# Sneak Preview of the Upcoming WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit Sample Library



## WarpIV (Dec 28, 2020)

Hi Everybody,

I thought it might be a good time for me to give you a sneak preview of the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit sample library that I've been working on for nearly 2 years. It has been quite a massive project and something that as a drummer I've wanted to do for a long time. I thought that in this post I would give you an overview of the drums and cymbals that are in this monster kit. I plan to talk about the unique recording techniques, articulations, and all of the features that are in the library in follow-on posts. Maybe I will post some demos along the way too. Of course, I am extremely interested in hearing your thoughts. There is still plenty of time for me to make changes so your feedback will really help me. I have finished all of the sample recordings, most of the editing, and scripting in Kontakt. But I still have some final scripting (involving playing back patterns) left to do, demos to put together, and final packaging of everything. I'm probably still a year away from releasing the final version of the library.

So, let's start with the drums... I decided that rather than sample lots of popular kits, it would be better to purchase a super high-end kit and then tune it in different ways, use different batter heads, play with various dampenings, and even record with the resonance heads removed (i.e., concert toms, gong toms, and doubling the snares as timbales). The drum shells that I decided would be perfect for my project was the Pearl Masterworks Urban drum kit (list price is more than $20K for just the shells, which does not include hardware or cymbals). It comes with two snares (14x5, and 14x8), three rack toms (8x7, 10x7, 12x8), two floor toms (16x16, 18x16), a gong tom (20x16), and a kick drum (22x18). Refitted with appropriate heads, the 14x8 snare served dual use as another tom. I also converted the kick drum into a super-large gong tom by removing its resonance head and hitting the batter head with a heavy drum stick instead of a bass drum mallet. These drums have a very resonant tonal sound that makes them coveted by top drummers.

To further augment the core set of drums, I added a 6x7 Pearl Reference Tom to extend the high range of the rack toms and a 14x12 Pearl Reference Tom to provide a deep resonant tom that fits perfectly between the 12 inch rack and 16 inch floor toms. Each of the toms in the kit were recorded with six variations: (1) Remo Ambassador, (2) Remo P4, (3) Remo Ambassador Concert Toms, (4) Remo Ambassador Concert Toms Damped with moon gel, (5) Remo P4 Concert Toms, (6) Remo P4 Concert Toms Damped with moon gel.

Then I added six rototoms (6", 8", 10", 12", 14", and 16"). I used a soft-tip stick to record these rototoms to maximize their tone while still maintaining a distinctive percussive sound. These rototoms were then mapped to a four-octave keyboard to allow composers create or augment tonal passages. I've always wanted to have a four-octave set of toms. It's very cool...

To all of this, I decided to add a number of very high-end snare drums, each with a distinct purpose. The first ones I added were two 13x3 piccolo snares: (1) Pearl M1330 Maple Piccolo Snare and (2) Pearl B1330 Brass Piccolo Snare. I tuned the brass one a little higher than the maple one to bring out its natural metallic ring. They both sound absolutely terrific (tight, very clean, and great rim shots). I then added a 14x6.5 TAMA S.L.P Black Brass Snare Drum with 42-strand (extra-wide) snares. It has an incredible driving tone for pop, rock, and metal. To me, it is the best sounding snare drum for hard rock. But what is crazy about this snare is that with higher tuning, it can be used for jazz and fusion too. I then decided to go in the opposite direction and include a top-of-the-line snare drum for orchestral music requiring super tight and crisp precision sounds. The snare I decided to fill this special need was the 14x4 Black Swamp Mercury Series Snare Drum. It uses various strands of cords instead of normal snares to get its tight sound. I tuned this one three different ways. As it turns out, when loosening it up a bit, this drum is also amazing for jazz and fusion styles. It has a great resonant ring when it loosens up. To round off the collection of snares, I added TAMA 3x6, 8x6, and 10x6 Metalworks Effects Snares. They are really interesting in that they do not have bottom heads. The snares are directly mounted under the batter head. They have a very unique and tight sound that is great for non-traditional uses.

Ok, those are the drums. Here are the cymbals...

The WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit includes a variety of extremely high-end cymbal collections from (1) Meinl Byzanth (22” Ride, 20” Jazz Medium Thin Crash, 18” Jazz Medium Thin Crash, 16” Trash Crash, 14” High Hats), (2) Paiste Signature Series (22” Ride, 20” Full Crash/Ride, 18” Full Crash, 16” Fast Crash, 14: High Hats), and (3) Zildjian K Constantinople (22” Ride with high resonance tone, 19” Crash-Ride, 16” Crash, and 14” High Hats). To further extend the collection of cymbals, the library includes two Paiste Signature 602 China cymbals (22” and 18”), and Zildjian K series splashes (12”, 10”, and 8”). These top-of-the-line cymbals were carefully chosen to provide a broad range of cymbal sounds. To top things off, a variety of cymbal stacks that provide modern trash sounds are included as well as various hand-cymbal combinations that can be used for marching bands and orchestral styles.

In addition to drums and cymbals, the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit comes with a large assortment of other percussion instruments, such as monster bongos, various types of shakers, tambourines, claves, three high-end cowbells, 4-octave double wind chimes, 6” triangle, wood and temple blocks, sleigh bells, two different finger cymbals, sticks, hand claps, finger snaps, etc.

These collections of drums, cymbals, and percussion are arguably the best of the best… I hope this sneak preview has been helpful. I'll talk about the really unique recording techniques I decided to use in my next post. How I recorded everything is really the key to this library...

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## Markastellor (Dec 29, 2020)

Thanks for the information. Sounds like a good approach. Looking forward to hearing examples.


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## WarpIV (Dec 29, 2020)

Hi Everyone,

I hope you don't mind me posting about this drum library in segments. There is too much to say about the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit in a single post. I want to do my best to explain what this library is all about, so please bear with me...

In this post, I will describe the recording techniques I used for this project.

Most sampled drum kits are recorded in a studio known for its good drum sounds. One or more popular kits are set up in the studio with carefully chosen drum mics placed the way you would have them arranged if a live drummer were playing. So, the mics have to be out of the way of the drummer to avoid getting hit. Directional mics must be used and carefully positioned to isolate as best as possible each drum. Usually there are also a couple of overhead mics set up a few feet above the kit to capture cymbals and to provide a stereo mix for the rest of the kit. Room mics are often set up much further away from the drums to capture the natural reverb of the room.

The WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit library takes a totally different approach to recording. Instead of recording a kit, I decided to record each drum and cymbal in isolation and to use a very different strategy for mic selection and placement.

The first thing I did in my project was to build a totally dry studio. I wanted to capture the raw sounds of each drum and cymbal without any color from the room or choice of microphone. Any color to the natural drum sounds in the library would be done by the composer through plug-ins and not dictated by the recording. So, I converted one of the unused bedrooms in our home to become the totally dry studio. I literally covered all of the walls, ceiling, and most of the floor with 4" rockwool acoustic insulation to accomplish this. It was a lot of work, but I believe it was worth it.

The next big decision was which mics to use. After quite a bit of research and discussion with several experts, I decided that instead of using traditional directional drum mics, I would use top-of-the-line omni-directional mics made by Earthworks. Omni-directional mics have no phase problems, they are easy to place, and are are generally much cleaner and accurate when it comes to capturing natural sounds than directional mics. The primary mic used for this project was an Earthworks QC50 Omni-directional mic. It has a nearly perfectly flat frequency response (less than 1 db) from 3 Hz to 50KHz, has a Sound Pressure Level (SPL) rating of 142 (note, high SPL for drums is critical to avoid saturating the mic), and has a super-fast response time (quick transients and low distortion). The other three mics I chose to use were Earthworks TC30's, which have a similar flat frequency response from 7 to 30 KHz, fantastic SPL rating of 150, and are also super fast in terms of their response time.

Each drum or cymbal was carefully mounted in an optimal way in the studio to eliminate rattles or muffled sounds. A suspended orchestral cymbal stand, rather than a traditional cymbal stand, was used for all cymbals to maximize their ring, tone, and eliminate the annoying cymbal bounce you get when they are crashed on normal stands. An elevated (orchestral) snare drum stand was used to minimize sound muffling by the floor. A super sturdy elevated tom stand was used to maximize resonance and eliminate rattles. An orchestral bass drum stand was used to raise the kick drum and gong toms off the floor, resulting in super clean tones (note, a bass drum mallet was used rather than a foot pedal to eliminate squeaks and improve sound). Hopefully, you all get the idea what I was trying to accomplish with this. My goal was to bring out the cleanest and most natural resonant tone of each drum and cymbal without microphone or room color.

Now, here is the key to the 3D library. I carefully placed the QC50 mic above each drum or cymbal (denoted as the Top mic), placed two TC30's a little above the drum or cymbal about 90 to 110 degrees apart (denoted as Left and Right side mics), and then I placed the other TC30 below the drum or cymbal (denoted as Bot mic). The combination of Top (or Bot), Left, and Right mic placements form a nearly orthogonal coordinate system where the waveforms from the widely oscillating drum or cymbal are all different and can therefore be mixed to produce startling 3D sounds if done carefully. All of the recordings were carefully processed by software I wrote to determine exactly when the drum or cymbal was hit. The Bot sample was inverted to correct the polarity. What this all does is eliminate phase issues from mics being different distances from the drum or cymbal.

The last, but very important, aspect of the recording process was to choose the right pre-amp. Again, I turned to Earthworks and used their ultra-high-end 1024 4-channel model, which was perfect for the four mics I used. This pre-amp is off the charts clean in terms of ridiculously low noise and distortion. I really needed the pre-amp for recording soft brushes on cymbals. The signal from the pre-amp was fed into a PreSonus Studio 192 USB audio interface to my Mac Pro, which was running Cubase as its DAW. All samples were recorded at 192 KHz and 24 bits.

I have attached a picture of the Paiste Signature 602 18" China Cymbals as it was recorded in the studio, in case anyone is interested in seeing the setup.

I've also attached an early demo of the library for those of you who would like to hear just a bit of what it sounds like. There were no real effects (other than reverb and some EQ) used in this demo, so what you are hearing is extremely natural/organic drum sounds. Think of this like hearing a clean (line-in) electric guitar, where you can later apply guitar amp effects as a plug-in to achieve any sound you want. So, what you are hearing in this demo is the actual sound of the drums and cymbals. I included the full mix, just drums so you can hear them in isolation, and no drums (in case anyone is interested in the other instruments). Note that all of the instruments (trumpets, trombones, saxes, flute, electric bass, electric guitar) are also WarpIV PRO sample libraries. There are no other sample libraries being used in this demo.

The demo features the Pearl Masterworks 14x5 Snare Drum, Zildjian K Constantinople Hi Hats, the Pearl Masterworks 22x10 Kick with pillow dampening, full range of concert toms (including two gong toms panned hard right and left), all of the crash, china, and splash cymbals, and the three cowbells. This demo barely scratches the surface of the library...

I plan to swap out various snares with this demo so you can hear each of them in context. I think that will be a lot of fun to listen to... I think I might do some versions where I use different effects on the kick, snare, and toms to give them more punch. If you have any suggestions of what you want to hear, let me know.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## Markastellor (Dec 30, 2020)

Interesting and unique approach. Unusual sound. Some would argue that the rings and rattles which you seek to eliminate are critical parts of the instrument. I understand that approach, but I think that is just one of many. I'm not a purist of any particular philosophy of sound, other than if I like it I use it. The sound of your examples is definitely unique, and I like having a pallet with many different colors. So thanks for the examples, and I will keep watching this project as it progresses.


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## WarpIV (Dec 30, 2020)

Markastellor said:


> Interesting and unique approach. Unusual sound. Some would argue that the rings and rattles which you seek to eliminate are critical parts of the instrument. I understand that approach, but I think that is just one of many. I'm not a purist of any particular philosophy of sound, other than if I like it I use it. The sound of your examples is definitely unique, and I like having a pallet with many different colors. So thanks for the examples, and I will keep watching this project as it progresses.


I hear you... It is funny to me how composers using virtual instruments work hard to include rings and rattles to make tracks sound real, while recording engineers do everything they can to cut out those things to make tracks sound good. There is a balance between these two things, but I definitely lean towards making tracks sound good. One of the examples of this sort of thing that I sometimes do on drums is have parts going that really could not be played by a real drummer, at least not by one drummer...


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## davidanthony (Dec 30, 2020)

Jeff ended up giving me a spontaneous demo of this library over Zoom a few weeks ago after I emailed him asking about the other Warp IV library products (and if anyone else is wondering like I was based on the minimal web-presence, yes, they are still being sold).

I play and record "real" drums a few times a week in my studio, and I came away quite impressed. Jeff's sample capture and playback techniques address what I consider some of the biggest shortcomings of existing libraries: insufficient articulations and dynamics to program convincing performances in more "musical" genres, and baked-in "house kit sounds" that restrict drum use to limited contexts.

He's also done some unique things with the cymbals that make me hopeful it'll be possible to convincingly program a performance like this:  which I consider impossible with all the libraries currently on the market.

As a potential bonus, the techniques also "solve" (in quotes because some argue this isn't a problem) a number of problems that plague many drum recordists like poor tuning, sympathetic vibrations, and phase issues. The resulting sampled sound is so clean it's actually a bit jarring, because it's not how I'm used to hearing recorded drums. But performing sonic surgery on a set of clean drum samples to place them in a space and give them character through EQ, saturation, layering, positioning, adding atmosphere, etc. is relatively straightforward, whereas the reverse is borderline impossible!

Three things I've thought of since our call, Jeff:

A lot of e-musicians (particularly non-drummers and people without experience mixing them) often need some help getting drums to sound the way they want. Offering presets in the form of premade character kits, e.g. "70s Funk" or "Orchestra" could be useful.

Similarly, I notice a lot of people are really into pre-programmed MIDI tracks for inspiration, e.g. pre-programmed intros, bridge, verse, chorus lines, etc. If there was a way to manage and/or share these (users can share presets with other users) in a library, I think people may find it useful.

Finally, if you're still recording and have room for one more snare, the Ludwig Supraphonic is a classic that is so sampled and a lot of people are so familiar with that I think it may serve well to highlight the tech of the library and differentiate it from other offerings. (I recognize this is somewhat of a lowest-common-denominator approach which is definitely not your style, but there's also no denying the utility and sheer pervasiveness of that drum so I thought I'd mention it!)

Good luck and thanks again for the demo!


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## WarpIV (Dec 30, 2020)

Thanks for the feedback. I completely agree with your sentiments about starting with jarringly clean samples before adding effects for different genres. You can make clean drum recordings sound great, but it is much harder transforming bad drum recordings to sound great...

I am setting things up so that everybody can share their favorite settings for each drum with everybody else. At least that is my hope. The samples are not contained within the NKI, they are in separate Samples folders, which means that it will be easy for people to share their NKIs. A drum kit in this library is an NKM, which means that you can load in as many drums, cymbals, or percussion as you want to create your own custom kits. It also makes it easy to start with a primary set of drums and then later expand as needed.

I am of course going to continue adding drums, cymbals, and percussion to the library over time. A lot of people have been asking for the Ludwig Supraphonic and/or Black Beauty snares. I think these two snares that everybody loves and use are pretty similar to the 14x6.5 TAMA Black Brass snare that I fell in love with and chose. I am certainly open to adding the Ludwigs to the collection in the future. What I tried to do with the current collection is to cover the spectrum of snare sounds as best I could for a wide variety of genres. I think you will be pleasantly surprised how amazing the TAMA sounds. It is a little unique with its 42 snares and super-heavy shell. It has a lot of crack to its sound. The drum has SO much resonance, especially on rim shots or edge hits, that it is really unique in that way too.


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## WarpIV (Dec 30, 2020)

In this post, I would like to go over some of the features of the library. I've included a screen shot of the main Instrument tab as a reference.

The top row in the interface lets you select an articulation and map it to one or two keys (note, some people like to have two keys for the same articulation to play fast passages with two fingers). You can enter the mapping in the interface, or you can hit the Learn button and hit a key on your keyboard to capture the mapping. You can also Load or Unload articulations as needed to save memory. There is a special, All, option for articulations that lets you load or unload all of the articulations and assign or unassign all of the articulations to a range of keys. The five audition buttons to the right allow you to listen to the selected articulation at different dynamics. It is very convenient when you want to adjust settings and hear their effect. To the right of the Audition buttons is a Gain control that you can separately adjust for each articulation.

Under the top row of controls are four sets of grouped controls (Red - Stereo, Green - Mics, Blue - Volume, and Purple - Humanize).

