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are there electric drums that sound like real drums?


mbengs1

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my drummer uses the Roland TD-11k electronic drum set. it sounds ok but still sounds fake. but good enough for non-serious recording. but i find electric drums very convenient. just plug straight into the recorder and it takes only one track. no mics needed. are there electric drums that can imitate accurately the sound of real drums?

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my drummer uses the Roland TD-11k electronic drum set. it sounds ok but still sounds fake. but good enough for non-serious recording. but i find electric drums very convenient. just plug straight into the recorder and it takes only one track. no mics needed. are there electric drums that can imitate accurately the sound of real drums?

 

 

2 tracks if you want to run the module in stereo.

 

A few years ago I set out to buy the exact Roland digital set your drummer is using. After demoing them and a Yamaha kit in the same price range , I bought the Yamaha kit.

 

I was more interested in a the acoustic samples anyway and I figured if Yamaha could sample there acoustic kit and get it right, who could.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I have a Roland TD-4 V-Drums Kit and the biggest help to me has been really playing around with the sounds some, Within the settings there should be somewhere to adjust the tuning and muffling, if the muffling is way up, it may not let the toms ring like normal, also with each kit setting on my e-kit I have, I can go to "Settings" then "Mix" and then "Ambience". I can make the set sound ring and echo more like a studio, small or large hall, or Arena for example, plus I can select the degree of the ambience on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the most. Now, it is very hard for a e-kit to sound like a real kit, ESPECIALLY the cymbals, but with my own playing around with the settings like the above mentioned, plus I would HIGHLY recommend a decent e-drum amp that takes two channels (stereo) and run that into the PA. This is how I have gotten the most out of my entry level e-kit that I can.Hope this helps!

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The electronic kit you pick isn't the important part if you're looking for realism. Sure, better pads (such as mesh heads) can make a difference to the drummer and how it feels to play the kit and that's important, but ultimately the pads make no sound of their own and are triggering samples somewhere else - usually in a hardware box. You don't have to stick with the samples in that box, and using the pad kit to trigger something like a BFD3 drumkit or Steven Slate Drums running on a computer via MIDI will usually result in far more realistic sounding drum parts.

 

MIDI drum controllers are great for doing drum parts because you can actually play them, and because of that they're far more expressive than trying to program drums by "hand" - it's nearly always better IMHO to get that human touch. But if they're triggering samples with truncated cymbals or other samples that aren't multisampled to correspond with the various playing dynamics and articulations that a good drummer brings to the table, it's not going to sound as much like a "real" drum kit. That kind of stuff is a dead give-away that you're not using the real thing, and IMO many of the samples in the hardware boxes just can't keep up with what you'll find in the better computer drum programs and plugins. The computer has far more sample memory and processing horsepower.

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my drummer uses the Roland TD-11k electronic drum set. it sounds ok but still sounds fake. but good enough for non-serious recording. but i find electric drums very convenient. just plug straight into the recorder and it takes only one track. no mics needed. are there electric drums that can imitate accurately the sound of real drums?

 

 

Our drummer has this exact set & in my opinion it sounds great. We use it primarily for silent practice but have performed live with it as well. Like any type of electric equipment there is a learning curve involved with it. Perhaps you or your drummer haven't spent enough time dialing it in...

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I have a td-30 and atv ad5. The atv ad5 sounds amazing and uses 24 bit samples and does have excellent dynamic range. It is a fairly new product and will likely improve over time in terms of additional sounds etc. I have compared my recordings with the td-30 and the ad5 and there is really no comparison. I have used bfd and ssd and they obviously sound fantastic but then you are tethered to computer.

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The responding sounds are still dialed in to a recorded environment. And acoustically, speakers and 10,000 watts can't correctly portray a drumkit. To be fair, the live/real drumzer has to be engineered and mastered to fit that (recorded) zone and good fake drums are always better than bad real drums.

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my drummer uses the Roland TD-11k electronic drum set. it sounds ok but still sounds fake. but good enough for non-serious recording. but i find electric drums very convenient. just plug straight into the recorder and it takes only one track. no mics needed. are there electric drums that can imitate accurately the sound of real drums?

 

 

Not without software. BFD3 and Superior Drummer are the two industry standards. You trigger the software with the edrum kit acting as the midi interface. The roland or yamaha module simply acts as the controller to dial in issues with feel. You bypass the module sounds completely.

 

I switched to edrums years ago mainly due to volume issues, but one of the things I wasn't willing to sacrifice was realistic sounds. Once I heard about the software it was a no brainer. In my case I bought BFD2 (and now BFD3) and I haven't looked back. I use it for recording and honestly I don't see a reason to ever go back to real drums at least for that purpose.

