone leakage controls. While some mics on some instruments have minimal effect, others are significant enough to noticeably alter the recording ambiance, and not just the overhead and ambiance mics. When activated, the Snare-Bottom mic did a great job in bleeding into the upper toms which typically do cause a slight vibration in the snare wires. Activating the Hi-Hat mic on the snare opened up the sound slightly, as did the Snare and External Kick mics on the kick.

Unlike a tool like Battery, DFH kits are not immediately playable and must go through one of two processes. If you have not clicked on the Cache button, the entire kit must first be loaded into RAM. To do this you must select or create your kit and then hit the Main button to go to the Main window. That action initiates the loading of the kit into memory, which took about a minute for the biggest preset kit. Not that big of a deal, especially if you have enough RAM. If you have Cache on, it will only load into RAM the files that you trigger so it takes some quick triggering of each instrument before they each become playable. Reason being that each time you trigger a different audio sample in the velocity spectrum it has to load that sample into RAM and each time it does that it does not give you the full decay of the sample you triggered until the next time you trigger it. Then, if you do something like switch from drumsticks to brushes, or need a different articulation, it has to go through that same process as you trigger each new articulation. This can become quite annoying if you are just trying to get an idea down. The good news is that you will never endure this process during playback of any MIDI performance that you have recorded.

I played and recorded MIDI for numerous snare and tom ruffs, fast passages and slow dynamic performances to see how it handles common drum techniques. When applying some of the Humanize features, I achieved excellent results regarding variation from left to right hand as well as easily hearing the difference in the various audio files as they were triggered at different velocities.

I then went through the highly-intuitive Offline Bounce feature which turned my MIDI programming into audio files. With just a couple of options DFH created a WAV file for each of the available mics. I then simply imported those back into Digital Performer and they sounded incredible (especially since I bounced at 24-bit). From there I could mix to my ears content. The beauty is that if you get all the way through the song and realize you want to add a drum fill in one bar and change the actual snare, you simply make those changes, re-bounce the entire drum part or even just a couple of bars, and import the new files right into the audio channels you have already created. The ease and flexibility is superb, especially compared to having to go back into the studio to re-record everything.

As far as Percussionist is concerned, the various microphones really make no difference as each one is associated specifically with a particular instrument type or family. Therefore the only real selection to be made is close mic'd and overheads, which opens each up into a stereo field if it isn't already. I wouldn't expect to have a big mic location selection with percussion so the fact that you only a couple of choices does not seem limiting and in fact is good news regarding RAM consumption when all instruments are active. With all close mics already on in Percussionist, selecting the overheads for all slots totaled 424MB of RAM.

Though the MIDI Learn function isn't perfectly intuitive from the interface, a quick read through the key map section in the manual makes it very apparent and easy to remember. I quickly switched from having the kit mapped across my keyboard to controlling DFH with a set of Roland SPD-S drum pads. I quickly found that the SPD-S can not be made sensitive enough to allow for triggering a highly dynamic performance, mostly in that it would not trigger many of the lower velocities. I therefore resorted to programming with my keyboard controller.

Little Devils in the Details

Overall the only minor annoyance I found was that you can not just load a kit and begin playing. But considering the overall convenience that DFH provides, I suppose I don’t mind waiting a minute or so for a kit to load into memory. If you don’t have much RAM and have to have Cache on, then this annoyance becomes significant, as you have to endure the loading of every triggered file as you begin to trigger your desired sounds.

One very minor wish is that, when triggering a sound on a MIDI controller, I wish the triggered sound would be identified in the Construction window as it is in the Main window.

When you select "Delete" from the Drumkit Presets menu, it deletes the active kit without any warning. I would hate to have created a wonderful new custom kit and then accidentally clicked on Delete when I'm actually aiming for Rename which is right below it in the drop-down menu. This should definitely be addressed in the next update.

Lastly, the overall output of DFH compared to most VIs is quite low. However, that seemed to only be during MIDI playback because having bounced the performance and created the various WAV files I noticed the recorded level to be quite acceptable.

Technical Support

I did not have any technical issues and none of my gripes were worthy of an inquiry to Toontrack so I did not try out their technical support response time. However, my drummer did use them when he was working out the e-drum bugs and was satisfied with their turnaround time even if they weren’t able to completely satisfy his needs. Toontrack does offer some wonderful forums on their web site, but you should note that, besides the online contact form the only phone numbers they provide are in the UK and Sweden.

Conclusion

I’m so convinced by DFHs depth of sounds, range of articulations, unparalleled control, and e-drum kit possibilities that my band plans to use it to track drums on our new album, whether programmed or performed by my drummer. The mic bleed controls are simply astounding and worth all of the time it will probably take to create the drum kits of our dreams. And while triggering of DFH via an e-drum kit may not yield perfect results right now, I see great potential in giving the drummer as much sound-source flexibility on stage and in studio as every other band member has long been accustomed.

I've heard the complaint that now everyone’s songs will have the same sounding kits. To that I have two points. First, compare the sound of DFH for yourself versus the type of sound you want for your recordings or that you’ve achieved in the past. I am actually quite happy with letting Toontrack spend the time and money to achieve such stellar results that are made available to home musicians in such a useable package. Second, remember that the features within DFH, as well as all of your other production abilities, allow you endless ways to customize your sound to make it all your own.

I will always be a proponent of the advantages of having a top-notch sound engineer, drum tech, drum kit, drummer, and studio gear to capture the perfect drum recording. But we all can’t afford that all of the time. There is no doubt that use of DFH in a home studio preserves much of the studio experience with character, recording quality, options, and performance sensitivity that provide nearly any musician the tools to create a “live session” drum performance and I consider it to be one of the great advances achieved in virtual instruments.

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