Toontrack Superior Drummer Review: The Most Realistic Drum Software?

Drums are the driving force in music. Without drums, a song would lose it’s energy completely.

When producing music, you might not always have access to a professionally miked drum kit. If you are looking to create realistic drum patterns, a sampler might not give you the best result. So what should you use?

Superior Drummer is a piece of software that promises to give you a virtual drum kit that sounds just as real as an actual drum kit.

I was a bit doubtful that any software can come anywhere close to the quality of an actual kit. In this review I’ll be covering everything you should know before purchasing Toontrack Superior Drummer.

https://soundcloud.com/toontrack/sets/superior-drummer-2

Software Name: Toontrack Superior Drummer

Compatibility: Windows AND Mac

Rating: 9/10:

Where to Buy: Plugin Boutique

System Requirements

Superior drummer requires that you have at least 1Gb of ram. If you have any less this software will most likely lag and have a lot of audio drop outs.

For Superior Drummer you will need 4Gb of free disc space. You should additionally have an extra 25Gb for all of the samples included.

If you are running Windows XP or higher, you’ll be good. On a mac you should be fine if you’re on running OS 10.4 or higher. Newer macs shouldn’t have any problems whatsoever.

How Realistic Does It Sound?

Each drum hit was recorded 60 times to give you a more realistic sound over different velocities. You can imagine that just the recording process for Superior drummer must’ve took a long time. It actually took Toontrack 5 years to fully develop this software.

I love that in Superior Drummer you can change the virtual microphone position. This can alter the tonality of the drum sounds. You can even go as far as changing the drumstick and mallet types used.

Like I said earlier, all of the samples will take up 25Gb of hard drive space. This used to not bother me at all when I had a 1TB hard drive, but now that I’m using a Macbook Pro with only about 50GB of free space, it takes up a lot of room. You should definitely check your hard drive space before buying Superior Drummer.

Superior Drummer even comes with pre-made midi files that were originally played by a drummer named Nir Z. All of the midi files are available to be played through Toontrack’s EZPlayer. If you are looking for some inspiration, or just need some quick backing drums, they are perfect.

Effects

For effects you’ll get a 5 band EQ, a highpass filter, a lowpass filter, a gate, a compressor, and transient control.

It’s also notable that you get control over the envelope of each drum hit allowing you to further customize a sample.

Is It Worth It?

Superior Drummer costs $299.

So is Superior drummer worth it? With this software you can create very realistic drum patterns without being a drummer or having a drum kit. It outputs great sound quality and can be configured just the way you like.

The software is easy to get started with and you can get the hang of all the features within 30-60 minutes of playing around.

I haven’t been successful in finding any other software that sounds as realistic as Superior Drummer. Playing Superior Drummer on my MPD26 felt like I was playing an actual drum kit. I’ll definitely be using this plugin as my go-to for realistic sounding drums.

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