 

I made a recording years ago and played it here and basically nobody could tell they weren't real drums. There was only person who suspected something was up, due to the fact that the mic's sounded gated and didn't believe that was possible for a home recording. Basically because I included the room and ambient mics in my audio, they thought it sounded TO good...haha.

 

When these programs are used there is no issue with dynamics. I've played drums for 30+ years and the feel of these programs is so good that when you close your eyes your brain is virtually convinced your playing a real kit. The only thing that makes you know your not is the pad feel.

 

The reason for the big difference is because modules alone just simply don't have the memory and RAM capacity to store and play such huge files. The best software packs are like 50GB or more and require a huge amount of resources.

 

Take for example a snare drum. Roland or yamaha will take a snare, sample it a few times, then write an algorithm that "fills in the blanks" of the missing dynamic ranges. So you get something close to a real sound, but during faster playing you are only hearing the same few samples. Your brain recognizes they are the same and you hear that "fakeness".

 

But with the best software, they take a snare and sample it hundreds of times. They'll do 10 to 20 hits from quiet to loud. Then they'll do that 20 more times. Then they'll stitch all those REAL samples into a nice curve from soft to loud. But not only that, they have multiple hits at one velocity layer (the name for each loudness hit)....the software will never trigger the same sample two times in a row. Thus you always hear a REAL drum hit every time you strike the pad and it's never the same hit twice so your ear cannot tell a difference and it sounds natural. Because it basically IS natural.

 

The best thing is having virtually hundreds and hundreds of drums recorded in some of the best studios in the world. Right now I can play a kit owned by Ringo or one owned by Bonham and recorded in AIR studios in london. Or kits recorded in Sound City engineered by people like Jim Scott, and Andy Johns. It's pretty crazy how advanced it's gotten actually.

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I love this thread. This is why we are here. Trying to help people sort out sounds on an Electronic Kit. Now, you may think: Hey, that's like herding cats ... and you'd be correct. People's opinions of what's real sounding and what's not is all over the map. Phil has the best of both worlds, as you can find many plug in options for great "real" drums (sampled, not frequency built) and you'd have to look to know you were playing e-drums. Dynamic settings can be tweaked to suit the player. Generally, I find if the player can't express dynamics on an e-kit, then he probably doesn't very well on an acoustic kit.

 

Personally, I hate electronic drums as far as a playing experience. It would be like watching Discovery Channel the rest of your life and never actually visiting places. But, I understand why people like them: Quiet, Direct Input, Direct Output, no extraneous noises, no miking, and the list goes on.

 

D

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I use a Roland td20x and bought it because there was no way i would be allowed to upset the neighbours. its brilliant and although its through speakers it sounds pretty good. in fact when you think about it at many shows your drums are amplified anyway so using the TD20 in no way for me detracts from the eventual sound. I have also tried an Alesis set and if your a decent drummer and don't need loads of effects that is not a bad kit either.. didn't do tangerine dream any harm using electronic drums did it

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Bit of an old thread but thought I'd chime in... I have my Roland TD30KV midi'd into a MacBook Pro running Superior Drummer 3. In a new band who insisted I play my acoustic kit, so I did at first. But as soon as they heard the Roland/SD3 in a practice environment (all headphones) - now they're hooked.

 

So we're now trying to figure out how set up a dedicated P.A. around it (with a suitable sub) located beside my kit (and putting out 90-100-120 db like a real drum kit) so in a small club situation it will sound similar (never exact I know that) to an acoustic set.

 

Anyone have any advice on a setup?

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The Drumit Five module by 2Box contains nothing but multi-layered samples of real drums and cymbals. Samples of electronic drums are available if you wish to have them but they, of course, sound like electric drums.

 

There's a Swedish company by the name of Clavia which makes the popular Nord series of synthesizers, keyboards, and stage pianos. Back in the 1980s they started out as a digital drum company called DDrum. First thing out was DDrum, then DDrum 2 (owned it and loved it), DDrum 3 (should have bought it but didn't - big mistake), and finally DDrum 4 (owned it but longed for DDrum 3). At some point they started making keyboards and you sell a heck of a lot more keyboards than you do electronic drums. They couldn't continue to go toe to toe with Roland and Yamaha digital drums so they sold the DDrum name and technology in the late 1990s or early 2000s to Armadillo Enterprises in the USA. Armadillo relaunched the DDrum name as a fairly cheap line of acoustic drums before coming out with more pricey drums. Eventually they reintroduced DDrum electronic drum pads and modules but they are nothing remotely close to the original DDrum stuff produced by DDrum when they were part of Clavia. Anyway, long story short, 2Box gear is designed and manufactured by the original DDrum guys from Clavia. It's top-of-the line stuff and the sounds, in my humble opinion, are far, far, far more pleasing than anything out of any Roland or Yamaha module.

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