Toontrack released the previous version of Superior Drummer back in 2008 but over that past nine years, despite many excellent products from competitors, Superior Drummer 2 has maintained its position as the top choice for professional-level drum production.
Toontrack subsequently released the more stripped-down EZdrummer 2 to huge acclaim in 2014. This was designed for ease of use and had fewer editing facilities and smaller sample sizes than Superior. Further, EZdrummer 2 also included the brilliant Song Track in which you could load MIDI loops and generate complete song drum tracks. The difficulty for the developers of Superior Drummer 3 was to combine the user-friendliness of EZdrummer with the uncompromising professional features of the Superior line of products. I think it has achieved this aim brilliantly with Superior Drummer 3.
Installation
The installation consists of the program plus the very large sound library, which, if you install fully, comprises some 236 GB. However, the full install includes specialist microphone recordings for complex surround-sound configurations that some users might not actually require. If you just install the basic sound library then the size is reduced to around 90 GB. The downloading and installing is operated by the very slick Toontrack Product Manager, which efficiently manages the whole process, including authorisation and any future updates. If this sounds like hard work, you also have the choice of purchasing an SSD containing the full library if you prefer.
Sound quality
There is a huge range of meticulously-sampled acoustic drum-kits included, as well as approximately 350 electronic drum sounds covering just about any genre from metal through to jazz, country and electronic pop. There are many inspiring presets for all the included kits and you can swap individual drum instruments or devise your own hybrid kits to suit your own tastes. When you load the program and play some MIDI loops, the quality of the sounds becomes evident.
The screen view is both attractive and logical and you can easily switch between the Drum, Groove, Mixer and Tracker views. The ‘Song Track’ is present in each view (except Tracker), which is where you place your MIDI grooves and build up your song. The song elements are usefully colour-coded, such as grey for the intro, blue for the verse, yellow for pre-chorus, purple for chorus and orange for fills.
Drum-track creation made simple
The Groove view displays a logically-organised collection of all your MIDI drum grooves and you can select genres, playing style and further filters to narrow down your choice to find the perfect groove. There is the ‘Tap 2 Find’ function that allows you to tap in a couple of a rhythm, playing bass and snare from your MIDI keyboard for the program to find all the closest matches. If you have an ideal groove then you can also apply the brilliant ‘Song Creator’ function, which will use this groove and choose matches to make up intro, verse, chorus, bridge and fills, enabling you to create a full drum part in seconds.
Once you have your different sections in the Song Track, if you double-click a region, the Edit Play view shows how you can further refine the playing style. For instance you can make any drum part more or less busy, and bring drums not playing into action while also adjusting their velocity. The results of your changes are instantly updated, and if you call up the Grid Editor you can add, modify, quantise and further refine dynamics. All these editing methods are fun and musically rewarding, making the creation of drum tracks a real pleasure. If you are using Superior Drummer 3 in a DAW then, by default, the program follows the tempo of the host program.
In summary
There is not space to discuss in detail either the Tracker function or the powerful mixer and the comprehensive array of effects, but the Tracker allows you to import audio files of existing drum tracks and convert them to MIDI to be replaced or augmented with the Superior Drummer's sounds. As you can see, this program really offers everything you could ever require in functionality and yet remains a delight to operate. The UK distributor has special prices for educational establishments, students and teachers.
I think Toontrack has created something of a masterpiece in Superior Drummer 3. It sets a new gold standard by which all other manufacturers will be judged.
£287 retail; upgrade options available