The Stereo set of controls allow you to set the Pan of the Top or Bot mic (only one can be selected) and then optionally also pan the side mics (Left and Right) mics using the PanRm button (note, I should rename this button to PanSd - Room is different from Side). Normally, panning simply controls the volume levels of the left and right channels. The WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit library takes this one step further by optionally adding delay between the left and right stereo channels based on the Width button (toggles on or off) and its setting (note, this is only applied to the Top or Bot mic). The Width setting physically represents the distance between your ears in inches to produce a stereo image. For example, in the real world if a sound were coming to you from 45 degrees to your left, the sound wave would hit your left ear first and then it would arrive a little later at your right ear. This is due to the speed of sound and the geometry of the sound source relative to your ears. Adding this small delay to the panning opens up the sound tremendously. You can exaggerate the distance between your ears to produce an even more spectacular effect (in the screen shot, the width is set to 40 inches - which is a little crazy). I don't know how else to describe the sound other than it transforms flat-sounding drums to stereophonic drums. The difference is a little like comparing a 2D movie to a 3D movie... There are a few more features that are noteworthy in the Stereo control. The Fat button uses different round robin samples for Top (or Bot), Left, and Right. So, it fattens up the overall sound by playing different recorded samples for different mics. It is almost like your are layering the drums with multiple samples. The 200 ms delay button transforms all of the samples to occur with a 200 millisecond delay, except for certain articulations such as flams and ruffs that are delayed a little less so that their main accent lines up correctly with the 200 ms delay. You can use this feature by setting the drum track in your DAW to play 200 ms early. With this feature turned on, you do not have to tweak flams and ruffs to line up correctly in your tracks when you compose. Finally, there are five buttons on the bottom of the Stereo control to create Ensembles. So, you can turn a snare drum into as many as 5 snare drums (think a marching band - or think drum layering). The attack can be randomized to spread ensembles hits in time using the Time setting in the Humanize set of controls.

The Mics set of controls lets you select either the Top or Bot mic (see the two buttons just to the right of the first dial to toggle Top or Bot), and the levels of the (1) Top or Bot mic, (2) Room mics (Left and Right), which are fed into the Room output where reverb can be added, and (3) Side mics (Left and Right) that are mixed in dry with the Top or Bot mic. The five buttons below allow you to fade in the two Side mics with different fade-in times. If you step back and think about it, the Top mic records the main up/down oscillation of the drum (these are the primary hits with the most power), while the Left and Right mics capture the side waves (the higher frequency ring with a lot more overtones). By fading in the attack of the Left and Right mics, you essentially blend in the tail ring of the drum with the more percussive Top mic. You can really customize the sound of the drum mixing the mics this way (very percussive to lots of tone). This feature is a little like using compression (which compresses the peak giving you more tail) except that you don't lose dynamics. Remember, the PanRm button (which should have been named PanSd) in the Stereo set of controls determines whether the Left and Right Side mics are panned or whether they mix with the Top or Bot mics as balanced stereo.

The Volume set of controls allow you to play with the Sustain and Decay. It lets you cut out long-ringing tails that you may not want. The Dynamics control lets you set how loud the softest samples (e.g., velocity 1) are played vs. the loudest ones (e.g., velocity 127). A setting of 100% would play samples with velocity 1 so soft that you would never hear (or use) it. On the other extreme, a setting of 0 would play all velocities at the same volume. I find that settings of 70% - 80% work about right. It lets me use the full dynamic range of the drum. A five button velocity curve is provided for electronic drummers to support non-linear velocity curves. The middle button is a linear transformation that does not adjust velocity in the playback.

The Humanize set of controls allow you to randomize Pitch, Velocity, and Time. The five buttons below the Time dial control the random time delays that are used when the Time is non-zero. The middle button provides a linear random time, while the left-most button favors randomly pushing beats ahead of time and the right-most button randomly favors lagging. I personally like setting the Pitch to about 3 cents to give each drum hit a slightly different tone and leave the Velocity and Time dials to zero.

Finally, I want to point out that each drum, cymbal, and misc. percussion feeds into one of the output channels (as appropriate). These channels can be set as independent channels in your DAW so that you can apply separate effects to your kick, snare, rack toms, floor toms, crash cymbals, ride cymbals, misc. percussion, and room (reverb). This is really important because while Kontakt has lots of great built-in effects, there is no comparison to the really great plugins you can use in your DAW. You can also feed the Room channel into the same reverb used by the rest of your composition, so your drums will sound like they are being played in the same space as the rest of your instruments.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this. If I have missed anything that you think is important, or have questions on any of the features, please let me know.

In my next post, I will describe the other two tabs (Patterns and Engine) including how I deal with playing back round robin samples, velocity layers based on dynamics, overlaps between hits, dealing with resonances, etc.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Jan 4, 2021)

The next thing I would like to describe in the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit sample library are the two additional tabs (see the screen shots). The first tab is still a work in progress, but it is the Pattern tab. When it is completed, it will provide an assortment of built-in patterns that you can copy, edit, restore, create, etc. Patterns can be mapped to any key. You can set quadruple, double, normal, half, and quarter speed time tempos. You can create patterns for any time signature. Examples of patterns might be various length drum rolls (e.g., 5-stroke roll, 7-stroke roll, etc.), cymbal patterns, tom fills, shaker patterns, brush patterns on snares, etc. The velocity of the note that starts the pattern establishes the overall volume of the pattern, so you can control its dynamics. Each pattern can use up to 5 articulations in the drum or cymbal's set of articulations and they can be set up to repeat a number of times. Keep in mind that a pattern is defined for a single drum, cymbal, or percussion, so 5 articulations is plenty...

The second tab is the Engine interface. This interface (which has lots of room for more controls, pictures of the drum, description, etc.) will probably include a few more features (e.g., snare buzz on toms, etc), but for now it has the main features that are important for shaping the sound.

First is the Sample Overlap X-Fade dial. It allows you to control how long a sample takes to fade out when a new sample (for the same drum or cymbal) is played. It allows you to control how the instrument builds sound when multiple hits are rapidly done. The best example of this is ride cymbals (which ring for a long time) where hitting the cymbal builds on the tone of previous hits. A short X-Fade essentially has no build up, while a 1500 ms X-Fade allows for plenty of overlap. The maximum X-Fade is 3000 ms. As a general rule, drums and hi hats typically require fairly short X-Fades and cymbals generally have a longer X-Fade to sound realistic. Extending the X-Fade for snare drums having lots of drum rolls improves the realism by adding building up the ring of the drum while the roll is played. You do not want to have a long X-Fade for hi hats because when the hi-hat closes, any prior open rings need to stop quickly.

Second is the Max Round Robin dial. All of the samples in the library have 8 round robin samples per dynamic. Snare drums have up to 7 dynamics, which means that with 4 mics, there are 4 x 7 x 8 = 224 actual samples for just a normal snare hit (note, snares have 35 articulations, so as you can imagine, there are lots of samples in each snare drum). The round robin algorithm I developed keeps track of the last four articulations played and randomly selects the new one from the remaining set of four samples. In this way, the same sample is never repeated more than once per 4 hits. This technique adds to the realism of the overall sound. Many more samples were actually recorded per dynamic during recording sessions. In the editing process, we carefully chose the ones that were most consistent. Yes, there is variety so you don't have the machine gun effect, but you don't have samples grossly sticking out with wierd rings, overtones, or inconsistent volumes. I should also mention that the attacks of the samples were analyzed for their audio power and normalized across dynamics based on that rather than simply using amplitude to normalize. This technique greatly improved the consistency and smoothness between transitions across dynamics. All of this means that there are virtually seamless transitions across dynamics, while retaining minor variety and realism. You can decrease the number of samples used in the round robin algorithm if you want. Doing this decreases memory usage and when setting the round robin dial to 1, it creates perfect consistency (if that is what you want).

The last dials are the Ring1 and Ring2 Resonance Controls. These are extremely important controls that let you dial in (or out) the tone of the drum, cymbal, or percussion. What I have done in the library is analyze the frequencies for each instrument to determine its two most dominant overtones. These overtones are usually the root tone (which you may like or not) and the next higher resonance after that (usually it is an annoying ring that you may not like). Recording engineers often go through their drum tracks and do this kind of thing manually (i.e., find the resonances) and then cut out the ones that are undesirable. This is especially done for cymbals. I've included three examples of this effect using four crash cymbals (Paiste 20", Meinl 20", Paiste 18", and Meinl 18" - hit in that order). The CrashRing-9 turns down the gong-like overtone of the four cymbals by 9 db, leaving a very nice shimmering tone to the crashes. The CrashRing0 demo is the natural tone of each cymbal. The CrashRing9 demo turns up the gong-like ring so you can really hear it exaggerated. I am going to post (right after this) some more demos of the 14x12 tom with various Ring1 settings so you can hear how dialing in or out the resonances changes the sound of the drum. I hope these short demos are helpful.


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## WarpIV (Jan 4, 2021)

Because there is a limit of 5 attachments per post, and I have 10 more demos, I am going to spread the demos of the 14x12 concert tom (no bottom head, which gives it a unique tone) across multiple posts. In this post, I have the natural tom (no effects other than reverb) with ring settings of -6, -3, 0, 3 and 6 db. What you will hear is a very percussive sounding tom with the negative settings and a very resonant tom (lots of tone) with the positive settings. In the next post, I will attach the same 14x12 concert tom with the same ring settings, but adding the Chris Lord Alge (CLA) plug in effect from waves to add a little more punch to the drum. I think it sounds a lot better with the plug in. The point is that you can tailor the sound of these natural drums however you like.


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## WarpIV (Jan 4, 2021)

And here is the same 14-12 concert tom with the five Ring settings and with the CLA plugin.


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## WarpIV (Jan 11, 2021)

davidanthony said:


> Jeff ended up giving me a spontaneous demo of this library over Zoom a few weeks ago after I emailed him asking about the other Warp IV library products (and if anyone else is wondering like I was based on the minimal web-presence, yes, they are still being sold).
> 
> I play and record "real" drums a few times a week in my studio, and I came away quite impressed. Jeff's sample capture and playback techniques address what I consider some of the biggest shortcomings of existing libraries: insufficient articulations and dynamics to program convincing performances in more "musical" genres, and baked-in "house kit sounds" that restrict drum use to limited contexts.
> 
> ...



Ok, I took your advice and bought the Ludwig Supraphonic 14x6.5 snare and will add it to my collection of snares. It comes in Friday... It will be interesting to compare its sound to the TAMA S.L.P. Black Brass snare. I’m really looking forward to recording it!


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## davidanthony (Jan 11, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> Ok, I took your advice and bought the Ludwig Supraphonic 14x6.5 snare and will add it to my collection of snares. It comes in Friday... It will be interesting to compare its sound to the TAMA S.L.P. Black Brass snare. I’m really looking forward to recording it!


Cool! I think it’ll be a great addition, very versatile drum!


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## Kirk1701 (Jan 14, 2021)

This is an extremely interesting project. I'm looking forward to seeing some full-on demos and walkthroughs. 

I've never been able to find drum libraries that have a sixties style double kick drum setup (Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Nick Mason, etc). Most libraries that have double kicks are meant for metal. Ginger always claimed to play jazz in a rock setting. There were also a number of swing drummers who employed the double kick in the "open" jazz style. 

Also, brushes and mallets should be essential tools for composers, imo, but they're missing from most libraries. I'm sure these extra samples bloat not only the overall gb count, but also the price. On the other hand, a drummer versed in all three styles is equally rare and expensive.


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## el-bo (Jan 15, 2021)

First time seeing this thread, so quite a lot to trawl through. Seems really interesting. Just wondering if you recorded the drums with both left and right hits. 

Thanks.


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## WarpIV (Jan 20, 2021)

davidanthony said:


> Cool! I think it’ll be a great addition, very versatile drum!


I got the Ludwig Supraphonic 14x6.5 snare a few days ago and started recording. I was surprised how different it sounds compared to the 14x6.5 TAMA S.L.P. Black Brass snare. The TAMA snare is a ridiculously heavy drum with a very focused tone, while the Ludwig is extremely light. It has more of a thumpy/dead tone. In my first round of tunings, I tuned the Ludwig about a half step lower than the high-tuned version of the TAMA snare (there is a low tuning too). That was where I felt the Ludwig began to choke, so I didn't go any higher. But when you listen to the hits with snares on, the Ludwig sounds much lower (thuddier - if that is a word) than the TAMA. Anyway, I am glad I added the Ludwig to the collection of snares. I don't know if I like it better than the TAMA or the Pearl Masterworks snares, but it definitely fills a gap and need. So, thanks again for the recommendation...


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## WarpIV (Jan 20, 2021)

el-bo said:


> First time seeing this thread, so quite a lot to trawl through. Seems really interesting. Just wondering if you recorded the drums with both left and right hits.
> 
> Thanks.


No, I thought about doing that, but in the end, having 8 round robin samples per dynamic gives plenty of variation. The left/right hits would have more meaning simulating drummers that use traditional grip, but most drummers today use a matched grip, which unifies the sound a bit more. Some drummers use matched sticks too, which further takes away left-right differences. I think users of the library will find that using edge and far edge samples with center hits provides plenty of variations. The rolls (which are built from buzz's) also have lots of variation due to the round robin. Anyway, thanks for the question...


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## WarpIV (Jan 20, 2021)

Kirk1701 said:


> This is an extremely interesting project. I'm looking forward to seeing some full-on demos and walkthroughs.
> 
> I've never been able to find drum libraries that have a sixties style double kick drum setup (Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Nick Mason, etc). Most libraries that have double kicks are meant for metal. Ginger always claimed to play jazz in a rock setting. There were also a number of swing drummers who employed the double kick in the "open" jazz style.
> 
> Also, brushes and mallets should be essential tools for composers, imo, but they're missing from most libraries. I'm sure these extra samples bloat not only the overall gb count, but also the price. On the other hand, a drummer versed in all three styles is equally rare and expensive.


I think you will find the many variations of the kick drum and gong toms to fill your needs for double kicks. The library has mallet and brush articulations. The mallets are part of all cymbals (hits and swells) and are also included with every tom. I did my best to capture every sound/articulation that you could imagine. The library was designed, not just for rock/pop/jazz styles, but for use in orchestral settings too. For example, crash cymbals have 20 articulations. Ride cymbals have 26 articulations. Snares have 35 articulations...


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## Kirk1701 (Jan 20, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> I think you will find the many variations of the kick drum and gong toms to fill your needs for double kicks. The library has mallet and brush articulations. The mallets are part of all cymbals (hits and swells) and are also included with every tom. I did my best to capture every sound/articulation that you could imagine. The library was designed, not just for rock/pop/jazz styles, but for use in orchestral settings too. For example, crash cymbals have 20 articulations. Ride cymbals have 26 articulations. Snares have 35 articulations...


Excellent! I look forward to hearing it!


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## el-bo (Jan 23, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> No, I thought about doing that, but in the end, having 8 round robin samples per dynamic gives plenty of variation. The left/right hits would have more meaning simulating drummers that use traditional grip, but most drummers today use a matched grip, which unifies the sound a bit more. Some drummers use matched sticks too, which further takes away left-right differences. I think users of the library will find that using edge and far edge samples with center hits provides plenty of variations. The rolls (which are built from buzz's) also have lots of variation due to the round robin. Anyway, thanks for the question...


Thanks! That's a real shame. I always want to map left and right hits to my midi controllers, where the hits are different enough to avoid any phasing issues from doubles, and to provide sonic variation without triggering a very distinct articulation. Even with the round-robins available in BFD, I still find I sometimes have issues with phasing. 

Anyway, not to worry. I'm very far off from being able to afford another specialised drum library. Definitely one to watch, though.


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## WarpIV (Jan 23, 2021)

el-bo said:


> Thanks! That's a real shame. I always want to map left and right hits to my midi controllers, where the hits are different enough to avoid any phasing issues from doubles, and to provide sonic variation without triggering a very distinct articulation. Even with the round-robins available in BFD, I still find I sometimes have issues with phasing.
> 
> Anyway, not to worry. I'm very far off from being able to afford another specialised drum library. Definitely one to watch, though.


I've tested the library with my electronic kit and there are NO phasing issues at all. I can play rolls, etc., using the basic center hit articulation and it sounds extremely natural. One of the reasons is because of the omni-directional mics I used vs. directional mics.


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## WarpIV (Jan 23, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> I've tested the library with my electronic kit and there are NO phasing issues at all. I can play rolls, etc., using the basic center hit articulation and it sounds extremely natural. One of the reasons is because of the omni-directional mics I used vs. directional mics.


Sorry for having two replies... Another reason why I don't have phasing issues is because of the way I cross fade between successive notes. I noticed that if you make the cross fade time too small (or non-existent), you can get non-realistic transitions between hits when they are played very fast. When it comes to drums and especially cymbals, their "ring" builds up. So, a drum or cymbal hit the first time has a different sound than subsequent drum or cymbal hits (i.e., when the drum or cymbal is still ringing). Controlling how they build their tone is an important aspect of getting realistic sounds. I like to have long cross fades for cymbals (great for rolls, swells, or just very smooth ride cymbal patterns), medium cross fades for drums, and short cross fades for the hi hat (closing the hi hat should quickly stop previous open hits). There is one more thing that I generally do as well that alleviates the need for left and right samples. I give each hit a very slight random tuning (it's one of the controls in the library). I like to use about +/- 3 cents. It's really not necessary to do this because of the round robin samples, but it gives everything a little more realism and variety. There is also a random timing control to also help alleviate the machine gun effect, but I generally do not use that feature very much.


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## el-bo (Jan 24, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> Sorry for having two replies... Another reason why I don't have phasing issues is because of the way I cross fade between successive notes. I noticed that if you make the cross fade time too small (or non-existent), you can get non-realistic transitions between hits when they are played very fast. When it comes to drums and especially cymbals, their "ring" builds up. So, a drum or cymbal hit the first time has a different sound than subsequent drum or cymbal hits (i.e., when the drum or cymbal is still ringing). Controlling how they build their tone is an important aspect of getting realistic sounds. I like to have long cross fades for cymbals (great for rolls, swells, or just very smooth ride cymbal patterns), medium cross fades for drums, and short cross fades for the hi hat (closing the hi hat should quickly stop previous open hits). There is one more thing that I generally do as well that alleviates the need for left and right samples. I give each hit a very slight random tuning (it's one of the controls in the library). I like to use about +/- 3 cents. It's really not necessary to do this because of the round robin samples, but it gives everything a little more realism and variety. There is also a random timing control to also help alleviate the machine gun effect, but I generally do not use that feature very much.


