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Finding “the” AUv3 drum sample player
So… while working in Cubasis 3 over the past days I’ve been experiencing glitching which seems related to EG Pulse overloading, I suspect CPU load spikes - DSP is showing circa 40%.
When I started with iOS music at the beginning of 2020 I first bought DigiStix, where I had problems in Cubasis 2 with the UI not (re-)showing.
Both of these niggle me with the level sliders not being in dB. A big pro with both is drag and drop of samples (from Auditor), though a con of DigiStix is not showing the loaded sample name.
There are now various other options…
Hammerhead - only 8 channels
FAC Drumkit
Drum Computer - heavy CPU load?
And…
Drambo - the infamous rabbit-hole, but it would be easy enough just for drum samples? And way more if wanted of course.
I’m going to do some more reading, feeling Drambo might be the choice…
Thoughts?
Comments
Drambo.
It's very easy really as just a drum sample player.
Drambo can be as simple as you need it to be. In my experience, it's always rock solid
DrumPerfect Pro.
This was totally off my radar! Given it became AUv3 ~2 years ago I’m surprised it doesn’t have more profile. Going to take a closer look at app info, though I doubt it will be the choice for me doing electronic music.
Drumperfect Pro doesn't appear to have many AU features, however I haven't used it.
EG Pulse is the closest AU sampler I've found which checks most boxes. However, sample start and end points can't be automated. On plus side, it supports importing and exporting for kits. So, I use it the most.
Might try using Drambo more too. For glitchy stuff, Drambo is great.
While I like Hammerhead, it's good for jams, but as a sampler very limited and importing samples isn't easy.
Ideally a drum sampler can manage hundred of samples and kits, and can automated as an AU. So, we're close, but nothing is perfect.
FAC Drumkit - importing is pretty easy, but very limited automation options.
This topic reminded me of an old screen recording I made. Was just demonstrating the samplers with some quick and dirty xox programming and pattern chaining. Drambo, of course.
All tracks are Flexi Samplers. You can hear some pitch randomoization and automation on the different sounds. Really easy and fast to get good results with samples.
I can make some more specific examples, including workflow, to show glitchy stuff with Flexi, the Multi Sampler or the Shot Sampler too, if that'd be helpful.
I think EG Pulse still has midi timing issues. Needs a fix.
DrumPerfect pro is the don but not truly AUv3. Just the preset player is.
Hammerhead is killer. It lets you make music. Has limitations (no bad thing).
And yes, Drambo is probably the most feature rich at this point. But the UI and workflow is maybe overly convoluted.
Vatanator is an outlier. Not sure where it's at today though.
Hammerhead and Drambo should get you there if AUv3 is a must.
Maybe you should try DigiStix 2.
I also had a problem with not showing the loaded sample name but I ask the developer on Youtube to implement an option to show samples name and he did.
One option is always to make a custom MiniSampler instrument with the drum samples?
(If multi output is needed just add more tracks and use the same kit, the bonus here is that with each sound on a separate track the pitch-bend can be used to tune the samples).
Another option is to ditch Cubasis for BM3 or NS2 if sample-based workflow is important.
(Drambo and SunVox are two other alternatives but setting up templates might take a while).
Hopefully Steinberg (or rather the Cubasis Team) wakes up and adds the Cubase SamplerTrack and/or improved sampler to to Cubasis which with the current speed things are happening should take about a year or two...
Cheers!
Right. I left Digistix 2 out as the OP had ruled Digistix 1 out. It’s one of the options for sure. It doesn’t click for me for some reason but fully featured and getting more updates by the looks of things.
Drambo.
This just goes to show that a DAW really needs a built-in fully featured sampler for full integration...
Someday we might get this in Cubasis on the iPad...
(This is Dom messing with Sampler Track in Cubase on the desktop).
Thank you all for the replies!
A great thing about iOS is I can potentially go Pokemon without serious spending… I’m still thinking Drambo, which given the App Store price recalibration has just had a 10% reduction. I think it will be interesting enough just to try the workflow and use for other purposes I don’t have covered like chromatic sampler, wavetable (with IAP natch)
With the Drambo Wavetable IAP you get one if not the most flexible wave-table synth on iOS
No one’s nailed killer drum AU….it’s gonna take NI to get it right.
Yeah, I don't use EG Pulse sequencer at all. The interface is confusing. I use it like a drum sampler only and sequence using other AUs.
