Drumdrops Formats
Drumdrops focus is as you can imagine on Drums. Our aim is not only to give users the most natural sounding live drum tracks and samples in the business but also to provide everything so it can easily be loaded into any software, DAW, sample or drum machine. Often we provide templates for particular pieces of software but if we don’t our product can easily be imported into anything else.
There are two main products we provide Live Drum Tracks and Drum Sample Packs.
Drum Tracks
Our drum tracks are recorded and then made available to purchase as multi-tracks, drum stems and drum loops. Some of our older products are only currently available as multi-tracks. All of the latest drum tracks released always come as multi-tracks, stems and loops.
Multi-track Packs
The Multi-tracks are the raw recordings of the drum tracks split up by the individual microphone channels. The microphones we use on each kit are recorded on to separate channels of the tape machine and this means you have total control in mixing these channels to make the sound you want. If we use two kick microphones you can control how much of each one is used. As well as the close room microphones we also provide the overhead and ambient microphones. This means it is easy to change the sound of the rooms, the sound of the kits and makes them much more versatile.
This format suits the musician or producer who likes to go deeper into drum production. Multi-track files allow you to control all aspects of the drum mix, re-trigger extra sounds instantly, access individual tracks to give the user the choice of compression, distortion and FX, so a mix becomes unique. Go from dry and in–your-face to bombastic Led Zep style room ambience with the room mics in seconds.
Multi-track Features
All Drumdrops multi-track packs provide the audio as 24 bit 44.1 kHz WAV files meaning they will work in any DAW that supports WAVs on Mac and PCs (which is probably all of them).
The multi-track zip files contain an audio folder of the separate microphone recordings of each drum that were used to record the kit that you have purchased in professional 44.1 kHz 24 bit WAVs. On older Drumdrops products we also include a template for Pro Tools so the audio can easily be loaded up. In all the new releases we are providing templates for Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Ableton Live, Reason, Reaper and Presonus’ Studio One. We also include an OMF file for easy integration into any other DAW’s which we do not provide templates for. We also include a tempo-map for each drum track.
Multi-track packs contain large amounts of data and are therefore large in size. They often vary from 500 meg to 1 gig in size. You really need a good broadband connection to download them.
Stems and Mix Packs
The stems and mixes are the next stage on from the multi-tracks. We mix the multi-tracks and then provide the full mix of the kit and stem files which are sub-mixes of the kit (which vary from track to track) but generally include the full mix of the whole kit, the kick, the snare, the close kit and the room mics as separate audio files. Once again the stems and mixes are provided as 44.1 kHz 24 bit WAV files meaning they can be loaded into all DAW.
The stems file will generally give you a mixed version of the kick, snare kit and room mics as separate files so that you can have the complete sound of the full drum mix but with the flexibility of being able to change the level and sound of the say the kick or snare drum separately to the rest of the kit. If you don’t like tinkering too much with the balance or mix of the drums and you want to jam and start creating instantly then this is the option for you. If you don’t make a hit don’t worry, pass the stem files to your mix engineer and they will be happy.
Loop Packs
Loop packs feature a number of 2 or 4 bar drum loops taken from the drum tracks. On average there are usually six or seven drum loops per pack but this varies from track to track depending on how many we feel we can make.
Each loop is provided as the separate drum stems (so full mix, kick, snare etc). This will give you lots of options.
They are perfect for for crate diggers and beat heads that use software such as Ableton Live, Reason, Logic and Garageband and drum machine programs like Geist. Pre-sliced Apple Loops and RX2 files give you immediate tempo, pitch and groove manipulation.
.RX2 Files
Rex2 is a proprietary type of audio sample loop file format developed by Propellerheads, a Swedish music company. The files are sliced internally offering musicians great flexibility with pitch and tempo of a loop or sample, allowing great freedom of expression and creativity. It is one of the most popular and widely-supported loop file formats for sequencer and digital audio workstation software. It is supported by Propellerheads Reason, Steinberg Cubase, Steinberg Nuendo, Apple Logic, Avid Pro Tools, Cakewalk, Cakewalk Sonar, Image-Line FL Studio, MOTU Digital Performer, MOTU Mach 5 (software sampler), and Synapse Audio Orion Platinum amongst others.