No need to apologise. The more detail you give, the more faith I have that you not only recognise the issue I'm talking about, but that you seem to have a few tricks in place to avoid said issues. Much appreciated.

Will definitely keep an eye on this product. 

Cheers


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## WarpIV (Jan 30, 2021)

Hi Everyone,

I previously posted a demo with no effects on the drums other than (1) the EQ filters that allow you to play with tonal resonances, (2) mixing the side (left/right) and main (top/bot) mics, and (3) some reverb. In this mix, I used the Chris Lord Alge plug-in from waves to brighten up and add a little more punch to the snare, toms, and kick. I'm not an expert at mixing drums (at least, not yet), but here is what I came up with. Let me know what you think...

I have included the full mix and then a separate mix with just the drums so you can really hear everything.

The kit configuration in this demo uses (a) the Pearl Masterworks 14x5 snare with a medium-high tuning, (b) all of the toms recorded without bottom heads (concert toms - they have a bit more of a pure tone than regular toms since there is no bottom head adding other resonances) including two 14 inch toms and two gong toms (the 20 and 22 inch gong toms sound a little like kicks but panned left and right), (c) 22x18 Pearl Masterworks kick, (d) all of the various crashes, splashes, Chinas, and trash, (e) Zildjian K Constantinople 14" hi hats, and (f) the three cowbells. All of the virtual instruments are WarpIV sample libraries (electric bass, electric guitar, trumpets, trombones, saxes, flute, clarinet).

I'll post another demo next week that showcases the 4-octave roto-toms. That demo uses the Pearl 13x3 Brass Piccolo snare so you can hear another snare in the mix (I really like its tight tone - note, the 13x3 Maple Piccolo Snare in the library is also fantastic - it's maybe my favorite snare in the collection). The roto-toms, which gives you 4 octaves of musically tuned toms, are incredibly cool...


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## WarpIV (Feb 3, 2021)

As promised, here is a demo of the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit library featuring four octaves of roto-toms. There are no other toms in this demo (except the two gong toms, which really sound like hard-panned left/right kicks). The demo uses the 13x3 Pearl Brass Piccolo Snare and the Zildjian K Constantinople 14" hi hats (note, the closed foot articulation is using a ching-ring, which gives it a little bit of a tambourine sound). It also features all the crashes, chinas, and splashes, along with the Paiste Signature 22" ride. Ive included 3 versions of the demo: (1) full mix, (2) just the drums (you really need to listen to this to hear everything), and (3) no drums so you can hear the rest of the track (all WarpIV PRO virtual instruments). I did use the Chris Lord Alge plugin from Waves to brighten up the rototoms, snare, and kick. Let me know what you think...


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## Welldone (Feb 3, 2021)

Hi Jeff,

The project is very interesting and the demos sound great. Do you have an estimated release date for the library?


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## WarpIV (Feb 3, 2021)

I will have finished the final recordings in a couple of weeks. The editing is almost done too. Most of the scripting is done. The only thing really left is programming the patterns, which I think will take me some time and then I have to package everything for distribution. I'm shooting for the end of this year, but I could have an early beta release. Maybe you, and others on VI would be interested in this...

I'll be posting more information soon. I want to explain to everybody what articulations are provided for each instrument (drums, cymbals, etc.), and what instruments will be provided in the first release. I plan on making the library very customizable, so you will be able to purchase just what you need and then expand later.


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## Welldone (Feb 3, 2021)

Thanks for the information about your roadmap. I would be interested in beta-testing. I already use some of your libraries.


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## WarpIV (Feb 3, 2021)

Welldone said:


> Thanks for the information about your roadmap. I would be interested in beta-testing. I already use some of your libraries.


Remind me in a few months... I need beta testers who might also want to produce some demos that I can use. I tend to write jazz-oriented compositions, so I definitely need to get some demos of other styles together. It's funny being a drummer myself that I focus on music with crazy drumming, but I suspect a lot of composers are more tame with their drum tracks... One of my hopes is that composers of orchestral music and sound tracks would be interested in the library. I really tried to make sure that all of the drums, cymbals, and percussion could be used in those types of styles too.


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## Welldone (Feb 3, 2021)

I‘ll be happy to contact you.


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## davidanthony (Feb 4, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> I need beta testers who might also want to produce some demos that I can use. I tend to write jazz-oriented compositions, so I definitely need to get some demos of other styles together.


Count me in when you're ready!


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## WarpIV (Feb 10, 2021)

Hi Everyone,

In this post, I would like to give you a list of the 35 articulations that are provided for each snare drum. At some point, I will prepare a demo that uses all 35 of the articulations with all of the snares in the library so you can really hear them go through their paces... I can't do that right now since we are finishing up the editing for the snares and I still need to bring them into Kontakt (the only snare that is fully edited and in Kontakt is the Pearl Masterworks 14x5). But, I think it will be helpful to at least give you the articulations. The snare drum is probably the most important part of a drum kit, so I thought I would start here. I'll provide an articulation list of the other drums and cymbals down the road...

If you listened to the demos I previously posted, you will hear many of the articulations. Listen for the various rim shots, edge, and far edge articulations for both hits and buzzes. Also, keep in mind that there are 8 round robin samples per dynamic and that there are 4 mics (Top or Bot, Left, and Right).

So here we go...

1. Stick: Basic hit of the snare in its center. There are 7 dynamics.

2. Mute: Same as Stick except I used Moon Gel to dampen the ring. There are 7 dynamics.

3. Edge: Hit of the snare halfway between the center and edge. It gives a lot more ring to the tone. There are 7 dynamics.

4. Far Edge: Hit of the snare very close to the rim. It gives a very bright ring to the tone (almost like a rim shot). There are 7 dynamics.

5. Rim Shot: Standard rim shot where the tip of the stick hits the center of the drum and the stick hits the rim simultaneously. There is 1 dynamic.

6. Rim Shot Edge: The tip of the stick hits very close to the edge of the drum and the stick hits the rim simultaneously. This gives a very bright ringing tone to the rim shot. There is 1 dynamic.

7. Rim Shot Stick Up: This is the old-fashioned burlesque-style rim shot where the tip of one stick is on the center of the drum while the other stick hits that stick. There is 1 dynamic.

8. Rim Shot Stick Down: The tip of one stick is placed at the center of the drum while the other end lays down on the rim. The other stick hits the first stick while it is in that position. There is 1 dynamic.

9. Rim: Stick hits the rim only of the drum. There are 3 dynamics.

10. Side Stick: Tip of the stick (along with the hand) is placed on the center of the drum and then the other end of the stick hits the rim. This is often used for Bossa nova styles. There is 1 dynamic.

11. Buzz: A buzz stroke hit in the center of the drum that is used to construct rolls of any length or dynamic. There are 5 dynamics.

12. Buzz Edge: A buzz stroke hit halfway between the center and edge, which can be used to produce moderately tight rolls with a good amount of ring to the tone. There are 5 dynamics.

13. Buzz Far Edge: A buzz stroke hit very close to the rim of the drum, which can be used to produce very tight rolls with lots of ring to the tone. There are 5 dynamics.

14. Flam: Two sticks hit the drum almost simultaneously with the first hit being like a grace note that is softer than the second hit. There are 5 dynamics.

15-28. All of the same articulations as 1-14 except without snares turned on.

29. Brush: Hits with brushes in the center of the drum. There are 7 dynamics.

30. Brush Mute: Hits with brushes in the center of the drum while another brush mutes the snare. This replicates the tone of a brush on the snare while swirls would be played with the other hand. There are 7 dynamics.

31. Brush Slap: Hits with brushes that slap across the drum to produce extended (less percussive) tone. There is 1 dynamic.

32. Brush Slap Mute: Same as Brush Slap except that the other brush lays on the drumhead to mute the tone. Like the Brush Mute, this is to replicate the sound of the snare when the other hand is playing swirls. There is 1 dynamic.

33. Swirls: Brush swirling on the drumhead at different speeds (dynamics). Swirls replicate jazz styles where the left hand plays swirls while the right hand plays the actual beats. There are 7 dynamics.

34. Brush No Snare: Same as 29 except without snares turned on. There are 7 dynamics.

35. Brush Slap No Snares: Same as 31 except without snares turned on. There is 1 dynamic.

Let me know what you think of these articulations and if you can hear them in the demos. I chose not to sample rods because (in my opinion) they sound terrible. Drummers sometimes use rods in live settings (e.g., church, small clubs, etc.) instead of sticks so that the drums aren't as loud, but I would never use them if loudness wasn't a factor... They also sound terrible on cymbals.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## davidanthony (May 2, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> Let me know what you think of these articulations


I think they're great! I'm hopeful that the variety of choices will enable more authentic "drum break" programming. How is recording going?


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## WarpIV (May 3, 2021)

davidanthony said:


> I think they're great! I'm hopeful that the variety of choices will enable more authentic "drum break" programming. How is recording going?


Hi David,

I just moved so everything has been on hold for a while. But I plan to get back to work on the drum library soon. I have to finish up a contract I'm working on for my software company, and then my time will really open up so I can sprint to complete the drum library.

Everything is already recorded and the editing is mostly done too. I had to finish the recording before my move because my crazy studio is now gone (I'll resurrect it someday)... The main work that remains is to bring all of the samples into Kontakt. I have some minor programming still to do, final testing to make sure every sample plays correctly, and then one last big script to finish, which is the patterns (I could release the patterns as a free update to the library). Then, I have to figure out how to package everything...

I'm going to make another post in a few days. I want to talk more about how I made the transitions between dynamics seamless. The snares, for example, have 7 dynamic layers, each with 8 samples across 4 mics (that's 7 x 8 x 4 = 224 samples). So, when you cross a boundary, the loudness is smooth - and as the round robin samples play, you don't get off balance left and right sounds. I believe our industry is not approaching this problem correctly from a pure physics perspective (i.e., everybody is using the wrong math equation to do this). My next post might completely change people's perspective of audio (at least, I hope so)...


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## davidanthony (May 3, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> I just moved so everything has been on hold for a while. But I plan to get back to work on the drum library soon. I have to finish up a contract I'm working on for my software company, and then my time will really open up so I can sprint to complete the drum library.
> 
> Everything is already recorded and the editing is mostly done too. I had to finish the recording before my move because my crazy studio is now gone (I'll resurrect it someday)...


Congrats on the move and bummer about the crazy studio closure but I'm sure V2 will be even better!



WarpIV said:


> The main work that remains is to bring all of the samples into Kontakt. I have some minor programming still to do, final testing to make sure every sample plays correctly, and then one last big script to finish, which is the patterns (I could release the patterns as a free update to the library). Then, I have to figure out how to package everything...



I think a library of patterns / grooves and a way to easily impart feel is a huge selling point for a lot of non-percussionists. There are a few libraries that I think are sonically superior to the more popular offerings, and the primary difference that I've identified between the two is the popular ones are easier for people who don't hear clear patterns in their head (which I think is most non-drummers) to use. 

For example Logic's drummer gets a lot of praise and imo the actual sonics are pretty lousy.



WarpIV said:


> My next post might completely change people's perspective of audio (at least, I hope so)


That's quite the teaser!! Looking forward.


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## WarpIV (May 6, 2021)

Hi Everyone,

As I begin describing how the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit solves the problem of (a) providing seamless transitions between up to seven layers of dynamics, and (b) balancing top/bot with left and right mics using eight round robin samples, I want to start this post with a very basic audio question that will help us all think about audio...

Assume that you have a digital wav file that represents a perfect sin wave. In other words, you have one pure frequency representing the sampled audio. The question is this, "What part of the sin wave would you say is the loudest?" Possible answers might be (a) where the amplitude is maximum, (b) where amplitude is minimum, (c) at the zero crossing going up, (d) at the zero crossing going down, (e) it is the same everywhere, (e) loudness is an ambiguous concept - need clarification, (f) it depends on the frequency of the sin wave, (g) it depends on the sample and bit rate used.

I'd love to hear your answers.
I'll post again tomorrow with my response.

Jeff Steinman


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## davidanthony (May 6, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> I'd love to hear your answers.


I'd go with all of the above! There are empirical methods for calculating the loudness of sound as recognized by humans (SPL meter), but physical loudness vs. SPL, equal loudness contours, the quality of someone's hearing, and the actual sample and playback could all result in a different subjective evaluation that could make A-D true in some case.


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## Lindon (May 8, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> Hi Everyone,
> 
> As I begin describing how the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit solves the problem of (a) providing seamless transitions between up to seven layers of dynamics, and (b) balancing top/bot with left and right mics using eight round robin samples, I want to start this post with a very basic audio question that will help us all think about audio...
> 
> ...


well (e) and (h) it depends how big the "part of the sine wave" is, if its as low as one sample then the answer is none of them...


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## WarpIV (May 8, 2021)

Lindon said:


> well (e) and (h) it depends how big the "part of the sine wave" is, if its as low as one sample then the answer is none of them...


Clever response, but that's not where I was going...


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## WarpIV (May 8, 2021)

davidanthony said:


> I'd go with all of the above! There are empirical methods for calculating the loudness of sound as recognized by humans (SPL meter), but physical loudness vs. SPL, equal loudness contours, the quality of someone's hearing, and the actual sample and playback could all result in a different subjective evaluation that could make A-D true in some case.


Good points, but not where I was going... As Fletcher Munson Curves show, our ears do not hear different frequencies at the same loudness. That is one of the reasons why it is so hard to mix bass. You turn down the volume of the mix and the bass frequencies dissapear. But then you turn up the volume and the bass frequencies are too loud. So the best you can do is listen at all levels of loudness (on good studio monitors - or perhaps a variety of listening spaces, including cars, etc.) and find the best compromise.


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## WarpIV (May 8, 2021)

Ok, as I answer the question, "What is the loudest part of a sin wave?", let me begin by dispelling the myth of RMS as being the way to measure audio loudness. RMS stands for Root Mean Squared. It is computed by the following math equation.

RMS = sqrt[(s1 x s1 + s2 x s2 + s3 x s3, ..., + sN x sN) / N]

In other words, add up the square of each sample, average them by dividing by the number of samples, and then take the square root of the result. Note that RMS can be transformed to db by taking the logarithm of RMS (base 10) and then multiplying that by 10.

In this math equation, sqrt is the square root, s1 is the first sample in a set of N samples, s2 is the second one, s3 is the third one, ..., and sN is the last sample in the set. RMS is always computed over a collection of N samples where N could be directly specified or determined by a time window (i.e., N = sample rate x time window, so a 48,000 sample rate x 0.01 second time window would mean computing RMS with 480 samples over 10 milliseconds).

Now imagine we have a wav file where every sample is maxed out (not the sin wav example). It would be like a long, positive, square wave that never comes down. Remember what actually happens at the speaker when we play the wav file. Positive samples push the speaker out and negative samples pull the speaker in. The speaker's movement essentially mimics what's in the wav file. In our maxed-out sample case, RMS would be maximized to its largest value possible, the speaker would be pushed out (ultimately controlled by the volume at the amplifier), but the speaker is not moving, which means no sound would be produced. This should alarm anyone who has thought of RMS as being a good measure of loudness. Clearly, this example describes a case where RMS is maximized, yet no sound would be produced...

RMS cannot possibly be the correct measure of audio loudness!

So why does everybody in the industry use RMS as the standard measure of loudness? It took me a while to figure this out. I had to go back to basic physics involving electromagnetic circuits. It turns out that RMS describes average power in electrical circuits involving voltage, currents, and resistors. Think of it this way. Your stereo system would be doing a lot of work to push and hold a speaker out at its maximum position even though no sound is being produced. It would be like holding your arm out motionless and parallel to the ground. Your body would get very tired (just like your stereo would be doing a lot of work holding the speaker out) even though your arm is motionless (i.e., doing no kinetic work).

As it turns out, RMS measures electrical power (think powering a radio station), which can be a useful measure. But, it does not measure audio loudness. Does anybody care how much electricity their compositions use when mixing (answer: no), or is audio loudness the real focus (answer: yes)...

So, with this concept in mind (i.e., that the speaker's out/in position, amplified by your amplifier, mimics the wav file), go back to my original question, "What is the loudest part of a sin wave?" If you haven't thought of audio in the way I just laid out, the answer might completely stun you...

Again, I hope to hear your responses. I'll provide the actual loudness equation in my next post. And guess what... It explains why compression and limiting work so well...


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## Lindon (May 9, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> So why does everybody in the industry use RMS as the standard measure of loudness?


They dont, well not any more, they use LUFS/LKFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKFS

You may find this useful:



https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bs/R-REC-BS.1770-3-201208-S!!PDF-E.pdf


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## WarpIV (May 9, 2021)

Lindon said:


> They dont, well not any more, they use LUFS/LKFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKFS
> 
> You may find this useful:
> 
> ...