Vatantor could have been the one. You can automate everything. Almost nails imports too. Sadly too crashy for me.
BM3 is the sample based goat on iPad. Honestly for me Cubasis has been unstable since iOS 13.7. Prior to that Cubasis was amazing for me. But every update since then has introduced major bugs that have made it pretty much impossible for me to get anything done. Constant crashes, major audio glitches and clicks on almost all recorded samples. It's on my iPad but gets no use. BM3 has conversely gotten way more stable and reliable. And it has an amazing sampler.
Another vote for Drambo here. I use it sometimes strictly as drum sampler sequenced from an external hardware sequencer. Works extremely good. Has all the necessary midi functionality to pull it off. And if you want to add on other modules like a filter or fx, its super easy to do. Drambo looks way more complex than it really is. Fear not.
Agreed if looking at DAWs/hosts.
The major advantage of Drambo is not only the full screen drum step sequencer but also the freedom to build each drum track as you want, including pitched sounds. One track can be a synthesized kick or snare, the others can be samples.
Once you've created the sound generators for each (drum) track, switching sounds on each track can be as easy as
A. Just hitting a different key on the keyboard on the selected track - from now on, that key will be played when you hit the drum pad for that track
or, just as simple,
B. Put your sampler or Flexi or whatever into an instrument rack and choose different sounds by hitting the preset arrows:
For sampled and synthesized drums, Drambo is very hard to beat.
You can also have a full drum kit on one track (and switch complete kits with arrow buttons) while still sequencing the instruments separately.
Drambo is definitely the most versatile. You can do layers, all sorts of randomization and modulation, every effect you can think of, etc…
BUT there’s some day to day to stuff that takes some work and it’s not straightforward.
I wish there was a dedicated drumkit maker/module in Drambo that would expedite the usual drum stuff. For example, layers work fine in the Sampler but it doesn’t have a speed control like Flexi. Ideally I’d want a flexi with layers… as always you can get around it joining layers into a file and slicing, but that takes time. To summarize, Drambo is a beast but takes some time to setup and perform day to day stuff.
@rs2000 what patch is that? I’m ashamed to save I’ve been putting off really learning drambo since I bought it on the the day it was released. I’ve added most of the patches (projects, modules, midi) on Patchstorage but only scratched the surface with actually using Drambo. I gotta get deeper, been saying that for awhile, and this right here might be the nugget of information that pushes me over the edge, and finally gets me to dig deeper.
None really, just an instrument rack with a Sampler module:
Then in the Sampler, edit and load your favorite drum sounds either from the Drambo factory lib or your own samples.
You can then give the Instrument Rack a name, save the preset and continue like this, building up a library of drum instrument sets and switch through them using the arrow buttons of the folded rack. To fold, hit the "><" arrows on the upper right.
^ this!
What one has to go through to achieve what is pretty much standard and essential in any drum machine has bugged me from the first time I tried the app. I'm sure it would be my go-to for sampled drums if not for that.
(Not to detract from all the zillions of other things Drambo is terrific at.)
'choke groups' for cymbals, hi-hats is pretty easy, load all samples that need to be in the same choke-group into one sampler and set polyphony to one...
Not too difficult in fact. One way to do it:
Keep all sound generators in the same mute group on the same track of 1-voice polyphony. If using the sampler, nothing else to do. If using Flexi or other analog sound generators, use note filters for each key and mix all into one at the end.
You can still sequence these on different tracks by merging the MIDI from them into that generator track.
I highly recommend saving a typical template for this so you only have to do the work once.
Instrument Racks can contain anything and for drums, they're the easiest utility to switch sounds individually for each instrument.
It’s a shame I find the dials in Drambo so fiddly with my fat fingers. Really puts me off.
This is what I do, but it would be nice to be able to easily have "cross-track" chokes so that, for instance, closed and open hi-hats can be on different pads like the rest of the drum hits. Also, sampler doesn't have nearly the options that flex sampler has.
Not a huge big deal - the workarounds just seem somewhat unintuitive when thinking of Drambo as a "drum machine".
(P.S. I'm familiar from other threads with the many other ways to achieve choking behavior. I didn't mean to derail the thread. It just seems like useful info for someone looking for drum samplers since it might be one of the first things noticed.)
I also got away with modulating the decay time of an amp env. with a gate signal from another track.