Sounds & Samples

Toontrack are clearly on a roll with their SDX expansion packs for Superior Drummer, and once again legendary status can be attributed to its creator and the environment in which it was recorded. Eddie Kramer is an iconic engineer, mixer and producer who began his career during the heady days of the 1960s, when the established rules for how one was supposed to record a band were being re-written for a louder and more powerful age. The drum kit is of course central to the drive and impact of rock music, and experimentation in mic placement, combined with expanding track counts and greater choice in terms of console, meant that both sound and approaches to its capture evolved in a relatively short space of time. Eddie Kramer was part of this, with his pioneering work on albums by Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Kiss (among others).

Like many previous Superior Drummer expansion packs, Legacy of Rock SDX will happily eat up a large chunk of your storage space. A full installation weighs in at 180GB, though options that include less content are available during the setup process – say, if you don’t need full 5.1 surround-sound capability.

The recordings themselves were made in Air Studio 1 with multiple mics and five kits, each tailored to highlight specific approaches used by Kramer. Three more kicks, six snares, two timpani, a gong, and a range of cymbals are also included for customising kits, and some recordings were made using brushes, mallets and hands instead of sticks.

Two of the kits – Amber and Sparkle – are based on those used by John Bonham in the mid-’70s and late ’60s respectively. Jet Black and the Oyster kit reflect the setup used by Charlie Watts, a more overtly jazz-influenced drummer. The Silver kit references the sound of Jimi Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell (another with a jazz background). The results are all excellent, but the room itself has a big impact on the sound and, naturally, all kits have an overriding similarity in ambience.

That said, you probably won’t go here for multiple variations on a ‘super-dry’ or stadium-style sound.

Part of the reason this SDX is huge (mics aside) is the large number of articulations captured per item

– 15 for snares, and up to 27 for hi-hats! As with other SDX packs, there is a hefty set of Presets (kit/mix combos), including those from Eddie Kramer and Toontrack, and unmixed kit versions. You also get some great MIDI-based patterns for each era.

This is another large, high-quality addition to the Superior Drummer family. Bruce Aisher toontrack.com

VERDICT 9.0