Hi Lindon, thanks for the link. I did my best to go through the math in the document and I think I have a basic understanding of the algorithm. What I am going to lay out in my next post is the actual audio energy, not perceived audio energy based on human perception (i.e., Fletcher Munson curves, head shapes, multichannel perception, etc.). What I am going to lay out is far simpler to understand and it is computationally trivial to implement as a plug-in or software algorithm. It does not require any filtering, special hardware, curve-fitted constants, or FFTs. It's just a measure of the raw energy of audio from first principles. The audio power can be instantaneous (i.e., the audio energy between two samples) or averaged over a specified time window... It is also (basically) independent of what digital bit rate or sample rate you use. I believe the Leq(RLB) algorithm (equation 3 on page 9 in the document) falls out of my much simpler equation if you wanted to include human perception to the loudness measure (but at a great computational cost)...


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## WarpIV (May 9, 2021)

Ok, here is the answer...

Sorry for the long post and for all the math. But I will do my best to make it as simple as possible.

If we go back to the basic principle that the speaker mimics what is in the wav file (i.e., it pushes out for positive values and pulls in for negative values), then it is not too hard to also realize that the air molecules close to the speaker essentially move with the speaker. We know from basic physics that the kinetic energy of a particle is 1/2 x mass x (velocity x velocity). So all we need to do is calculate the velocity (speed) of the speaker at any time to get the speed of the air molecules being pushed out and pulled in by the speaker. We can ignore scale factors such as constants, amplification, speaker size, and the mass of air molecules because we want our measure of loudness to be independent of any particular audio hardware. The only actual important thing is the speed of the speaker at any point in time.

Well, that is easy to compute...

Speed is defined as distance traveled divided by time (e.g., a car moving 60 miles in an hour has a speed of 60 miles per hour). In the case of a wav file, the distance the speaker moves between two samples is simply the difference between the two samples. The time between the two samples is 1.0 divided by the sample rate (a constant for a given wav file). So here we go - it's super easy...

Here is the equation for the instantaneous power between two samples denoted by s(i+1) and s(i).

Define ds(i) = s(i+1) - s(i)
Define T = 1.0 / Sample Rate

Instantaneous power (ignoring constants, etc.) between two samples is.

P = ds x ds / T

To get an average power, all you have to do is add up the instantaneous power values over a time window and then divide by the number of samples in the time window. The big difference between this and RMS (other than the square root) is that instead of adding up the squared samples, you add up the squared difference between successive samples. It makes all the difference in the world...

One thing that is really cool about this calculation is that you can easily compute a sliding average power without having to recompute the whole window each time from scratch. All you have to do is subtract the instantaneous power of the previous first sample from the sliding average and then add the new sample's instantaneous power. You don't need any special hardware to do this because it is super fast to do these computations. I wrote software to do all of this...

For anyone who is really into math, an alternative representation of signals in the time domain (e.g., wav files) is the frequency domain. This is often done digitally using FFTs or filters. So, a function of time can be represented as a sum of sin wave frequencies, each with their own amplitude and phase shift. If you know basic calculus, the speed is simply the time derivative of the function. So, the derivative of a function (i.e., its speed) that is described as a sum of sin waves turns out to be a sum of cosine waves with each cosine term multiplied by its frequency. Squaring that and averaging over the time window used to compute the FFT has the orthogonal property that all cross terms go to zero. So what you end up with is essentially the original sin wave amplitudes multiplied by their frequency squared. What this tells us is that the audio power for a given frequency is proportional to its frequency squared. For example, doubling a frequency (i.e., an octave) but keeping the amplitude constant has four times the power. Or conversely, the same power would be achieved by having 1/4 the amplitude. This is why when you look at frequency spectrums, the levels go down in a nearly linear way (note, it's linear because the scale is in db, which is a log scale). This also explains the linearly ramped down frequency spectrum of pink noise so that all frequencies have the same power.

So, with all this, what is the loudest part of a perfect sin wave?

The answer is easy. The speaker moves fastest as the wav file crosses 0. It slows down and actually stops at the high and low peaks where it has no power. The peaks are actually where the least amount of power occurs (not intuitive for most people). This is why compression and limiting work so well. At the upper and lower peaks of the wave file, you are compressing the part of the waveform where the speaker is moving its slowest, which means compression and limiting affect the parts of the audio with the least amount of power. That's a very good thing...

Putting this all back together, the WarpIV PRO 3D Drum Kit analyzes the power during the attack in each sample to normalize all dynamic layers and (Top/Bot, Left, Right) channels. The attack is different for each type of drum, cymbal, or percussion so appropriate time windows are used to capture this. The audio power approach is far better than normalizing samples based on peaks or RMS. Peaks can be wildly off (think about cymbals vibrating and contorting in very unpredictable ways) and RMS is simply not a correct measure of loudness. Basing normalization on physics-based audio power works great. It made a big difference in the library.

By the way, somebody ought to develop a plug-in with a limiter and/or compressor that shows audio power before and after compression or limiting. Such a plug-in would provide feedback to users on how much distortion (based on power) is occurring from the compression or limiting effect. If anyone is interested in working on this with me down the road, let me know...


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## Lindon (May 10, 2021)

Yeah, but no. Ignoring perception means that any non-frequency dependent approach is no better (or worse) than RMS. As we know perceived volume does depend upon the frequency of the source, different (high and low) pitches with the same RMS (or I would imagine with whatever value your approach calculates, as again I assume its not accounting for frequency) are perceived as different volumes. That's the point in LUFS.

Also I think you should be careful attempting to take a theory that seems to work when applied to a sine waves and extrapolation it to the real world..... where audio almost never emulates a sine wave...


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## davidanthony (May 10, 2021)

Lindon said:


> Ignoring perception means that any non-frequency dependent approach is no better (or worse) than RMS.


I'm confused as to why frequencies matter when it comes to evaluating an equation for normalizing samples in a library? Unless I'm understanding it incorrectly the equal loudness contours of the ear are basically a filter that our brains apply to the input, so I don't understand why the math used to produce the signal feeding them needs to account for them.

Makes sense when using something like LUFS to appreciate loudness across different program material, but for setting dynamic layers?


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## WarpIV (May 10, 2021)

Lindon said:


> Yeah, but no. Ignoring perception means that any non-frequency dependent approach is no better (or worse) than RMS. As we know perceived volume does depend upon the frequency of the source, different (high and low) pitches with the same RMS (or I would imagine with whatever value your approach calculates, as again I assume its not accounting for frequency) are perceived as different volumes. That's the point in LUFS.
> 
> Also I think you should be careful attempting to take a theory that seems to work when applied to a sine waves and extrapolation it to the real world..... where audio almost never emulates a sine wave...


Lindon,

First, thank you for the dialog. I enjoy talking about audio to people... I hope this is interesting to you (and others) too.

You are not correct in saying that "any non-frequency dependent approach is no better than RMS." I just showed why RMS is not a valid measure of audio power, but rather, a measure of electric power. I then derived the physically correct measure of audio power from first principles. What my equation does not account for is the fact that human ears are subjective, which means that we hear frequencies with the same power differently. This is one of the reasons why people good at mixing have "great ears." I also showed why two frequencies with the same amplitude, but an octave apart, would have 4 times the power for the higher frequency. Power as a function of frequency and amplitude explains why frequency spectrums of mixes decrease as frequencies increase. It also explains how pink noise is computed (each frequency is generated with the same power, which means their amplitude decreases linearly in a db scale).

Everybody's hearing is different, which means that frequency-corrected measures of loudness are subjective. It's why they curve-fitted frequency-corrected audio power in the document you posted. But what makes this approach even worse is the fact that audio perception by humans is not linear in terms of volume. So as we increase the volume, different frequencies (e.g., low low and very high frequencies) begin to pop out in our human perception as being too loud and as we lower the volume, the same frequencies disappear from the mix (e.g., low and very high frequencies). This is why a lot of music alarm clocks have a loudness button that increases low and high frequencies. People like to wake up to soft and soothing music, but when you play music really soft, you lose the bass and highs, and when you turn up the volume, the bass and highs are dominating.

This is why mixing is really hard...

So, any frequency corrected definition of loudness is subjective and a function of the volume. Keep in mind that a wav file has no volume setting. That is controlled by your amplifier. The LUFS measure might be a good measure of perceived loudness at a fixed (medium) volume, but it is not a general representation of the actual power of the audio. It is also not a simple computation, which means that it drains CPU resources when you use it. My metric is simply a true measure of the audio power across all frequencies. It works great for normalizing my drum samples, and I believe it would work great for other sampled instruments with different dynamic layers or multiple mic setups...

I'm not saying that LUFS has no use or is wrong. But, it has major problems. I am saying that RMS is junk and should not be used by anybody ever again. We need a true audio power plug-in for metering to replace RMS. My equation is super simple to implement, very efficient, and extremely accurate. I actually did an analysis of a composition I wrote some years ago where I plotted RMS over time (over the whole composition) and then the actual audio power using my true audio power approach. The two plots are very different. For example, I had some xylophone hits in the composition and they popped right out in my audio power plot, but were buried in the RMS plot.

I hope this helps.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (May 10, 2021)

davidanthony said:


> I'm confused as to why frequencies matter when it comes to evaluating an equation for normalizing samples in a library? Unless I'm understanding it incorrectly the equal loudness contours of the ear are basically a filter that our brains apply to the input, so I don't understand why the math used to produce the signal feeding them needs to account for them.
> 
> Makes sense when using something like LUFS to appreciate loudness across different program material, but for setting dynamic layers?


You are right. For normalizing velocity layers, audio power is the right metric to use because the samples essentially are made of the same frequencies (cymbals sound like cymbals, snare drums sound like snare drums, etc.). So, my audio power equation treats them all the same way and is a true measure even with human perception of frequencies being different. What the audio power approach does (vs just normalizing the samples) is eliminate spikes in the audio that occur by chance. Again, think of a cymbal vibrating in a crazy way where the frequencies picked up by each mic could randomly spike. When you look at cymbals, the peak in the wav file often comes much later than the initial hit of the cymbal. It is too random to rely on normalization (the approach most libraries use). The audio power approach over a meaningful time window eliminates these random spikes in the amplitude and gives a much truer representation of the audio loudness.


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## synthesizerwriter (May 10, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> I hear you... It is funny to me how composers using virtual instruments work hard to include rings and rattles to make tracks sound real, while recording engineers do everything they can to cut out those things to make tracks sound good. There is a balance between these two things, but I definitely lean towards making tracks sound good. One of the examples of this sort of thing that I sometimes do on drums is have parts going that really could not be played by a real drummer, at least not by one drummer...


I'm intrigued by the thought of taking 'rings and rattles' and deliberately recording those, to the extent of as much exclusion of the parent drum sound as possible. The resulting 'nurnies' (the word that 3D CGI people use for little bits of added detail) would seem to be a very interesting way of extending the creative breadth/scope of what already sounds like an amazingly detailed piece of work!


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## WarpIV (May 10, 2021)

synthesizerwriter said:


> I'm intrigued by the thought of taking 'rings and rattles' and deliberately recording those, to the extent of as much exclusion of the parent drum sound as possible. The resulting 'nurnies' (the word that 3D CGI people use for little bits of added detail) would seem to be a very interesting way of extending the creative breadth/scope of what already sounds like an amazingly detailed piece of work!


I am going to add adjustable snare noise to toms and kicks as an option. So, that will get much of what you are looking for. Also, even though I took great care to mount everything as clean as possible, there still is some rattle, etc., just from the recordings.


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## WarpIV (May 10, 2021)

Lindon said:


> Also I think you should be careful attempting to take a theory that seems to work when applied to a sine waves and extrapolation it to the real world..... where audio almost never emulates a sine wave...


The sin wave was just to get the discussion started with something extremely simple. I wanted to point out that the loudness does not come from the peaks, which is when the speaker stops and then moves in the opposite direction, but rather the zero crossing. It explains why compression and limiting work so well (you are cutting out the part of the waveform that has the least amount of audio power).

My audio power equation works across any audio mix, not just sin waves.

Jeff


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## synthesizerwriter (May 10, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> I am going to add adjustable snare noise to toms and kicks as an option. So, that will get much of what you are looking for. Also, even though I took great care to mount everything as clean as possible, there still is some rattle, etc., just from the recordings.


Wow!


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## Lindon (May 11, 2021)

davidanthony said:


> I'm confused as to why frequencies matter when it comes to evaluating an equation for normalizing samples in a library? Unless I'm understanding it incorrectly the equal loudness contours of the ear are basically a filter that our brains apply to the input, so I don't understand why the math used to produce the signal feeding them needs to account for them.
> 
> Makes sense when using something like LUFS to appreciate loudness across different program material, but for setting dynamic layers?


Frequencies DONT matter when normalizing samples - but that's not what we are discussing - we are discussing loudness, and for my part perceived loudness (which is quite different I will grant). Nothing I've said is about approaches to normalizing.


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## Lindon (May 11, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> Lindon,
> 
> First, thank you for the dialog. I enjoy talking about audio to people... I hope this is interesting to you (and others) too.
> 
> ...


Ok well , *I* think you are confusing "audio power", for which RMS may be a rubbish approach, with "loudness" - which you explain is subjective, and frequency dependent. But all of this stems from your original question "which is the loudest part of a sine wave", which you then use to extrapolate into an approach for "audio power". I guess all I am saying is that these two are not the same, but you seem to be saying the same thing as me above - so now we are disappearing down a pointless rabbit hole of minutiae, so lets stop now, because I think we are furiously agreeing about loudness. 

So if your algorithm works - then great - build a plugin that uses it and demonstrate its usefulness beyond the normal gain reduction display in several existing software compressors.


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## WarpIV (May 11, 2021)

Hi Everybody,

We've had a lot of interesting discussion on the subject of audio loudness and I am guessing that some of you following this thread are confused. So, I would like to summarize and clarify everything one last time. I am hoping that this thread (within my main thread on the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit) will be helpful, not just for sample library developers but for anybody mixing and mastering their own compositions and wondering what is actually going on with audio in their mixes.

First, it is important to understand that each speaker moves in and out in a manner that mimics the audio channels in the wav file. As a speaker moves, it pushes and pulls the air molecules that are in front of it, which gives the air molecules kinetic energy. It is the energy of the moving air molecules that translates to audio power.

Second, I showed that RMS is junk. It is a measure of electrical power that your audio hardware consumes when it plays your composition. It is not a measure of audio power. For reference, here is the equation for RMS, where s(i) represents sample i in a time window.

RMS = sqrt[(s(1) x s(1) + s(2) x s(2) + ..., + s(N) x s(N)) / N]

The real measure of audio power from physics is derived by recognizing that the air molecules in front of each speaker essentially move with the speaker and that their energy is 1/2 x Mass x (Velocity x Velocity). The velocity (or speed) of the speaker is easily derived from the wav file as we recognize that the distance the speaker moves between two successive samples is proportional to the difference between the two samples (i.e., from one sample to the next, here is how much the speaker moves). The time (T) between two successive samples is simply one divided by the sample rate. So, the measure of kinetic energy between two successive samples (denoted as sample i and sample i+1) in a wav file is represented by the following equation.

ds(i) = (s(i+1) - s(i)) / T
Energy per air molecule is therefore proportional to ds(i) * ds(i).

So, the key is that instead of simply squaring samples and averaging them over a time window (the RMS approach), we should really be taking the difference between samples, squaring them, and averaging them over a time window.

Of course, the total energy is proportional to speaker size (which impacts how many air molecules are moved by the speaker), speaker design, amplification, mass of air molecules, etc... We can ignore all of these constants and just focus on the speed derived from the wav file.

Power is defined as average energy over time. So, the way to compute audio power is to add up a bunch of squared ds(i) terms over a time window and then divide by the number of terms (N) to get their average. That is the equation of audio power from a purely phyics perspective. It does not involve human factors such as people hearing frequencies differently. It is simply the total raw power of the audio.

Audio Power = (ds(1) x ds(1) + ds(2) x ds(2) + ..., + ds(N) x ds(N)) / N

When it comes to perceived loudness, it is important to recognize that everybody's hearing is different. For example, we do not generally hear frequencies above 20KHz very well (although some people apparently do). Also, perceived loudness of different frequencies is highly non-linear in terms of their amplitude. This is why many audio alarm clocks have a loudness switch (so you can hear the lows and highs even when music is played softly - but if you turned up the volume, the lows and highs would be too loud).

Now, switching gears...

From a mathematical perspective, you can represent any function of time as a sum of sin waves, each with a different amplitude and phase shift. In the continuous (analog) world, this is done mathematically by something called a Fourier Transform. In the discrete (digitally sampled) world, it is done through a Fourier Series. A special algorithm, known as the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), was developed to super-efficiently take a series of samples over time and turn them into a sum of sin waves. What you essentially get is the following.

F(t) = A1 x sin(w1 x t) + A2 x sin(w2 x t) + A3 x sin(w3 x t) + ... AN x sin(wN x t)

In this equation, wi represents a frequency derived from the FFT.

The idea is that F(t) perfectly replicates the samples over the window used to compute the FFT. From physics and calculus, we know that the velocity (speed) is the time derivative of this function. And we know that the derivative of a A x sin(w x t) = A x w x cos(w x t). The important thing is this. The power at any time t, (determined by squaring F(t)) has terms such as (Ai x Ai) x (wi x wi) x cos(wi x t) x cos(wi x t) and then there are all of the cross terms. It turns out that when averaged over the same time window that was used to compute the FFT, the cross terms all cancel out and the cos (wi x t) x cos(wi x t)( terms all average to 1/2. Ignoring all of the constants, all that is left is the following.

