Toontrack SDX Sound Expansion

REAL TO REEL SDX

Software Review

Today there are a variety of expansions, adapted for Toontrack’s two drum apps, EZDrummer 3 and Superior Drummer 3. The nice thing is that if you have Superior Drummer 3, you can use expansions for both apps, i.e. both EZX and EDX expansions. However, it doesn’t work the other way around, but still…

Today’s test item is an SDX package recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, and producer Kevin Killen was responsible for the recording. No less than eight different drum sets have been sampled and three different recording rooms have been used in the studio.

Audio and MIDI expansions

Toontrack has an incredibly impressive drum library in every conceivable style – both as audio samples and MIDI files. In addition, there are bass, keyboard and mixing apps, with associated expansions. During my years as a writer and editor-in-chief of the venerable Musikermagasinet, I have had the great fortune of testing a variety of different expansions and other interesting things from Toontrack’s vast catalog. It therefore feels a little extra exciting to take a virtual visit to one of my absolute favorite recording studios, Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, together with the Umeå-based developers.

About Kevin Killen

Producer, engineer and mixer Kevin Killen has been credited with no less than 31 platinum records, nine gold albums and a slew of Grammy nominations. Among the artists Killen has worked with are U2, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello, Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Paula Cole, Jewel, Bon Jovi, Shawn Colvin, Shakira, Donna Lewis and David Bowie. Not bad!

He had actually not worked in the industry as a “trainee” for more than six months before he started working as a sound engineer. A few years later, he assisted Steven Lillywhite when he produced U2’s album War, and when it was time to record the album Unforgettable Fire, he was part of Brian Enos and Daniel Lanois’ production team. Killen also worked with Lanois on Peter Gabriel’s So. Since then, there have been lots of productions that Kevin Killen has worked on, and as we have pointed out, this has resulted in lots of awards.

When the production team at Toontrack asked Killen where he would most like to work to create his own SDX drum expansion, there was no doubt in his mind. Real World Studios was at the top of his wish list. And so it was.

The studio is located in the small village of Box, just outside of Bath in Wales, and the only thing that gives away that this may not be your typical century-old mill is a steel and concrete extension that juts out from the main building. This is a dream project that Peter Gabriel managed to realize in the late 1980s, and since then countless of the world’s biggest artists have chosen to record here, or what about Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, Muse, Björk, Tom Jones, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Harry Styles, to name but a few.

Many drum kits to record

All in all, there were eight complete drum kits that Kevin Killen chose to put together. Of course, he also added some extra snare drums, rototoms, octabans, and concert toms to the already full sets. In addition, he decided to record everything in three different recording rooms with completely different room characteristics. The largest, aptly named, Big Room, is a full 185 square meters (2000 square feet) and the walls are made of bare concrete, and there are also steel columns, which together of course give a special kind of acoustics. It sounds big, simply!

The next room, Wood Room, has a mixture of wooden and stone walls and together with the wooden floor and ceiling beams, this in turn gives its characteristic sound colors; a natural, somewhat diffuse and controlled reverb.

The last room, the Wood Booth, is considerably drier in tone than the other two rooms, but you still get a certain kind of livelyness from the drums that is difficult to achieve anywhere else. When you use both the close-mic parts and the microphones that pick up more of the room’s ambience at a distance, you have the opportunity to create almost any type of drum sound you can imagine.

A tape recorder

In addition, everything was recorded on a classic Studer A820 tape recorder. In this way, they wanted to create the perfect combination of modern technology and the vintage-oriented tape saturation. The result was incredibly musical – at the same time both correct, a little analytical, and with a lot of warmth from the analog parts. Perhaps the perfect way to record drums…

The tape provides the perfect saturation with just the right amount of compression, a nice bottom, analog power and warmth without losing any of the fine details and transients. Tape recording is called reel-to-reel in English, and together with the studio’s name, Real World Studios, you automatically get the perfect name for this SDX expansion: Real to Reel. Is there perhaps a Gothenburger hiding in Bath or at Toontrack?

In addition to the large sound library, buyers of Real to Reel also get a substantial set of MIDI grooves and fills, specially developed for these drums, plus a heap of ready-made preset configurations, ready for mixing. Here, Kevin Killen himself has created a number of balanced drum mixes. Perfect to start from in your own ”tinkering”.

Lots of drum parts, microphones and other interesting things…

If you want to know in more detail which drums and cymbals were included in the eight different drum sets, or which microphones were used for the sets in the three different recording rooms, there is plenty of information for calendar-biters on Toontrack’s website. It lists every cymbal, drum, microphone and peripheral for every part of the recording. Here you can also listen to a lot of different audio files that show how the different rooms and drum kits sound.

In a video, Kevin Killen shows how he miked up some of the drum sets. There is also a short interview with him where he tells a little more about the recording.

Listed below are the microphones used for one of the sets in the great room, and their placement is shown in the sketch.

Impressions

An expansion in this format can be almost overwhelming at first glance – or listening – because there is so much here, and everything sounds so damn good. The different rooms and drum kits give us an incredibly large selection of great sounds, and the possibilities to influence the end result ourselves are almost endless. In previous SDX expansions, I have often found one or two different combinations of drum kits and rooms, which I then returned to when I wanted to create my own drum accompaniments, but here you can almost feel a little lost among all the options. It’s like being forced to choose only two flavors when you end up in an ice cream shop that makes the most excellent varieties of homemade Italian model, and they can offer 44 different flavors!

But … have a little patience. If you listen to everything and go through all the options a few more times, maybe a handful of favorites can crystallize. At least that’s how it was for me. You can’t use all the drum kits in all the rooms on all the songs. Even though they all sounds so damn good!

And don’t be afraid that this will sound a certain way, that it will sound like Peter Gabriel in every set. On the contrary! This is instead a set of extremely versatile and useful sets, which can actually work for every conceivable style of music. And it just sounds so incredibly nice!

Short summary

• Recorded by Kevin Killen, the man behind tons of Grammy nominations, 31 Platinum and nine gold records

• A total of eight different drum kits have been used, plus quite a bit of extra percussion

• Recorded in three different recording rooms at Real World Studios in Wales

• Some selected sets have been recorded with extra ambience and surround microphones

• Comes with a large set of MIDI grooves and fills specially designed for these sets

• Includes a variety of mix-ready presets for each set and configuration

Links

Here Kevin Killen himself talks about Real to Reel:

And here he shows how he has recorded some of the drum kits:

More information about the different drum kits and the rooms used in Real World Studios can be found on Toontrack’s website: https://www.toontrack.com/product/real-to-reel-sdx/

System Requirements

For the full installation, you will need over 160 GB of free HD or SSD space, plus an additional 161 GB for the installation process

8 GB of RAM (16 GB of RAM or more is recommended).

A working Superior Drummer 3.4.1 installation (or later)

Developer Toontrack

Information www.toontrack.com

Price 1,695 SEK

About the Author

Gunnar E

Administrator

Visit Website View All Posts