Apple Loops
These files are a Mac-based format which were created to run with Apple’s Logic and Garageband software. They have much in common with Rex and Acid Loops in that Audio files can be tagged with their publishing info (author, comments etc.) and musical information (key, tempo, etc.). This allows the producer to easily mix and match samples and loops with different pitches and tempos together, which can save valuable time. It’s also great for indexing and retrieving the right sort of files when composing. Many more applications are now compatible with Apple Loops and at Drumdrops we continue to increase our support for this loop type.
ACID PRO from Sony, along with many other music software packages now use Acid Loops that are essentially enriched WAV loops and that have tempo and key information built into the file structure. Acid loops and samples are useful to the musician as they allow you to throw lots of different elements together on screen at a desired pitch and tempo which is great for getting ideas together and experimenting with different types of sounds quickly and easily.
WAV
This is the generic audio file-type for recorded music on a Mac or PC. WAVs are probably the most widely used and cross compatible type of music files in circulation today and you will be hard pushed to find a music application that cannot read a WAV file. WAV samples are widely found and can be presented in different bit and sample rates. All Drumdrops WAV files are in a professional 24 bit 44.1 kHz format.
Drum Samples
As well as our live drum tracks Drumdrops now offers multi-sampled drum kits that work in nearly all of the main software samplers that are available on the market. There are five different packs at different price ranges for you to choose from.
The Multi-Velocity Pack
The multi-velocity pack consists of up to 16 velocities of each articulation. The stereo 44.1 kHz 24 bit WAV samples are mixed from a balance of the close mic, overhead and room mics. These samples are compatible with any software that reads 24 bit WAVs but to make life easier we have included templates for the following software:-
- Kontakt
- Battery
- EXS24
- Maschine
- Ableton’s Drum Rack
Where possible, templates have been included for better integration with MIDI files that may have been created using different drum compatible software packages. Please note that these MIDI templates are a starting point only and may need adjusting to fit any previous recorded MIDI files. The samples have been recorded in the same velocity steps as our old Kontakt Pack samples but do not feature the separate mic samples or the round-robin samples.
This pack is ideal for anybody who wants an immediately great-sounding kit with lots of velocities and uses one of the software packs that we have built templates for.
The Single Hits Pack
This is the most basic sample pack that we offer in our multi-sampled kit range. It features the same software templates as the Multi-Velocity Pack with all the same MIDI templates, but each articulation only included three velocity steps instead of sixteen. Again there are no round-robin samples available for this pack.
If all you really want is a great sounding kick drum, snare drum, hi-hat, ride, tom or crash but you aren’t really after a realistic sound, then this is the pack for you.
The Drum Replacement Pack
The "Drum Replacement Pack" is a sample replacement pack which includes templates for Slate Trigger V2, Drumagog V5 and DrumXchanger.
The Slate Trigger template is created using the close mic, overhead and room mic samples from the kit. There are samples for the kick drum, snare and toms. You can choose to trigger the close mic, overhead or room samples. The samples in this template have up to 16 velocity levels and six round robins.
The Drumagog template uses the same samples and you can choose the balance between the close mic, overheads and room mics. This template uses up to 8 velocity levels with four round robins. Included are samples for the Kick, Snare, toms and hi-hat. If your version of Drumagog contains the Auto hi-hat tracking feature then the samples will follow the opening and closing of the hi-hat.
The DrumXchanger template contains stereo mixed samples (a combination of the overhead, room and close mics samples). This template contains eight velocity levels with no round robins. The snare also contains a rimshot sample that has its own adjustable trigger threshold.
All of the formats we provide are royalty free as long as you have proof of purchase.
If you have any other questions about our formats we will be more than happy to help you. Email us at info@drumdrops.com