Audio Power = (A1 x A1) x (w1 x w1) + (A2 x A2) x (w2 x w2) + ..., A(N x An) x (wn x wN)

This is where we get the audio power of each frequency being proportional to the square of the frequency. It explains why high frequencies sound louder than low frequencies, why it is so hard to mix bass, pink noise, etc.

These two Audio Power equations (mine and the one derived from the FFT) are identical (or at least proportional). What LUFS does is multiply each frequency by an empirically derived weight to form a new "perceived" definition of Audio Power that would more accurately reflect what an average human would perceive at some reference level of amplification. Of course it does not match each individual perfectly and it could be wildly off as the volume of the audio changes (i.e., music played loud, soft, medium, etc.).

So, LUFS attempts to relate Audio Power to some reference human perception, while my simple equation is the actual audio power from a pure physics perspective. In any case, RMS is junk and should not be used because it is not a measure of audio power at all. My physics-based equation for audio power is much better and is not subjective to human perception.

Here is why using physics-based audio power works great for sample libraries. When you hit a drum or cymbal, what is really happening is that the kinetic energy from the stick is imparted onto the drum or cymbal. We want the audio power to represent that energy. This is exactly what my equation for power captures. It is the true energy imparted from the stick to the drum or cymbal, not some distorted representation of what humans would hear.

The other reason why the physics-based audio power approach works so well for drums and cymbals, and why it would be better than RMS, Normalization based on peak sample, or even LUFS, is to remember that human perception of frequencies is non-linear in terms of their amplitude. Use of drums in musical compositions generally have a huge dynamic range, which could cause LUFS to break down.

Finally, I want to go back to my original question, "Which part of a perfect sin wave is the loudest?). This was just a (admittedly loaded) teaser to get us to think about audio power using a simple example. My goal was to provide an intuitive perspective about audio and to generate lively discussion... Remembering that the air molecules in front of the speaker move with the speaker, we get a very unintuitive result. The speaker stops and reverses direction at the peaks of the sin wave, which means that right at the peaks, the air molecules have no energy. The speaker (and therefore the air molecules) actually move fastest at the zero crossings. Most people naturally think that the peaks in their wav files (not just sin waves) have the most power, but actually it is at the peaks where the speaker stops and changes direction. In other words, it is at the peaks of our wav files where the audio energy is minimal. This is why compression and limiting work so well. What these effects do is compress the audio right where the audio power is smallest. So the resulting distortion from compression and limiting (up to a point) is often imperceptible. We get louder mixes (at least up to a point) almost for free.

Anyway, I hope all of this is helpful to people reading this post. I tried to provide a solid foundation for how we normalize our drum samples across dynamic boundaries and how we accurately mix multiple mics. But, I also hope that this discussion has been helpful for anyone wanting to better understand the physics and mathematics of audio. These concepts have really helped me formulate my strategy for mixing and mastering in my own compositions. I just wish I had better ears...

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## davidanthony (May 11, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> for anybody mixing and mastering their own compositions and wondering what is actually going on with audio in their mixes.


Thanks for this, Jeff. I have to admit I've been using LUFS metering (standard for most broadcast deliverables and parts of the music industry as well) without having a clue about how it actually works under the hood, and this thread has prompted me to try to address that ignorance.

If you have some time, could you expand on this paragraph?



WarpIV said:


> What LUFS does is multiply each frequency by an empirically derived weight to form a new "perceived" definition of Audio Power that would more accurately reflect what an average human would perceive at some reference level of amplification. Of course it does not match each individual perfectly and it could be wildly off as the volume of the audio changes (i.e., music played loud, soft, medium, etc.).



Specifically the last part -- are you saying that something in the weighting of the equation allows for
"disproportionate" results in terms of actual perception (recognizing there's no universal perception, but just to an "average" listener with decent hearing) vs. the LUFS number?

The reason this is important is some deliverables actually require you to hit a certain LUFS measurement as measured over the duration of a piece (not just peak levels), so I'm wondering if strategically boosting or cutting certain frequencies at certain volumes could make sense as a strategy in order to "hit" loudness targets. E.g. if something like a 30hz bump measuring 65 dbC at reference volume is almost perceptually undetectable but accounts for a disproportionate bump in the LUFS measurement, it may make sense to dynamically high pass content in order to bring the average into range..

Unfortunately given how resistant to change the industry is, it's doubtful the standard will change for some time, even in the face of a superior alternative (I won't pretend to be able to evaluate the mathematically quality of your equation but the logic strikes me as correct!) So if you can't beat em, join em...


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## WarpIV (Aug 20, 2021)

Ok, after being swamped with work from my software company (which is a good thing), I'm back on the drum library, at least for a while!

Just so everybody knows, we have completed all of the recordings and most of the editing, so the remaining work is getting the samples into Kontakt and upgrading some of the programming.

We completed the other two hi hats in the collection and I put a demo together featuring these two new sets. All of the demos I previously posted were the Zildjian K Constantinople 14" hi hats, so you have already heard them. These new demos that I am posting feature the 14" Paiste Signature Series and the 14" Meinl Byzanth. I have attached 5 demos to help you hear what everything sounds like. Two demos are the full composition, two are just the drums, cymbals, and percussion, and one is everything except drums. All of the tracks are WarpIV sampled instruments (trumpets, trombones, saxes, flute, bass, guitars).

In these demos, most of the cymbal sounds are hi hats at various openings, but I added three Zildjian K splash cymbals (8", 10". and 12") and either a matching 22" Meinl or 22" Paiste Ride cymbal for the cymbal swells. The Paiste hi hat demo used a 13x3 Pearl Piccolo Maple Snare and the Meinl hi hat demo used a 13x3 Pearl Piccolo Brass Snare that is tuned a little higher than the Maple snare. The two snares are actually pretty similar and I think they sound great. There are two kicks, one a tight kick with pillow dampening and the other is an open kick that is boomier and with more reverb. There are also finger snaps, 3 cowbells, and Meinl red/black woodblocks. I did not use any toms in these demos.

The next thing we will focus on is getting all of the snare drums into Kontakt. I think that will take a few weeks. Once that is done, I will put some demos together so you can hear what the snares sound like. I'll probably just do some solo snares first because the type of snare used in a composition really depends on the style of the composition. So, great snares for some genres will sound really bad in others. My hope is that you will all get to hear what each of them sounds like and what they can do.

Meanwhile, let me know what you think of these hi hat demos...

Thanks,
Jeff Steinman


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## davidanthony (Aug 20, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> let me know what you think of these hi hat demos...


The way the hats decay is impressive. I'm not sure I would have picked them out as samples without the benefit of knowing! The only "giveaway" to me was the open/close but again I think that was just because I was being hyper vigilant, doubt I'd notice in a mix. Well done!


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## Markastellor (Aug 21, 2021)

Sounds promising.


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## WarpIV (Aug 21, 2021)

davidanthony said:


> The way the hats decay is impressive. I'm not sure I would have picked them out as samples without the benefit of knowing! The only "giveaway" to me was the open/close but again I think that was just because I was being hyper vigilant, doubt I'd notice in a mix. Well done!


The reason why the decays sound good is that when a new note is played, the old note fades out with a reasonable tail. This allows the hi hat (and cymbals) to build. You might also notice the cymbal swells that were created on the 22" rides. They were created with single hits.

I think when you said open/close, you were referring to what I call mutes (the open hi hat is hit on its edge and then quickly closed). I have mutes for all the cymbals as well, where they are crashed and then quickly muted by hand. I tried to get a lot of the articulations in, so perhaps I overdid those...

One more thing that I thought I would mention. I use Ozone 9 for mastering. One of the things I like to do is compare the frequency response of the entire mix with a reference. I use Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band for this. Those mixes are incredible. Anyway, with other drum libraries, I would always get a bump in the bass frequencies and a loss in the very high frequencies. With my drum libraries, I do not get a loss in the very high frequencies, but actually a little rise, and the bump in the bass frequecies is also gone. I think this is because the microphones I used to record everything are ridiculously good. The top mic has a flat (within 1 db) frequency response of 3 Hz to 50 KHz and the two side mics are also flat )within 1 db) with a frequency response of 7 Hz to 30 KHz. I think capturing the really high frequencies does not really add treble to the mix, but rather, it gives everything more clarity, which makes it easier to listen to without tiring your ears. I'm really happy with the tone, clarity, expression (57 articulations), and naturalness of the hi hats.

Thanks for the feedback,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Sep 1, 2021)

Here is the same demo with the Zildjian K Constantinople 14" hi hats, Zildjian K Constantinople 22" ride cymbal, and the Pearl Masterworks 14x5 snare tuned a little low. The Zildjians are a bit brighter than the Paiste and Meinl hi hats and cymbals used in the previous demos, so they might sound a little louder in the mix. I've included both the full composition and the solo drums so you can hear everything clearly.

I've also finished putting all of the snare drums into Kontakt and have a basic demo that goes through most of the 35 articulations that are in each snare. I plan to post some of these demos over the next few days. For anyone interested, it might help me to get feedback on what you want to hear. For example, I can provide versions showing separate mics, dry/wet, ring filters, with/without effects, etc.

These are the main snare drums that are in the library.

Pearl Masterworks Snare 14x5 (tuned medium and low)
Pearl Masterworks Snare 14x8 (tuned medium)
Pearl Piccolo Brass Snare 13x3 (tuned high)
Pearl Piccolo Maple Snare 13x3 (tuned medium)
Black Swamp Mercury Maple Snare 14x4 (tuned hi, medium, and low)
TAMA SLP Black Brass Snare 14x6.5 (tuned high and low)
Ludwig Supraphonic Snare 14x6.5 (tuned medium and low)

Each of them is unique and great for their specific genres. Here is my take... The Pearl Masterworks 14x5 is a classic fantastic sounding snare that can be used in just about everything. The Pearl Masterworks 14x8 has a deeper and more resonant tone that is great for rock or as a second snare in a mix. The two Pearl Piccolo snares (Maple and Brass) have a lot of pop and ring; they are great for jazz/fusion/pop genres. The Black Swamp snare is super tight and is amazing for very precise orchestral genres, but it can also be used for jazz/fusion/pop (especially with the medium and low tunings). The TAMA SLP snare is amazing for rock or pop; I think it is the best sounding rock snare you can buy. Finally, the widely recorded Ludwig Supraphonic snare has a classic thud-like sound for pop/rock genres, where it truly comes alive in the mix.

All of the snares have tons of controls that you can use to really tailor the sound just the way you want.

There are actually three more TAMA Metalworks Effects Snares (6", 8", and 10") in the library too that I will be working on next. They have their own set of articulations. Once these are done, all of the drums and cymbals are in Kontakt and I will be able to put more demos together. We still have a variety of percussion instruments to edit, but those will get done pretty quickly.

One more thing that I am considering doing (it depends on how taxes go this year). I am thinking about buying a 5-set timpani package for the library. They come in different sizes and will cost me about $25,000 for the package if I decide to do this. I think I can create the best sounding timpani library ever produced using all of the same recording techniques that I am using in the monster drum kit library, but yikes, I better make some sales for that kind of investment...


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## WarpIV (Sep 3, 2021)

I just finished editing the three (6", 8", and 10") TAMA Metalworks Effect Snares and put a little 30 second demo together. It took me about an hour, so it is no brilliant work of art... Really, it was just testing everything out, but I think you might get a kick out of it. These three snares are really unique. They have no bottom heads. The actual snares are on the inside of the drum under the top head. The drums are only 3 inches thick. I recorded them with four settings, no snare (kind of a high-pitch timbale sound), loose snares, normal snares, and tight snares. The demo features the three snares with their tight setting. The demo also uses the Meinl hi hats, the 20 inch gong tom tuned high with a tight attack and decay, and a much deeper 22 inch gong tom also with tight attack and decay. The bass is the WarpIV Electric Bass with basically nothing fancy going on...


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## WarpIV (Sep 18, 2021)

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would put another demo together featuring the TAMA SLP Black Brass Snare drum (hi tuning) in a jazz-rock setting. I wanted to hear if it sounded as good in rock as I thought it would (you can be the judge if it has the perfect rock sound - I'd love to hear your feedback). The demo uses the damped snare articulation for the main beat where moon gel was used to reduce the overtones. If you listen carefully, you can hear some of the other snare articulations too that were used throughout. I used the Chris Loyd Alge Waves plugin to help bring out the snare sound that I wanted.

REMatrix was used for the drum reverb.

The kit features the Meinl Byzanth 14" hi hats, just about all of the cymbals in the kit (Paiste Signature Collection, Meinl Byzanth Collection, Zildjian K Constantinople Collection, 22" and 18" Paiste China 602s, and Zildjian K Splashes), all of the toms (6", 8", 10", 12", two 14", 16", and 18") recorded with P4 heads (which have a built-in ring that dampens the tones a bit - note that all toms have 6 variations in heads, tuning, etc., so this demo features just one of the 6 variations), and 20" and 22" gong toms. The toms and gong toms use only Kontakt effects. I did that because I wanted to see if I could get a great tom sound without using external plugins specially designed for drums. I used EQ to brighten up the highs, solid bus compression to slightly squash the tom hits, and the transient master effect to adjust attack and sustain. I also took out some of the primary tone of the toms using the Ring feature in my Kontakt instruments (it lets you adjust key frequencies to really give you control over the tone of each instrument). That gave the toms a more modern percussive sound. I also took out the unwanted gong-like (low) tones in the cymbals using the Ring feature in my drum library so that the cymbals all sound great. Most of the crash cymbal hits in the demo use the Sweet Crash articulation, which provide samples of perfectly hit crashes (note, there is a technique in hitting crash cymbals to get the magic sound of a perfect crash - you don't just pound the cymbal...).

You might notice the 22" Meinl ride cymbal during the guitar solo (it has a more percussive dark sound) and the 22" Paiste Signature ride cymbal (it has a brighter tone with a more sustained ring) in the busy section of the demo where a lot is going on. Not used in the demo is the 22" Zildjian K Constantinople ride which I would say sits right between the Meinl and Paste rides. The toms in the last section of the demo sound a little different because I used a lot of rim shots to accent some of the hits. The demo ends with a muted crash cymbal.

I've included four mp3 files that I think will help you hear things: (1) the full demo, (2) just the drums, (3) just the instruments without drums, and (4) a standalone test I made of the TAMA SLP Black Brass snare that runs it through all of its articulations.

One more thing that I will mention is that all of the drums and cymbals use their full sustain and decay. The snare and hi hat were set up to cross fade between successive hits with a tail of 200 milliseconds. Those settings are just right to not have buzzes (during rolls and ruffs) overlap hits and for hi hat hits (e.g., when the hi hat is closed by the foot, etc.) to quickly dampen previous hits in just the right way.

If you get a chance to listen to the solo snare drum demo, you will hear various tones recorded as (a) damped, (b) hit in the middle, (c) hit halfway between the middle and the edge, (d) hit on the far edge. Buzzes are used to create drum rolls. Samples are hit in the middle, edge, and far edge. There are several rim shots (normal, far edge, side stick, and some others...). Brushes were recorded muted (one brush hits the drum while the other brush lays on the drum as if it were doing a swirl) and open (which you would use when doing hits with both hands). There are also slaps and swirls used to create expressive brush patterns. I should also mention that the solo snare drum demo does use the REMatrix reverb to bring out a realistic tone. Remember, the actual samples are recorded totally dry...

Again, I'd love to hear feedback. Who knows, you might help me make the library better...

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## davidanthony (Sep 29, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> I'd love to hear your feedback


Hey Jeff, hope you're well! Finally had a chance to listen to all these demos. Some nice progress! 

As to whether it's the perfect rock drum, I don't have enough experience in the genre to offer any kind of helpful opinion, but a couple general things that came to mind:

1. Are you able to change the location of the various drums in the mix? Hearing snare come out of the R channel sounds strange to me as that's not how I'm accustomed to micing drumsets, and I think a lot of drummers would probably appreciate the opportunity to tweak the mix to reflect their real-world kit preferences.

2. I know you've recorded all kinds of articulations. I would love to hear some more examples of those, preferably dry and at slower BPMs? Things like ghost notes on the snare, tip-shank on hi-hat, or the classic sprang-a-lang on the ride are things that I don't think any library does particularly well and would really set a modern library apart. I've attached an mp3 with the kind of patterns I'd be interested in hearing if they're a possibility.


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## WarpIV (Sep 29, 2021)

Hi David, first thanks for the feedback.

Response to Comment 1:

I think you are referring to the demo of the TAMA Metalworks Effects Snares on the snare coming from the right channel. That demo had three snares, the 6", 8", and 10" snares, so I panned them differently to increase the effect. They are not normal snares as you can hear from the demo... And of course, you can pan every drum or cymbal however you want. You can even dial in how much of the 3D effect you want (where I delay Left-Right mics depending on how you panned the instrument to account for the delay the sound would have as it reaches your ears) and you can turn on or off the panning of the Left-Right (Side) mics too when they mix (dry) with the Top or Bottom mic. My preference is to not pan the Left-Right mics and only pan the Top (or Bottom) mic with the 3D effect. You still get a great pan, but without losing the stereo sound. The Left-Right mics are also fed into the reverb output evenly (I don't pan them for reverb) because this gives (in my view) the best 3D room sound.

