Nothing beats just making your own via synthesis. That’s pretty much all that’s going on under the hood of analog/digital drum machines anyway. Ableton’s operator and effects are pretty much all you need to make drum sounds that are comparable and arguably better than any premade recipe these machines can give you if you work hard enough. Not to mention the Sampler in Ableton is one of the best samplers ever created thanks to its built in oscillator that can do audio rate AM and FM so layering synth/samplers like a RYTM is far superior in Live. Just sampling the M4L drum synths and throwing them into the Sampler to take advantage of that is well worth it.
The downside is that this approach is less immediate and also limited by your knowledge of synthesis. You can counter the immediacy problem with simple organization of your own presets so you aren’t starting from scratch every time, and the knowledge problem, well, that’s more of an opportunity than a problem (obligatory: Synth Secrets - From Sound On Sound). The major upside is the sense of gratification you’ll feel knowing you designed your drums from scratch and because of that will be in many ways unique compared to a lot of the other same-sounding music out there.
Of course a lot of people know how to do this but choose not to because it no longer what floats their boat. And then there are other people who try this and get nowhere and that’s OK. For that scenario I think other’s have already made great suggestions (like Opal)
Well, I’d say it’s either a D16 bug with Windows 11(?), so submit a ticket or check the D16 forums for similar user issues, or your AMD processor and RAM aren’t powerful enough to manage these types of plugin power hogs.
Not helpful to you right now, but with apple silicon you can use many multiple instances of these types of plugins without breaking a sweat - here’s an old thread I posted that shows how much load they can take : Apple goes to ARM - #2135 by Jimbo
Having Diva playing on one track with 15-20% cpu usage is not a good sign for your cpu’s power capability. The above thread shows 25% average cpu draw with a shit ton more tracks and power hungry plugins running.
3 year old M1 macs are more than up to the task of this kind of performance and are pretty cheap to buy second hand now.
I think these numbers don’t actually tell the full story of how much power your PC has it’s more about single core performance as given the sample rate and buffer size you have a certain amount of time to process the audio before you need to output the buffer to the sound card otherwise it will splat.
The meters on DAWs are telling you how much of the potential buffer processing is being used before it’s going to splat.
So provided it fits in that allocation of time and you have an 8 core processor then even if something takes 80% you could potentially be able to run another 8 instances of it.
I should underline that I’m doing projects on my laptop with 10+ instances of Dune, Hive, Diva etc running + multiple audio tracks and multiple VST effects on each and having no problems, but one instance of Drumazon and basically anything else and it starts splatting.
I think the biggest concern is that the CPU usage constantly spikes rather than being consistent so even if it’s sitting at 50% most of the time it will still regularly cause glitches as it bounces up to 100% randomly for a second which is what makes me think there is some issue especially since the quality settings seem to make minimal difference.
ain’t that the truth…
I’ve been diving into the Live12 new features and was quickly reminded that the tactile experience is so important for me, sure it’s not coming out perfectly mixed or whatever but damn do I hate midi clips and punching in notes with a mouse… the new midi tools are truly great but I’d still prefer punching in trigs and p-locks. a software sequencer helps a lot with it for sure, I still throw stepic and for step sequencing I just love how it works, but you still need to set one per track, so tracks, routing, remembering which stepic I have open and which does what… all of this “extra software work” throws me out of balance.
I mean, if you’re going to get the Push for the tactile experience for Live that’s one way to go for sure, but Push costs… checks notes… $1k for controller and $2k for standalone, which if you combine with the price for Live+Push alone is a pretty penny. and that’s pure digital - if that matters to anyone.
the Microtonic has amazing tone for sure, but no tactile option, and that’s cool for people that can flow with mouse tweaking and stay creative, but obviously not for everyone.
also I’ve been listening to a lot of demos of Opal and it’s sounds damn good and crazy capable, if that goes fluidly into Push then I’d say it’s worth the bundle for it.
otherwise, imo rytm is king
been really inspired by @tumulishroomaroom’s hybrid approach and been also experimenting with external outs a lot lately, and with a mixer or just enough inputs on audio interface and a daw you can push it into really good mix territory, do your creative work in the rytm and just mix it elsewhere… layer it with some software fx and it’s like a whole new world.
yeah i hate midi-clips, too. will look into the new ableton midi tools, but i doubt that’s going to change my mind. i do have fors opal and it is a great sequencer, but still not comparable to just punching in a few trigs on the rytm and going wild with it in a matter of seconds.
I’m also concerned by this topic, I’m really looking for VST with the same powerful drum synthesis than AR. Playing with samples is cool but the AR is so good for writing techno music WITH variation and life.
unfortunatly, “drum machine” vst’s in the market are so weak for example they remake again boring classic 909 or plugin with one kick engine with no extra parameters. I tested Unfiltered Audio Battalion but synth engine is very limited and absolutely not “analog” flavor that I’m looking or
Lots of tweaking, layers to combine samples (limited to what’s inside it but there are plenty
) with synthesis, and a flexible sequencer. For me, it’s a workhorse I keep coming back to when in DAW.
but there are plenty