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Steven Slate Digital TRIGGER EX Drum Replacer Now Available

Big Al — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:52:21 +0000

Slate Digital’s TRIGGER multi-channel drum replacement tool for VST, AU, and RTAS has been called the new “GOLD STANDARD” in drum replacement and has already won two awards, earning a 10/10 rating from Computer Music magazine.

Mixer Michael Brauer (Coldplay, Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney) had this to say about TRIGGER:

“I consider Trigger the state of the art for drum replacement, it’s exactly what i’ve been patiently waiting for to come around. Slate has an excellent sample library and some really great presets to start with. It’s the best and most versatile program I’ve ever used.”

The new TRIGGER EX is also pretty darn affordable. TRIGGER EX is the exact SAME plugin as TRIGGER Platinum, but rather than come with the entire Steven Slate drum sample library, it ships with 10 of the most popular kicks and snares and 3 sets of toms.

At any time, you can easily upgrade your Slate Sample pack to the full Platinum.

TRIGGER EX is available now at the www.SlateDigital.com online shop for the introductory price of only $129!

Original Post

Steven Slate Digital TRIGGER EX Drum Replacer Now Available is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

Get Steven Slate Drums EX For Just 20 Bucks!

Big Al — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:46:24 +0000

AudioMidi.com is running another great group of “No-Brainer” deals, and Steven Slate Drums EX for $20.00 is one of them. You can find right on the front page of their site.

This offer is apparently VEY popular and the authentication and download servers are running really, really. sloooow. Be patient, and keep trying!

Here’s the official rundown of this edition of Steven Slate Drums:

OVERVIEW:
Steven Slate Drums EX Contains 10 drumkits including the famous “Old Zep” kit (an authentic Led Zeppelin model recorded in a stone castle) as well as five hybrid kits, which use multiple layers of kicks and snare to acheive highly unique sounds.

This EX drum suite is the most complete digital drum suite on the market, conquering all your digital drum needs with an RTAS/VST/AU and standalone MIDI plugin, instant presets for all Roland VDrum Modules, hundreds of easy-to-use MIDI grooves in our unique SONG form.

KITS:

Absolute Rock Kit
All American Kit
Chunky Rock Kit
Classic Vintage Kit
Cracky Metal Kit
Nashville Fat Kit
Old Zep Kit
Old Zep Kit A
Ringy Hit Kit
Sizzle Kit

Hybrid Kits:

Funky Dry Hybrid Kit
Lazy Rock Hybrid kit
Metal Hybrid Kit
Slate’s Hybrid Kit
Three Snare Rock Kit

EXPAND your EX:
As your drum needs expand, so can your Steven Slate Drums EX library! With six EX packs, add additional Steven Slate classic drum sounds for a very small price. You’ll also be able to access the famous modeled kits, as well as some well known samples used every day on top albums by the world’s best artists.

SAMPLES
At the heart of any drum library are the actual samples. Steven Slate has been called the master of drum sounds. In the early 2000′s his original drum sample disc was in high demand amongst many top Hollywood producers and mixers. By 2006, when he publicly released his first official drum sample disc, his sounds could already be heard in many top billboard hits. Today, the airwaves are filled with Steven’s samples, as used by top mixers such as Mike Shipley, Chris Lord-Alge, Dave Way, Jeff Juliano, Jay Baumgardner, and more!

Steven has recorded only the best drums, all tuned to perfection. Every drum and cymbal has been recorded first to two-inch tape, enhancing their unique rich sound. Every drum and cymbal was recorded with multiple velocities and multiple hits per velocity to ensure the most natural recreation. Then the samples were transferred to digital via high-end A/D converters at 24 bit/ 44.1kHz. The samples were then processed by Steven Slate using some of the most classic analog gear from both past and present. The result are drums that sound like you’ve always dreamed of, with punchy transients and smooth decays. By listening to the audio demos on the homepage, its easy to hear why many pros call Steven’s samples the very best sounding digital drums available.

SSD VIRTUAL INSTRUMENT
The SSD Virtual Instrument, powered by Kontakt Player 3, is a standalone or RTAS/VST/AU plug-in that is easy to use and integrate into your DAW environment. It contains both maps for keyboard and a universal mapping for Roland V drums. With its custom velocity and remapping features, users can also customize their own maps.

New in version 3.5 is the “Advanced AMG” anti-machine gun mode for more realistic fills. This new algorithm is physically modeled to sound like a real drummer, playing real drums. Advanced AMG lets drums to play with an extreme amount of realism as well as detailed response and sensitivity.

MODELED KITS
While you’ll probably find many of the drumkits on Steven Slate Drums are reminscent of drumkits you’ve heard from various bands over the years, thirteen kits have been authentically modeled for a sound so close, you’ll think it’s the real thing! The initial EX pack contains the now famous Old Zep kit, modeled after the classic sound of Led Zeppelin. Upgrading with EX expansions lets users add all of the modeled kits, including: Steely Dan, Motley Crue, Metallica, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Dream Theater. Keep in mind, these drumkits model the finalized mixed sounds that you have become familiar with, not just raw recordings of the drummer’s kits.