Response to Comment 2:

I can upload some more of my tests that run the drums through their articulations. One of the demos I uploaded (I'm not sure if you listened to it) was the 14x6.5 TAMA SLP Black Brass Snare. The demo has reverb and some effects turned on. I could turn all of that off so you can hear the dry samples. They will sound weird, but that might be helpful to you so you know what you're really getting...

I think a lot of the realistic sounds you are looking for almost have to be played live to get the feel of a real drummer. I know that I have all of the articulations and dynamics to capture live playing realism. A lot of my tests run through the dynamics to make sure they are virtually seamless. When I recorded the drums (especially the snares, which have 7 dynamics for all of the various hits), the loudest dynamics were basically hitting the drum as hard as I could and the softest dynamics were barely tapping the drum. So I know I captures the full dynamic range...

I do have an electronic drum kit (Yamaha DTX950 - it's basically a $10,000 kit - but it is kind of old now), so perhaps I will play a few beats as I put some demos together. Normally, I just program the drums on the computer, so it is a little harder to capture the live sound and feel.

I'll try to upload more demos (especially ones that people might ask for) over time as I go along. Right now, I am working on the Timbales, which were recorded using all of my snares with high and low tunings, but without bottom heads or snares. Those will probably be the next things I demo (Latin). By the way, I think the Timbales that I've put together so far really sound great. I love Timbales...

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Sep 29, 2021)

davidanthony said:


> Hey Jeff, hope you're well! Finally had a chance to listen to all these demos. Some nice progress!
> 
> As to whether it's the perfect rock drum, I don't have enough experience in the genre to offer any kind of helpful opinion, but a couple general things that came to mind:
> 
> ...


Sorry David, I wrote a reply to your message, but did it on the general topic instead of yours specifically. So I hope you get a chance to read my response. One more thing that I will add. I have dome some testing of my library on my Yamaha DTX950 kit. One of the things I tested is playing rolls on the snare drum. The library captures buzz articulations that you can use to construct your own rolls with whatever dynamics you want. But when you play rolls on an electronic kit, it uses single hits to construct the rolls. So, I was curious how rolls constructed from single hits played live sound. The result was that the rolls sound perfect. It's because (1) the edits are super tight so there is no delay between hits and when the samples start, (2) the seven layers of dynamics really capture the right tone of live rolls being played, and (3) because of the way I cross fade notes that are played in succession. Because the previous note fades out when the next note is played, there is a slight buildup of tone with the cross fade, which is very realistic. The cross fade effect is even more prominent on cymbals where the buildup ring of the cymbal is more pronounced.


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## davidanthony (Sep 29, 2021)

WarpIV said:


> So I hope you get a chance to read my response


Sounds promising, looking forward to hearing more!


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## WarpIV (Oct 16, 2021)

Hi Everyone,

Ok, we have now finished editing all of the timbales and they are in Kontakt 5. I put a Latin-Jazz demo together to test how they sound within an arrangement. All of the drum effects (EQ, Compression, and Transients) are from Kontakt, so other than reverb, everything is self-contained in Kontakt. My goal with effects is to bring out the excitement of the drums without making them sound processed and without requiring people to use other drum effects plugins. Note that I could have used the various reverbs provided by Kontakt, but I wanted to use a higher quality reverb that matches (or is the same) as the reverb used in the rest of the composition so everything sounds like it is being played in the same room.

The timbales were recorded using all of the snares in the library without bottom heads (kind of like concert toms for snares, but with higher tunings). I took great care to eliminate any rattle that might come from the bottom lugs during recordings (note, real timbales would not have bottom lugs). Each timbale has a high and low tuning so they come in pairs. I think the sound of all of them are really good and authentic sounding.

So, here are the timbales we have.

Pearl Masterworks 14x5
Pearl Piccolo Brass 13x3
Pearl Piccolo Maple 13x3
Black Swamp Mercury 14x4
TAMA SLP Black Brass 14x6.5
Ludwig Supraphonic 14x6.5

Each one of these has 12 articulations. You can hear them in the demo if you listen carefully.

Center (7 dynamics)
Edge (7 dynamics)
Far Edge (7 dynamics)
Rim Shot (1 dynamic)
Rim Shot Edge (1 dynamic)
Rim (3 dynamics)
Buzz Center (5 dynamics)
Buzz Edge (5 dynamics)
Buzz Far Edge (5 dynamics)
Flam (5 dynamics)
Brush (7 dynamics)
Brush Slap (1 dynamic)

In addition to these main timbales, there are also the TAMA Metalworks Effects Snares (6", 8", and 10") that can also be used as timbales (with snares off) to form three more.

What this means is that all of the drums and cymbals in the library are essentially done...

What is left are various percussion instruments (there are a lot of them). I'm also adding some additional features to the library, such as being able to add snares (with full control over the mic settings) to the toms, timbales, and kicks. I'm also looking at creating presets for sculpting the sound of drums and/or processing effects in output channels. My goal is to keep everything in Kontakt. Then comes the hard part... Creating patterns (some of the work is already done, but there is a lot more to do)... I might release a first version of the library that does not have the pattern feature if there is enough interest in people getting started early.

I'm also at a place where I really need feedback from professional composers as the interface and set of features becomes finalized. If there is enough interest, maybe we could do a zoom meeting in the near future where I can walk through the library and demonstrate how it works. It would be a great time for anybody interested to actually see it, ask questions, and make helpful suggestions while there is time before everything gets finalized. Perhaps we are getting close now to beta testing with volunteers who might also be interested in helping me with demos.

Anyway, this demo features the Pearl Piccolo 13x3 Brass Timbale along with the matching Pearl Piccolo 13x3 Brass Snare. It uses the three cowbells hit with the tip of the stick instead of the edge. I also added the WarpIV bongos, which are part of the monster drum kit library. The rest of the drums and cymbals is the same monster drum kit setup used in the rock demo I previously uploaded. Of course, all of the trumpets, trombones, saxes, flute, and clarinet come from the WarpIV PRO Hollywood Brass and Woodwind Collection. The electric bass and guitars are also WarpIV PRO instruments.

I'm one of those composers who does not play parts in with a keyboard. Everything is entered in with the mouse, so forgive me if things sound a bit too quantized... Also, there is some cutting and pasting of parts, so some of the drum patterns repeat a bit... I hope you will mainly listen to the drum sounds.

I've uploaded three mp3 files: (1) full arrangement, (2) drums and percussion only, (3) no drums.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Feb 21, 2022)

FYI, I just posted a thread on the "Mixing, Post-Production, and Effects" forum to discuss mixing drums. I am facing the dilemma of what effects are needed for the WarpIV 3D Monster Drum Kit library, etc. In particular, I am looking at issues involving EQ. If you are interested in what I am doing and have some thoughts on mixing drums, please check out my post. I am really looking for feedback and I very much appreciate any expert (or non-expert) advise... I think the technical discussion is much broader than just my library, and the discussion might help everybody produce better mixes, so I posted it there.

Thanks,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Apr 23, 2022)

Hi Everyone,

It has been a while since I posted an update. We have completed all of the editing of the drums and cymbals for the drum library and are working on the percussion (which there are a lot of - much of that is done too). Everything is in Kontakt and the basic scripts are all in place. But, there are some features involving effects that I am still experimenting with. I'm at the stage where I'm putting demos together to try out different combinations of effects and then I need to develop the interface for controlling them, along with presets for different genres. To keep everything "in the box", the only effects I am assuming are those provided by Kontakt. So, here is what I am thinking (I'd love to get feedback).

For the snare, rack toms, floor toms (including gong toms), and kick, the order of effects that will go into the dry channel outputs (note, there is a separate channel for each of these) is the following.

1. Very tight (algorithmic) reverb. What this does is smooth out the fadeout tail of the drum if you decrease the sustain and decay in the user interface I provide. The tight reverb makes the drum sound more natural, while still sounding fairly dry. Note that the purpose of this is not to give the drum reverb, but just to smooth out the decay. Reverb for everything has its own separate output channel, which you can feed into the high quality reberb you are using for the rest of your mix (so the drums sound like they are being played in the same room).

2. Three-band EQ. The main purpose of this is to increase the broad higher frequencies to give the drum more pop. Note that I plan to add a high and low pass filter in the interface for each instrument to cut out bass frequencies that do not belong, and/or cut out high frequencies that you may not want.

3. Transient master. This allows you to play with the attack and sustain. I suspect that this may not be heavily used in practice because you can control the attack and sustain by playing with the mix of the top mic (heavy attack) and the left-right mics that have their attacks optionally faded in. I will probably set the mix of these in default instruments and kits, but users may still want to play with attacks and sustains without going into the instrument and making changes.

4. Finally, the last effect is the maximizer. I suspect that this may also not be heavily used because if you are like me, I feed the entire dry drum track through a (high-quality, e.g., ozone 9) maximizer in my DAW.

What this means is that most users will focus on the tight reverb and EQ effects. I should also mention that each drum is its own Kontakt instrument and you can control 3 resonances (typically the root pitch and a couple of other resonances) that you may want to either enhance or reduce. Probably the biggest use case for the 3 resonance controls is to get rid of the gong-like root tone of cymbals. It really cleans up cymbal crashes. My biggest issue with Kontakt effects is that the EQ is not tight enough to do precision cuts of resonant frequencies. But, oh well...

I spent quite a while exploring the use of very tight EQ for the drums and have decided to not go down that path. But, users can do that if they want in their DAW, especially for the snare and kick, which have their own output channels. Multiple toms go to the rack and floor tom output channels, so it is harder to isolate them unless you have a small kit with one tom for the rack and one tom for the floor.

I've put a few new demos together. Here is one of them. It is a big band arrangement that only uses WarpIV virtual instruments. I've include three versions of the demo, (1) the full arrangement, (2) no drums so you can hear the other WarpIV instruments, and (3) drums and bass so you can really hear the drums. Note that the drums and bass track are kind of repetitious (without the other instruments) until you get a little less than 2 minutes into the track, which is when the Latin percussion section starts, so if you listen to the drum and bass track, you might want to skip over the first part of it. You might also notice that the no drum track includes the 4-octave roto-toms, which are kind of cool.

I'm thinking of releasing the first version of the drum library without the pattern capability (or at least a full set of patterns provided - maybe just user-created patterns will be supported). The patterns would allow you to hit a key and that starts a 1-bar, 2-bar, or 4-bar pattern to be played, which can repeat if you want. It will be a lot of work getting that part done.

Again, any feedback would be appreciated. Also, if any of you are interested in being (friendly) beta users and producing demos I can use, let me know. I mostly write jazz stuff, so I really need other genres, including orchestral, rock, country, pop, Latin, etc., and of course other types of jazz...

Thanks,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Jul 9, 2022)

I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I would give everyone an update on the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit Sample Library.

All of the recordings are done, most of the editing is done, and pretty much all of the scripting and user interfaces are done. I've decided to probably release version 1 of the library without patterns (i.e., you press a key on the keyboard and it plays a preset or editable pattern - I might still get this into version 1, so we will see).

First, we've been working hard on completing the percussion side of the library. Wind Chimes and Temple Blocks are done. Tamborines, finger cymbals, and triangle are edited and will be done soon. This leaves things like shakers, maracas, etc., to be completed down the road.

Now comes the real work I have been doing on perfecting the actual drums... One of the new features is the ability to add bottom head snares to any of the snares, toms, kicks, and gong toms. This gives more character and realism to each of these drums. You can control fade-in time, levels, and velocity dynamics for the snares. You can pick from any of the snares in the library to add to your drums, so there are a lot of options for customizing.

Another feature I have worked on is perfecting the 3 frequency filters for every instrument. The first frequency is always the root pitch of the instrument. It's what gives the instrument its tone and punch. The second two filters are annoying resonant frequencies that you probably want to cut out. If you listen carefully, you will actually hear drums playing chords that you really don't want. By cutting down the second two frequencies and boosting the root frequency, the drum has a much cleaner and punchier sound. Remember, the recordings are super clean, dry, and with no processing. So, by starting with the cleanest raw and dry samples, you can really carve out the sound you want and put it in any room.

Finally, the last thing I have been working on is perfecting the effects chain in the Kontakt output channels. Remember, the drum kit has separate outputs for kick, snare, rack tom, floor tom, hi hat, crash cymbal, ride cymbal, percussion, and room. Users will have the option of redirecting the room channel as a separate output (so you can use your favorite reverb plugin) or you can use any of the built-in Kontakt reverbs and have a single stereo Kontakt output (which is the easiest way to do things).

For the (dry) kick, snare, rack tom, and floor tom output channels, I have the same series of effects. First, is a 3 band EQ that lets you add crackle and pop where you want it and/or you can remove additional specific frequencies with a tight Q setting. Second is another 3 band EQ with wider Q settings (think more of a tone control). Third is the Transient Master effect that lets you increase or decrease the attack (to add punch) and also let's you shape the decay (i.e., to get rid of one rings that you don't want). Finally, the last effect is a very tight (algorithmic) reverb that eliminates any artifacts from the other effects (e.g., decays sound more real).

The crash and ride cymbals have an EQ effect (the default is to bypass it), followed by a transient master that lets you control attacks and decays.

The room channel has a convolution reverb that can be bypassed if you want to redirect the channel into a separate output for your DAW, where you can use your own reverb (e.g., the reverb you are using for the rest of your mix).

I've attached a demo (full mix, drums only, and no drums) where I actually use (test) all of these effects. The demo features the Pearl Maple Piccolo 13x3 Snare (it's one of my favorites), toms with ambassador heads, 20" and 22" gong toms panned left and right (kind of like 2 kicks), and the Meinl cymbal pack (14" hi hats, 22" ride, 20" and 18" crashes, and a 16" trash crash). It also features the Zildjian 8", 10", and 12" splash cymbals and the Paiste 602 18" and 22" China cymbals. Finally, and best of all, the demo uses the Latin Percussion rock cowbell.

My goal in the demo was to get a really punchy snare. Let me know what you think of the overall sound or if you think I'm missing anything in the effects chains. I'm now getting ready to focus on how in the world do I package this up into sellable products that can be expanded...

Thanks,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Jul 21, 2022)

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to give an update on an important new feature in the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit library that I hope you will all appreciate. I've set up a Tuning control in the interface that let's you accurately change the tuning of any drum, cymbal, or percussion by semi-tones (-12 to +12) and cents (-100 to +100). What is important about this is that the three frequencies used in the EQ filters (i.e., Ring1, Ring2, and Ring3 that let you cut out unwanted resonances or boost desirable ones such as root tones) shift when you change the tuning. Without this feature, changing the tuning (i.e., using the standard Kontakt Tune dial) would shift the resonances outside the EQ filters, leaving you with a not-so-great sound. One of the tests I did to make sure everything works properly is that I reconstructed the 4-octave Roto Toms and put a quick demo together (in a couple hours) to make sure everything sounds right. I've attached the demo, along with two screen shots of the main Instrument interface and the Engine interface. The demo also features the Black Swamp 14x4 orchestral snare with high tuning. It is a very crisp and precise snare that can be used for a lot of musical styles.

Just as a reminder about the EQ filters, the frequencies for Ring1, Ring2, and Ring3 were carefully determined by me using the spectrum tool in Ozone 9 and then listening very carefully. Each instrument comes with settings that I think are good, but you can change how much you cut or keep yourself. There is an Enable Filters button on the interface that lets you do A/B comparisons. It's very enlightening listening and doing comparisons.

I'm really at a good point in time now to do a live demo of the drum library on Zoom if anyone is interested. It would be a great opportunity for you to learn more about the library, ask questions, and it would give me some great feedback as the library matures into its final product (getting close). If you are interested in participating in this, leave a comment and let me know what time works best. If we get a couple people (or more), we'll do it! I can handle up to 100 people via Zoom.

I think having a live Zoom session will also benefit anyone intersted in the use of plugin effects for drums... I will probably demonstrate one of my snares and maybe a crash cymbal, starting from the raw unprocessed (dry) samples, to what each step in the interface and effects chain does to the sound...

Thanks,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Aug 15, 2022)

Hi Everyone,

Well, we're getting close to releasing the library. My deadline is November 3, where I will at the Taxi Road Rally in Los Angeles making my first sales. The last thing to complete the library is the Pattern Playback capability, which people using my library may or may not use...

I appreciate all of your patience as we near the release of this new library. I am still finalizing the price list of each package, but the products and packages will probably look something like this.

There will be a WarpIV PRO Starter 3D Drum Kit that is very basic, but still very powerful. It is designed to let users try out the library before making heavy investments. The Starter Kit will come with the following:

1. A single snare, the Pearl Masterworks 14x5 with Medium tuning (36 articulations), which is an extremely flexible snare for many genres. You can upgrade to get all of the snares later as an add-on.

2. A single kick, the Pearl Masterworks 22x18 with a circular hole in the bottom head, damping, and deep tuning. It is the tight kick that I use most often in my demos. You can upgrade later on to get all of the kicks and gong toms (which are very much like mounted kicks without bottom heads).

3. Zildjian Cymbal Pack, which includes the Zildjian K Constantinople series (hi hats with 56 articulations, 22 ride, 19 crash/ride, and 16 crash) and three Zildjian Custom K Dark splashes (12, 10, and 8). You can upgrade later on to include the Meinl Byzanth Cymbal Pack and the Paiste Signature Series Cymbal Pack, which also includes the Formula-602 18 and 22 China Cymbals.

