Digital drum synthesis : alternative to SPS1?

Hello Elektronauts ! I hope everyone is doing fine on this fine day…

I’m in the market for something that offers digital drum synthesis. Of course, everyone must be screaming SPS1 right now, and rightfully so because it’s the type of sound that I’m after. I’m looking to make metallic percussive sounds like the ones heard in the first part of this video. Something that would sound like the love song of an aluminum baseball bat and a star wars droid…

The issues :

  • it’s stll at least €500, I recently bought the AR and a mac so I’m a little financially dry at the moment.
  • my desk is getting seriously crowded and those boxes do occupy space.
  • they are not so easy to come by in my countryside.

Those are excuses rather than issues of course, I’ll probably end up buying a SPS1 when I get the funding, but I figured that I could start experimenting with something else in the meantime and maybe like it so much that I’d keep it. So what would you suggest ? I’m mainly interested in virtual instruments that sound good, mainly because I could then assign some parameters to macros in Live and then use a midi controller (have a couple of cheap ones lying around) to design sounds, but extra hardware is not out of the question if it’s amazing.

Thank you in advance for your answers & have a good one !

Monomachine is pretty synth for percussive sounds.
I found 0-Coast is pretty nice as well :slight_smile:

if you are thinking of real experimentation rather than forking out right away… bypass the sales man and record some metallic sounds such as saws, tins and glass bottles and whacking sheet metal into a decent recorder (zoom h1) in a garage and then split the results into a daw/eq them into a rack… youll actually be being very creative and saving a ton of cash while you wait… you may even prefer the process

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DrumSpillage by AudioSpillage is excellent and definitely in that vein of sharp/metallic synthesised digital drum sounds:

http://www.audiospillage.com/drumspillage.html

The kick drum engine is a beast too. There’s a free cut-down version called MiniSpillage that might even meet your needs for now.

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LXR Drum synth?
http://www.sonic-potions.com/lxr

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Yes, lxr is nice, i have it. But ther are some workflow issues for me. But it is the best sounding drum machine for me, so i have to keep it and use it for ever :heart_eyes: like my girlfriend also …

Nord drum, yo. Easy to program. Small. Affordable. Also, pads are cool and you can midi out to save your trigs as midi.
Good - velocity responsive programming
Bad - a little quiet, no internal sequencer.

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+1 To @AdamJay and his Microtonic suggestion…

that + PO-32 has me STOKED right now on digital drums. Making tracks with that synced up to my A4.

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Nord Drum 2 without a doubt…

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if you’re not allergic to using a computer then Native Instruments Polyplex is pretty crazy :wink:

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The drum synths in Maschine are great. They’re what sold me on getting one, and the cool thing is now you can pick your controller.

  • If you don’t mind mouse/screen - get the cheap Maschine Mikro
  • If you don’t care about velocity and prefer step sequencing, get the Maschine Jam
  • If you want to look at the computer as little as possible, get the Maschine MK2

The drum synth engines tend to lean more towards physical modelling, with a good number of them in the more electro vain. I’d check it out.

All of 'em integrate with Live nicely. In fact the Jam is a great Live controller as well.

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that one sounds great too, actually, i am going to check my lead 2x drum set tonight…

Yes I noticed I had to turn my input gain up on the nord drum 2. But it also depends on the patch.

MiniSpillage feels/sounds like what I’m after, I need to try the demo of DrumSpillage (I suppose the extra synthesis would be a nice addition, plus it’s pretty cheap) and also check out what I can control using MIDI. Microtonic looks interesting as well, especially the ease of triggering patterns from the DAW. I’ll check Machine but it feels like overkill for what I’m after. I already have Polyplex but it’s sample based only AFAIK (and it’s very cpu hungry).

As far as hardware goes, the LXR looks awesome, I really like the idea that they made the firmware open source so one could tinker with it. Nord Drums 2 is more expensive even in 2nd hand but its MIDI implementation looks impressive. I guess I’ll have to look at a bunch of videos to check those out in more details.

I have a Numark DR-07 mk2, I think I’ll try taking it with me sometimes and record stuff to possibly use as percussive sounds. I have tried that experience in the past but found that field recordings were hard to integrate in the mix, but I suppose it had to do with the things I tried to mix those with. And a second try won’t hurt anyway :slight_smile:

You want a Nord Drum 2

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Another vote for Nord Drum 2, and get the Nord Pad too, it’s worth it

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May i suggest the Nord Modular G1.
Its really amazing for synthetic percussion !

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Set up a custom drum rack in Live triggering the 6 channels of Nord Drum 2. If you have push 2 firing out rhythms, its cherry on top and game over :slight_smile:

The FM modes on your Analog Rytm may be able to do what your after. FM synthesis can be great for modeling physical objects, especially metallic stuff as FM synths can produce really in-harmonic spectra (timbres with harmonics that are not in the harmonic series of 2x 3x 4x 5x 7x ect of the fundamental frequency)

When I’m looking for those kind of sounds I usually look in FM synths, resonant bandpass filters, and Amplitude Modulation Effects and try to set the frequencies in odd non-integer multiple places.

Anyway, I hope thats helpful. Happy noisemaking!

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