ROOM MICS
The Steven Slate Drums collection contains two unique sounding sets of room mics. The first set is from a large warehouse with concrete walls. These room mics were processed with heavy doses of compression, EQ, and even modulation to create a larger then life, deep, wide, expressive room sound.

The drums were then sampled in the famous NRG Recording Studio A, known for being one of the top drum rooms in Los Angeles. It’s been home to bands such as Linkin Park, Foo Fighters, Deadsy and more rockin’ bands who frequently refer to each other as “dude” and “bro”. The room mics have been left unprocessed and contain the signature depth and space of this beautiful sounding room.

Click here to visit AudioMidi.com

Get Steven Slate Drums EX For Just 20 Bucks! is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru

A New Player In DAW Saturation Plugins – Slate Digital

Big Al — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:46:39 +0000

I’ve been a believer in adding saturation in the DAW via special plugins ever since becoming acquainted with the idea via Charles Dye’s Mix It Like A Record interactive video mixing course.

As I learned there, I’ve been using McDSP’s Analog Channel, several of the DUY plugins (including DaD Valve, DaD Tape, etc.), Steven Massey’s TapeHead plugin and the Waves SSL bundle to achieve this.

Now there’s a new player in this interesting niche, Slate Digital. (You might be familiar with Steven Slate from his famous drum sample collections and drum replacement products.)

Here’s the official lowdown from the company, and in the latter half, Steven Slate himself:

The Slate Digital “Virtual Console Collection” brings the sound of six of the most legendary mixing consoles in to your digital audio workstation.

“When you mix through an analog desk you get this life and body to the sound that just doesn’t happen when you mix inside the workstation. The separation and imaging from the analog summing is very apparent, especially when your track count gets high” remarks mixer Jay Baumgardner (Papa Roach, Evanescence).

Steven Slate made his mark on analog summing by conceiving the concept of the Folcrom passive summing, which was expertly designed and manufactured by Roll Music in 2001. Now he brings analog summing to the digital world.

“Slate Digital CTO Fabrice Gabriel and I studied these consoles inside and out. We meticulously modeled the entire circuit path so that we could recreate every subtle nuance that makes these consoles the legends that they are”.

The VIRTUAL CONSOLE COLLECTION consists of two plugins, Virtual Channel and Virtual Mixbuss. Each plugin allows the user to choose from one of six modeled consoles. Virtual Channel is applied on individual mixing channels. Virtual Mixbuss goes on the first insert of the master fader.

When using the Virtual Console Collection, your DAW instantly takes on the personality of a real analog mixing desk. The imaging and depth improves, instruments sit better in the frequency spectrum, and mixing becomes easier and more musical. You can even push the DAW faders up to find each mixer’s ‘sweet spot’. This is due to the algorithms being dynamic, just like a real console.

From Slate Digital Co-founder Steven Slate:

The Virtual Console Collection has been a dream of mine for years. I’ve always mixed on analog consoles because I love the color and sound that they provide, and I missed it while trying to mix “in the box”.

The Folcrom allowed me to get the best of both worlds, and I’ve used it on hundreds of mixes and productions with great results. However, after creating Slate Digital with Fabrice Gabriel almost two years ago, one of the first things we looked into was recreating the sound of analog mixing, but with digital.

This first lead us to the question: What is wrong with digital summing?

To answer this question, we first built our own digital summing buss. In fact we built three of them. Our conclusion?

NOTHING. Nothing at all is “wrong” about digital summing, whether it be fixed integer or floating point, dithered or undithered. None of these things had an audible effect that any human could pick out in a blind A/B test.

No, actually the problem is with analog summing. With an analog console, the audio path contains a lot of circuitry. By the time a mix is summed in an analog console and gets passed to the outputs, it contains varied degrees of harmonic distortion, phase distortion, and noise. However, it is these nonlinearities that sound “musical” to the human ear.

Fabrice Gabriel is not only a genius at audio DSP, but he has a degree in electrical engineering. He was able to carefully analyze the schematics of all the great mixing consoles and produce individual DSP modules that reproduce various parts of the circuit path, from line input amplifiers to fader buffers to summing amps. Over the past year, we then tweaked the modules by EAR in a mastering room to precisely match the hundreds of test files that were processed with each console.

Keep in mind, that an analog console is a dynamic instrument. As you begin to push the faders into the mix buss, the amplifiers start to reach their threshold and various changes occur in the harmonics and overall sound. This is all recreated in this plugin suite.

In conclusion, I’m so proud of this plugin, and I think it will change the way many people think of “mixing in the box”. As we’ve been developing the Virtual Console Collection, we’ve been pleased to see other digital models of analog mixing pop up (such as the Harrison Mixbuss), showing us that this was an important issue for the audio industry, and we’re glad to add to it.

The Virtual Console Collection is RTAS, VST, AU on both Mac and PC, and along with the whole Slate Digital line, will now be available very soon with a 14 day demo. I’m eager for you all to try them.

A New Player In DAW Saturation Plugins – Slate Digital is a post from: Home Recording Studio Guru