4. Three toms with Remo Ambassador top and bottom heads (10x8 Pearl Masterworks, 14x12 Pearl Reference, 18x16 Pearl Masterworks). I include two tunings of the 10 and 14 toms, so the kit actually has 5 great-sounding toms. Note that you can upgrade later on to the full monster kit toms, which include 9 toms in 6 configurations (different drum heads, damping, concert toms with no bottom heads, etc.). They all sound very different and great for a variety of uses...

The second major product, or major upgrade from the starter kit, is the WarpIV PRO Basic 3D Monster Drum Kit. It contains all of the snares, kicks, gong toms, cymbal packs, two different sets of 9 toms with Remo Ambassador heads configured with and without bottom heads (concert toms), and cymbal stacks.

The third major product is the WarpIV PRO Full 3D Monster Drum Kit, which includes a ton of percussion instruments, 12 different timbales, 4-octave roto-toms, orchestral hand cymbals, and bongos.

Finally, I will set things up where you can do individual upgrades (e.g., just snares, individual cymbal packs, timbales, percussion, etc.).

I put a demo together yesterday to try out the starter kit. My goal at this point is to get the kits set up so that they sound great right out of the box. But, you can of course adjust everything as you want (and there are a lot of things you can do to dial-in the sound you want). The demo is kind of a play on Rocky and Bullwinkel. The demo also includes the 3-octave temple blocks that are included in the percussion package.

As usual, I have provided (1) the full arrangement, (2) just drums so you can really hear them, and then (3) no drums in case you want to hear the rest of the composition. All of the instruments in the demo are WarpIV PRO sample libraries (drums, trumpets, trombones, saxes/woodwinds, bass, guitar).

Any feedback is always welcome...

Thanks,
Jeff Steinman


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## Zanshin (Aug 16, 2022)

Sounds great.

Will you have intro pricing?

Black Friday sale on the brass and saxes maybe????


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## WarpIV (Aug 16, 2022)

I have put a preliminary price list together, but am still working out the details.

Basically, I plan to offer a 30% discount (compared to individual package pricing) for the two major upgrades to the starter kit. I am also thinking about throwing in the starter kit for anyone who purchases any of my other library bundles (trumpets, trombone, woodwinds, guitar/bass). Perhaps I will throw in the WarpIV PRO Basic 3D Monster Drum Kit for anyone who purchases the full collection of my other libraries (which are huge and fully articulated). That would be a MAJOR discount for any serious composer...

But for now, I am focusing on establishing non-discounted pricing. My hope is to get people going with the (affordable) starter kit and that once they get used to it, they will want to upgrade. My current non-discounted price for the starter kit (at least right now) is $199.

The drum library won't be cheap, but it's pricing will be competitive with other high-end drum libraries.

I think the main reasons for composers to use my drum library are (1) extremely clear unprocessed samples across the full frequency range due to the high-end Earthworks omni-directional mics I used to record each drum/cymbal/percussion isolated in a totally dry room (flat frequency response from 3 Hz to 50 KHz with extremely short transient times - crazy right?), (2) flexibility in dialing in the tone you want due to the advanced features/technologies in the library and their integration with Kontakt effects, and (3) TONS of articulations that you will not find in any other library such as 56 hi hat articulations and 36 snare articulations.

I also think that this library will fill an important gap in supporting orchestral uses. For example, one of the snares is the Black Swamp Mercury Maple 14x4 snare (it's a $1,300 snare), which is an extremely tight/precise snare (primarily) for orchestral use. The full library also contains a ton of concert toms, which are awesome for both rock and orchestral. The percussion bundle has a ton of super-clean instruments, including the temple blocks, a variety of shakers, finger cymbals, wind chimes, cow bells, etc. Other drum kit libraries are recorded in a studio where the effects of the room are captured. That makes it hard to cleanly use the drums for orchestral compositions because the drums sound like they are not played in the same room as the rest of the orchestra.

I am not yet ready to make online sales, but we are getting ready. I need to have a good way for people to make purchases and download what they buy in an automated way. The full library will be about 110 GB. The starter kit is about 16 GB and the basic monster kit is about 78 GB. That is a lot to download.

One thing that I noticed is that the Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 product (a great product, and probably my most serious competition - I used to use Superior Drummer 2 before I started my library) comes with 230 GB of samples. So, you might think that blows away WarpIV. But, you have to remember that it is recorded with 11 mics (I use 4, which is all we really need). Their samples have to be longer than mine to capture the sound of the room, so I probably have tighter cuts. Also, they record many more types of drums than I do (e.g., 25 snares compared to my 9 carefully selected snares, sometimes captured with multiple tunings and configurations). My philosophy was to not record a ton of different (cheap or popular) drums, but instead to get the top-of-the-line drums and then change their character through different tunings, drum heads, and configurations, etc. For example, Sweetwater says that the Pearl Masterworks Urban kit (just shells, no hardware or cymbals) that I used (and extended) lists for about $28,000. Everything that I chose for the kit was done to capture a particular sound. So for example, instead of just having a bunch of popular cymbals, I carefully chose (super high-end) cymbal packs and extensions to capture every type of cymbal sound users might want. Finally, nobody captures the vast number of articulations I recorded and carefully edited, which means that each drum can play many more sounds and expressions. It took me more than a year (a couple hours each day) to set up and record everything.

If anyone from the VI Control Forum is interested in buying the library (e.g., the starter kit) before I get set up for online purchases, just contact me through this thread. I'll figure out a way to make it happen. For now, I plan to bring USB thumb drives to the November 3 Taxi Road Rally with various kits installed. That will make it possible for me to initially distribute the library right there.

I am planning to teach a class at the Road Rally on the drum library. I might be able to record it. Also, I will probably be a guest on Taxi TV livestream before the Road Rally, so that will provide an opportunity for anyone on the VI Control Forum to hear me talk about the library's features, and perhaps to ask/answer questions in the chat. At some point fairly soon, I will also record a walkthrough of the library, so people can see everything in the library.

Anyway, I hope this reply helps fill in more information about the drums.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## davidanthony (Aug 16, 2022)

WarpIV said:


> I think the main reasons for composers to use my drum library are (1) extremely clear unprocessed samples across the full frequency range due to the high-end Earthworks omni-directional mics I used to record each drum/cymbal/percussion isolated in a totally dry room (flat frequency response from 3 Hz to 50 KHz with extremely short transient times - crazy right?), (2) flexibility in dialing in the tone you want due to the advanced features/technologies in the library and their integration with Kontakt effects, and (3) TONS of articulations that you will not find in any other library such as 56 hi hat articulations and 36 snare articulations.


Hey Jeff, glad to see you're getting close to the finish line with this! I've been super busy but just now checking into this thread.

One thing I'm curious about is how you anticipate the userbase breaking down between drummers and non-drumming musicians who are looking for drum sounds?

I ask because, purely anecdotally, it feels to me like the vast majority of conversation about popular digital drum offerings tends to center around diversity in recorded instruments, availability of automatically or otherwise pre-generated grooves/patterns, and general ease of use for non-drummers/engineers. You can check out the EZ Drummer 3 launch thread from earlier this summer (I imagine a lot of folks will probably be comparing your standard version to this product, given the similar pricepoints) for an idea of what I'm talking about.

Maybe there are a lot of drummers/engineers purchasing these products without participating in the threads, but if not you may want to consider showing off some of the above elements to attract composers who may not have the playing/recording background to fully appreciate some of the unique elements of your product.

Looking forward to seeing and hearing more!


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## WarpIV (Aug 16, 2022)

Hi David,

It's funny, I just had this conversation with Michael Laskow, who is the owner of Taxi. He told me that most musicians working with Taxi create pop music and they want something super easy to work with. He was worried that the technology and intricate features in my library will be too hard and confusing for most musicians to understand and work with. I think I made his head spin when I described the concept behind the library and why I did everything I did... What he meant by that is that most musicians want to work with already created MIDI grooves, loops, etc. They do not want to have to be expert audio engineers, let alone program their own drum parts. They want something that they can use quickly to get great sounds without getting bogged down with complicated settings, etc. I totally get that, but focusing on everything being automatic for novice users wanting to use loops, etc., is not really where my library is going, at least not initially (maybe someday, but not in the first release).

It is more important for me to "brand" all of my "WarpIV PRO" sample libraries as the best of the best, designed for top professional composers who do not want to compromise on sound. This means:

1. I record the top artists (Wayne Bergeron, Andy Martin, Eric Marienthal)
2. Everything about the recording process is top notch so the sounds are awesome
3. My libraries have TONS (over the top) of articulations to provide full expression
4. I try to make everything as easy as possible, but without compromising sound

This drum library is designed for composers who create/play/program their own drum parts. I will have a pattern playback capability (it's almost done - should be ready by November 3), but I really don't see that being used a lot, at least initially, by users. My focus on the pattern capability is to play things like shaker patterns, hi hat patterns, ride cymbal patterns, snare brush patterns, etc. I am not (yet) really thinking about full drum kit groove patterns, for one reason, because users will have a lot of flexibility in creating their kits. So, I do not necessarily know what is in someone's kit, nor do I know how they have mapped their drums/articulations to their keyboards. which makes it hard to create full kit grooves.

So, I plan to carefully put some drum kits together with everything adjusted to create great sounds, but I expect users to want to tweak things themselves and perhaps save their favorite settings for later use. Examples of tweaking might include use of reverb, tunings, panning, trying out ensembles (i.e., two snares to thicken up the sound), adjusting EQ filters, playing with attacks and decays, etc. What this means is that I need to start putting the kits together (from the instruments I've already created) and try them out in demos. I did that for the starter kit and now I plan to do that next for the monster kits. I'll have some more demos ready in a few weeks with monster kits, so you can hear different snares, toms, and cymbals.

I think that the cymbals and hi hats sound great with the default settings I am providing. The toms also sound great with my settings. The different tom tones will mostly come from the various configurations (heads, using concert toms, dampening, etc.) in packages. The kicks also sound great with the default settings I am providing. And then there are the snares... I am providing all of them with settings that I think sound great, but everybody has a snare sound that they like for each genre. I think that at minimum, users should at least upgrade from the starter kit to include all of the snares because that is where the different characters of each one come out. Professional drummers usually have a collection of snares they use for different genres. The 14x6.5 TAMA SLP Black Brass snare is my absolute favorite for rock, country, etc. It has a really meaty sound that I really like. But, I also really love the 13x3 Pearl Piccolo Maple (and its companion Brass) snare. It has more of a short pop/crack, but it is also great sounding for a ton of genres, including jazz and pop. The Pearl Masterworks 14x5 that comes with the starter kit is easily the most flexible for all genres. It has a classic sound. Really, all of the snares sound great and each one has their place, depending on the composition and genre.

Anyway, I hope I have not gone on and on too much with ramblings, but I hope sharing my thoughts is helpful. It is important to me to stay focused on what the library is intended to be and who my (initial) users will be. For me, it is all about users who want the best sounding drums without compromising on sound quality. I hope this library earns that reputation.

One more thing is that I hope to create a community of users over time who are happy to share their secrets, settings, and perhaps even MIDI grooves with each other. I think it would be awesome for musicians working together to help each other out, which I guess is the purpose of this forum...

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## gwretling (Aug 17, 2022)

WarpIV said:


> The WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit library takes a totally different approach to recording. Instead of recording a kit, I decided to record each drum and cymbal in isolation and to use a very different strategy for mic selection and placement.


@WarpIV interesting project! Sign me up for beta testing!

Questions:
*How do you solve or emulate the liveliness and sound characteristic that natural bleed between drums/cymbals gives when recording each drum etc. on its own?

*Have you also recorded each drum/cymbal with rods and mallets?

*Can you give us a "dry" demo of a pop or rock beat that let us hear only the natural recording sound and no added reverb etc.?


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## re-peat (Aug 17, 2022)

Always very interested in what’s happening on the drum libraries front, Mr. Steinman, so I have been following this thread ever since it started, but I’ve got to say: despite the many audio examples which you’ve posted thus far, plus an amount of text compared to which Tolstoy’s “War & Peace” reads like a light and breezy novelette, the one thing I still have absolutely no idea about, is how these WarpIV kits actually sound ‘au naturel’, in other words, how the drums sound in their natural, unprocessed state, as they were recorded.

At least, I hope I haven’t heard that yet, because if the drums’ naked sampled sound is the one we can hear in the audio examples, I fear I must take issue with your claim of this being “top notch” and “awesome”, let alone “the best of the best”. If I may speak frankly (but not too frankly), I haven’t heard a really great- and natural-sounding acoustic kit yet in any of audio material posted thus far.

So, just to avoid any misunderstanding, would it be possible to record a couple of bars with some drums from the WarpIV library, maybe playing some standard rhythms and one or two fills maybe, so that we get to hear how the library sounds in its pure, untreated state? I'm very interested to hear how an acoustic kit sounds that was sampled by WarpIV and that is intended for “top professional composers who do not want to compromise on sound”.

Ideally, what I’d really like to hear, is a little solo demo along the lines of the ones I made for the Handheld Mad Drums (examples *1**, **2**, **3*) — demos that were specifically made to give the potential buyer as accurate as possible an idea of what the drums sound like — but as those things require quite a bit of work, I can understand if you prefer to spend your time on other things, now that the project is getting closer to finalisation.

I really do think though that the moment has come for a minute or two of audio material that let’s us hear why musicians who have more than a casual interest in virtual drums (and who may already own one or more of the better virtual drum solutions currently available), should be interested in the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit.

Thanks in advance!
And all the best.

_


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## WarpIV (Aug 17, 2022)

gwretling said:


> @WarpIV interesting project! Sign me up for beta testing!
> 
> Questions:
> *How do you solve or emulate the liveliness and sound characteristic that natural bleed between drums/cymbals gives when recording each drum etc. on its own?
> ...


These are great questions.

One of the things that is interesting is that audio engineers go through great trouble to isolate drums to minimize bleed, but of course you can't eliminate all of it. Overhead mics are used to capture cymbals, but they also capture everything else. So, if you try to optimize overheads for cymbals (e.g., using effects), then it screws up the other drums. Room mics capture everything too, but their purpose is to capture the natural reverb of the room, which goes against what I am doing with totally dry sounds. Keep in mind, by isolating each drum in a totally dry room, that let me use omni-directional mics, which have incredible frequency response, which lets me really capture the organic sounds of each drum or cymbal. So, my recordings are super accurate in terms of capturing the natural sound of each drum. But, you bring up a good point concerning realism. Real drums have all kinds of rattles, resonances with other drums, mic bleed, etc.

So here is what I do... The main mic bleeding that is really needed are snares that buzz when a tom or kick is hit. I've added all of the snare buzzes (from all the snares) to the drums so you can bring that back in (you have a ton of control over that). It does produce a more realistic sound. Other than that, I would argue that you probably do not want mic bleeding, especially since everything needs to be dry so that you can put the drums in any room (reverb) you want. The four mics (really three, top, left, and right - I don't use the bottom mic very much) provide the full 3D sound you need to reconstruct the dry and room sounds.

I definitely captured mallets for everything you might want. That includes all of the toms and cymbals. I did not record rods for one reason. As a drummer, I hate rods even though I've had to use them. I think they sound like crap (just my opinion)... The only reason I would ever use rods as a drummer is to tone down the volume (e.g., playing in a church worship band). But with sample libraries, that is not an issue. If you need rods, then my library won't work for that. I do have brushes for everything, so that might be a good alternative.

If you've listened to some of my demos (which are probably not as good as most composers on VI Control can do), you will notice that each step of the way, I've been testing and refining the sounds. It's come a long way. As I've talked to numerous audio engineers and drummers over the last several years, they keep telling me that drums are the hardest instrument to mix. I believe it... Everything is (almost always) heavily processed. But I've been thinking about releasing some demos of drums with different levels of effects added in so you can hear the natural sound and what each step in the processing chain does. I do this when I demo the library live for people.

I'll try to produce something dry and then with effects for everyone so you can do A/B comparisons.

Thanks,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Aug 17, 2022)

re-peat said:


> Always very interested in what’s happening on the drum libraries front, Mr. Steinman, so I have been following this thread ever since it started, but I’ve got to say: despite the many audio examples which you’ve posted thus far, plus an amount of text compared to which Tolstoy’s “War & Peace” reads like a light and breezy novelette, the one thing I still have absolutely no idea about, is how these WarpIV kits actually sound ‘au naturel’, in other words, how the drums sound in their natural, unprocessed state, as they were recorded.
> 
> At least, I hope I haven’t heard that yet, because if the drums’ naked sampled sound is the one we can hear in the audio examples, I fear I must take issue with your claim of this being “top notch” and “awesome”, let alone “the best of the best”. If I may speak frankly (but not too frankly), I haven’t heard a really great- and natural-sounding acoustic kit yet in any of audio material posted thus far.
> 
> ...


Ok...


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## davidanthony (Aug 17, 2022)

WarpIV said:


> He told me that most musicians working with Taxi create pop music and they want something super easy to work with. He was worried that the technology and intricate features in my library will be too hard and confusing for most musicians to understand and work with.


I share this concern but as long as you understand you're targeting a relatively small niche, full steam ahead!



re-peat said:


> Ideally, what I’d really like to hear, is a little solo demo along the lines of the ones I made for the Handheld Mad Drums (examples *1**, **2**, **3*) — demos that were specifically made to give the potential buyer as accurate as possible an idea of what the drums sound like — but as those things require quite a bit of work


If you created them, why not share the MIDI files for Jeff to adapt?


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## re-peat (Aug 17, 2022)

davidanthony said:


> If you created them, why not share the MIDI files for Jeff to adapt?



David, those demos were specifically created for another developer. Surely, you must understand that it just wouldn't do to use the same material for Mr. Steinman's new library as well? 

Besides, it's highly unlikely that the midi data would be of much use anyway as I assume that the WarpIV kit uses very different structuring, programming and scripts than the HH drums do. The better quality virtual drumkits are pretty complex affairs, each with their very own techniques to control articulations, dynamics, bleed, microphone setups and whatever else there is that the developer has implemented to give a sampled kit some semblance of life. 

In order to get the best out of a WarpIV kit, you have to write for that WarpIV kit, from scratch (and not before first having studied the library thoroughly). Only then are you able to fully exploit and showcase the library's particular strengths and qualities. That's something you can't do nearly as well, if at all, by adapting a midi file that was not specifically created for (and with) the library.

I also very much doubt if Mr. Steinman would welcome the idea, to begin with, implying as it does that he isn't more than capable himself to produce what he feels are the best possible demos for his product.

_


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## davidanthony (Aug 17, 2022)

re-peat said:


> I also very much doubt if Mr. Steinman would welcome the idea, to begin with, implying as it does that he isn't more than capable himself to produce what he feels are the best possible demos for his product.


You claim to have been following this thread for a while, so I'm curious as to how we arrived at such a different impression on this point as I think Jeff has humbly acknowledged his limitations when it comes to production several times already, e.g. most recently:



WarpIV said:


> If you've listened to some of my demos (which are probably not as good as most composers on VI Control can do)



For both technical and creative reasons I think it would be foolish to use the MIDI to create a 1:1 adaptation, but when asking someone to create something "along similar lines", it's hard for me to imagine providing MIDI for reference as being harmful to achieving that goal. Not for the reasons you've shared, anyway. But as it's yours, you're obviously free to do (or in this case, not do), what you want! I just thought it would help produce the audio you want to hear.


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## WarpIV (Aug 17, 2022)

Ok, I put a (rough) demo together this morning that I needed to develop anyway. It is a test of the monster drum kit in a particular configuration. It tests lots of the articulations (but certainly not all - there are too many), which is important to me. I ran it through various styles, beats, including marching band stuff because I wanted to hear snare rolls. There are lots of articulations being used if you listen, including cymbal swells with mallets, rolls on cymbals and hi hats, lots of different snare sounds (hits from center/edge/far-edge, buzzes from center/edge/far-edge, various types of rim shots, side stick, various brush articulations, etc.). The main thing I am most interested in is the snare...

The drums and cymbals used in this demo are:

1. Pearl Masterworks 22x18 Kick with low pillow damping to make it tight
2. Pearl Piccolo 13x3 Maple Snare (kind of a tight crack sound that I like)
3. Meinl 14 Hi Hats
4. Menl Byzanth Cymbal Pack (22 ride, 20 crash, 18 crash, and 16 trash)
5. Orchestral Hand Cymbals (16, 18, and 20) used near the beginning
6. A variety of cymbal stacks (listen around the middle of the demo to hear them)
7. Concert toms (no bottom heads) with Remo Ambassador batter heads damped (very little ring)
8. 20 and 22 inch gong toms with deep/low tunings (you can hear them panned left and right)
9. Three different Cowbells (can't get enough, right?)

I've attached four files. Note that the first three are not normalized, so their levels are pretty low. You might have to turn up your volume when you listen. I did not touch the levels in the mix, but there might be some slight volume differences due to the use of effects and reverb when I turned them on.

1. Dry and no effects
2. Dry (no reverb) with effects
3. Wet (reverb) with effects
4. Mastered (louder and a little imaging) wet with effects

One of the things you will notice is how the cymbals clean up with the filter effects that are provided in the library. For example, gong-like tones in crashes are removed. A lot of unwanted resonant frequencies are also removed (of course, you can control all of that yourself) in all the instruments. You can really hear it in the snare (hopefully, you hear the improvement). Attacks and tails are also tuned in to get more pop and reduce unwanted ringing noise, and some general EQ is applied to each output (kick, snare, rack toms, floor toms, hi hat, crash cymbals, ride cymbals, percussion).

I'm always interested in feedback of course... If there is interest, I could post a variety of configurations with this demo (different snares, toms, cymbals, kicks, etc.). Let me know if there are any particular configurations you want to hear.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Aug 17, 2022)

davidanthony said:


> You claim to have been following this thread for a while, so I'm curious as to how we arrived at such a different impression on this point as I think Jeff has humbly acknowledged his limitations when it comes to production several times already, e.g. most recently:
> 
> 
> 
> For both technical and creative reasons I think it would be foolish to use the MIDI to create a 1:1 adaptation, but when asking someone to create something "along similar lines", it's hard for me to imagine providing MIDI for reference as being harmful to achieving that goal. Not for the reasons you've shared, anyway. But as it's yours, you're obviously free to do (or in this case, not do), what you want! I just thought it would help produce the audio you want to hear.


I could use a MIDI file to play my drums, but it would not really utilize all of the articulations in my library. Still, it would be fun to try playing back existing drum MIDI files. This may be important later on for people who want quick and easy solutions.


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## WarpIV (Aug 17, 2022)

re-peat said:


> David, those demos were specifically created for another developer. Surely, you must understand that it just wouldn't do to use the same material for Mr. Steinman's new library as well?
> 
> Besides, it's highly unlikely that the midi data would be of much use anyway as I assume that the WarpIV kit uses very different structuring, programming and scripts than the HH drums do. The better quality virtual drumkits are pretty complex affairs, each with their very own techniques to control articulations, dynamics, bleed, microphone setups and whatever else there is that the developer has implemented to give a sampled kit some semblance of life.
> 
> ...


On the contrary, I do welcome trying to play back existing MIDI files. It is not built into my interface in the first version of the library, but I could certainly play back MIDI files that are copied into anyone's DAW. I would just have to assign the right notes on the keyboard to the right articulations and make sure that the kit has all of the drums and cymbals used in the MIDI file. I'm sure some tweaking might improve the sound a little since levels might be different, etc.


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## WarpIV (Aug 17, 2022)

davidanthony said:


> You claim to have been following this thread for a while, so I'm curious as to how we arrived at such a different impression on this point as I think Jeff has humbly acknowledged his limitations when it comes to production several times already, e.g. most recently:
> 
> 
> 
> For both technical and creative reasons I think it would be foolish to use the MIDI to create a 1:1 adaptation, but when asking someone to create something "along similar lines", it's hard for me to imagine providing MIDI for reference as being harmful to achieving that goal. Not for the reasons you've shared, anyway. But as it's yours, you're obviously free to do (or in this case, not do), what you want! I just thought it would help produce the audio you want to hear.


I think I'm just ok as a composer. I don't do it for a living and my time is limited... My mixing and mastering skills are nothing great, even though I love that part of the process... I just don't have the ears to be great... But as a drummer, I think I am pretty good at creating drum parts (even though, I might overdo it sometimes). So my demos are just ok (in my view) overall... A lot of people are better than me, which is why I would love to invite others to help me with demos.


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## gwretling (Aug 18, 2022)

WarpIV said:


> I'll try to produce something dry and then with effects for everyone so you can do A/B comparisons.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jeff Steinman


How does the drums from your song "I will not fail" early in this thread sound without any reverb?


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## WarpIV (Aug 18, 2022)

gwretling said:


> How does the drums from your song "I will not fail" early in this thread sound without any reverb?


I'll try to upload it either today or tomorrow. Hopefully, there are no issues (things have moved around and the Kontakt scripts I used at the time are REALLY old). Back when I did that demo, I didn't have any effects yet, so (if I remember correctly) it was pretty natural with just some reverb. You can probably tell that I don't use a lot of reverb in my demos and that I tend to accentuate the root tones (probably too much). I'm actually finishing up the final shakers and maracas today, which means that EVERYTHING recorded is in Kontakt...


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## WarpIV (Aug 18, 2022)

gwretling said:


> How does the drums from your song "I will not fail" early in this thread sound without any reverb?


Ok, here is the "I will not fail" drum track with totally unprocessed dry drums. It was one of the first demos I did (way back) and the Kontakt programming was definitely not all there... The levels may not be great since levels changed when I turned off effects. The snare and toms used in this demo are: Pearl Masterworks 14x5 Snare with medium tuning and Pearl Masterworks and Pearl Reference Toms with Remo Ambassador heads, no damping, and no bottom heads (concert toms). Everything is really dry, so you are hearing what the drums really sound like without any room effects... All the magic comes when you put them in a room...

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## gwretling (Aug 18, 2022)

WarpIV said:


> Ok, here is the "I will not fail" drum track with totally unprocessed dry drums. It was one of the first demos I did (way back) and the Kontakt programming was definitely not all there... The levels may not be great since levels changed when I turned off effects. The snare and toms used in this demo are: Pearl Masterworks 14x5 Snare with medium tuning and Pearl Masterworks and Pearl Reference Toms with Remo Ambassador heads, no damping, and no bottom heads (concert toms). Everything is really dry, so you are hearing what the drums really sound like without any room effects... All the magic comes when you put them in a room...
> 
> Best,
> Jeff Steinman


Sign me up for beta testing!
How's integration for E-drums?


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## WarpIV (Aug 19, 2022)

gwretling said:


> Sign me up for beta testing!
> How's integration for E-drums?


I’d love to get a few “friendly” beta testers… Are you an E-drummer? I have a Yamaha DTX 950. It’s kind of old, but was top of the line in its day… I need to do more testing. The only thing I’m not sure how to do with E-drums is work with hi hats. The edits in my samples are really tight, which is important for electronic drums. Snare rolls work great. One of the features in the library is control over velocity, which is really important for electronic drummers to get the right sensitivity from their pads.


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## gwretling (Aug 19, 2022)

WarpIV said:


> I’d love to get a few “friendly” beta testers… Are you an E-drummer? I have a Yamaha DTX 950. It’s kind of old, but was top of the line in its day… I need to do more testing. The only thing I’m not sure how to do with E-drums is work with hi hats. The edits in my samples are really tight, which is important for electronic drums. Snare rolls work great. One of the features in the library is control over velocity, which is really important for electronic drummers to get the right sensitivity from their pads.


Yes, I'm an E-drummer, a Roland TD e-kit with mesh heads here in my studio. I also use to notate drums in Sibelius (score) and Cubase (piano roll) with VSTi so different perspectives when beta testing.


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## WarpIV (Aug 19, 2022)

gwretling said:


> Yes, I'm an E-drummer, a Roland TD e-kit with mesh heads here in my studio. I also use to notate drums in Sibelius (score) and Cubase (piano roll) with VSTi so different perspectives when beta testing.


That is awesome. The E-drum world is DEFINITELY one of my markets. even though I play drums, I’ve always programmed my drum parts. Would you be able to do a zoom meeting today? I can show you how the library works. The biggest things I need are general feedback, demos, and settings for each drum coming from a different set of ears than mine…


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## WarpIV (Aug 19, 2022)

I've been listening to, and thinking about, some of the demos from other drum libraries (especially jazz-oriented libraries). They really sound good, at least for what they are trying to do, and of course I wonder if my libraries can capture similar sounds. Something I haven't really talked about much is the fact that the dynamic range of all my drums goes from me hitting them almost as hard as I could (FF), to barely tapping the drum (PPP). So, you could use my drums in both heavy metal rock where the drummer is pounding the drums, but also for delicate jazz ensembles. For jazz, you would probably not use the FF, F, or maybe even MF velocities, but keep things in the MP, P, PP, and PPP range where the drums ring a bit more. Most of my demos, especially snares, toms, and kicks, use lots of hits in the FF velocity range... One of the features in the library is the ability to map velocities in a non-linear way. I originally designed this feature for electronic drummers to account for the sensitivity in their pads. But I think this feature might come in handy for mapping drums (e.g., snares) to lower velocities for more delicate genres like jazz.


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## WarpIV (Aug 31, 2022)

Hi Everyone,

As I previously mentioned, the preliminary release of the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit will be at the upcoming Taxi Road Rally (in Los Angeles) November 3 2022. I am scheduled to be on Taxi TV (livestream) in a couple weeks where I will talk about a lot of things, including the drum library. I'll let you know more about this when the details are set. I plan to bring some USB thumb drives with various versions of the library pre-installed to the Road Rally, where I will have a table and will also conduct a class on the drum library (I might be able to record the class). If anyone from the V.I. Control Forum is interested in obtaining a copy of the library, let me know and I can arrange something.

In preparation for the WarpIV PRO 3D Monster Drum Kit sample library release, I am putting various drum kits together and setting them up so that they (hopefully) sound really good right out of the box...

So, here is another demo I put together this last week. It's a slower jazz composition (sorry, most of my music is big band jazz oriented) that features all of the WarpIV PRO sample libraries (trumpets, trombones, woodwinds, bass, guitar) and the drums. Everything in the demo is WarpIV instruments. The drum kit contains the following.

1. Tight 22x18 Pearl Masterworks kick tuned low with pillow dampening and a hole in the resonant head. This is the tightest kick in the drum kit sample library.

2. Pearl piccolo brass 13x3 snare. It is tuned high and was configured to have a crack rather than resonant tone.

3. Pearl Masterworks and Pearl Reference concert toms with Remo Ambassador top heads (6" hi and lo tuning, 8", 10", 12", two 14", 16", and 18") and no bottom heads.

4. Two gong toms (20" and 22") that act like mounted kicks with no resonant (bottom) head.

5. Meinl 14" hi hats. They are very versatile and have a lot of character.

6. Meinl cymbal pack (22" ride, 20" and 18" crash, 16" trash). I absolutely love these cymbals... The 20" crash can also be used as a ride.

7. I also included the Zildjian and Budhist finger cymbals that are part of the percussion package. They were tuned for the composition

Some comments about the demo... The snare features brushes in the beginning (hopefully, you can hear the swirls) and a lot of delicate rolls, a variety of rim shots, etc. Hopefully, you can hear how the tone changes as I move around from the center, edge, and far edge of the snare drum. The concert toms are probably not the perfect choice for this composition because they have very little ring to them. You get more of a thump, which would be great for rock, etc. Concert toms can also be a little "boingy" because the pitch starts high when the stick hits the drum (stretching the head) and then comes down after the drum rings.

I've attached four versions of the demo. (1) full composition, (2) just drums, (3) just drums dry with no reverb, and (4) no drums.

Of course, feedback is always welcome.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## WarpIV (Sep 9, 2022)

Hi Everyone,

If you've been following my posts, you know that I have been putting drum kits together and testing them with demos. So, here is a new demo that features the following drums and cymbals.

1. Pearl Masterworks 22x18 kick tuned low with hole in resonance head and muting.

2. TAMA SLP Black Brass 14x6.5 snare with medium tuning.

3. Paiste Signature Series cymbals and hi hats, and Formula 602 Chinas (22 ride, 20/18/16/14 crash, 14 hi hats, 18/22 China).

4. Pearl Masterworks and Reference Toms (6 hi, 6 lo, 8, 10, 12, 14x8, 14x12, 16, 18) with Remo P4 batter heads (they have a dampening ring built into the head to reduce ring and overtones). I think this tom collection might be the most versatile set in the library. They have enough ring and tone to be used in a lot of applications, but not too much ring...

5. Gong Toms (20 and 22) panned hard right and left.

6. Zildjian and Buddhist finger cymbals.

7. Wind Chimes.

8. Finally, I added the Meinl Byzanth 22 ride cymbal tuned down by an octave hit with a mallet to produce a gong-like sound (you will hear it about 2/3 into the composition). I think the Zildjian K Constantinople 22 ride would have worked really well for this too.

I've attached four versions: (1) full version, (2) drums dry, (3) drums raw (dry and no effects so you can hear the raw recordings - sorry that the mix is not balanced very well), and (4) no drums so you can hear the rest of my virtual instruments more clearly. Like my previous demos, all of the tracks are WarpIV PRO virtual instruments.

Finally, we had to shift the Taxi TV live stream to September 19 at 4:00 Pacific Time due to a schedule conflict. I'll let you know more about this as we get closer.

Best,
Jeff Steinman


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## gwretling (Sep 10, 2022)

WarpIV said:


> That is awesome. The E-drum world is DEFINITELY one of my markets. even though I play drums, I’ve always programmed my drum parts. Would you be able to do a zoom meeting today? I can show you how the library works. The biggest things I need are general feedback, demos, and settings for each drum coming from a different set of ears than mine…


@WarpIV when is it possible to start beta testing your drums? Send me a beta download link to [email protected]


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## WarpIV (Sep 11, 2022)

gwretling said:


> @WarpIV when is it possible to start beta testing your drums? Send me a beta download link to [email protected]


I have just the snare drum uploaded to my FTP site. I think the first step is for you to download that and try it out. We should do a zoom meeting so I can walk you through it. I need to upload more instruments to make up a whole kit. The basic kit is too large to put in one zip file, so when I get everything ready, it will involve a number of downloads. We are working on setting up a website for sales and a cross-platform (Mac, Windows) installer, but we're not there yet. I'll send you an email.

If anyone else is interesting in being a beta user, let me know...


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