ALT DRUMS for Drumagog – Ryan Greene
Actually there are not much that needs to be said about Ryan Greene and his role in the audio engineering industry. He is known not only for his work on bands like Lagwagon, No Use for a Name, Good Riddance, Strung Out, Propagandhi, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Nofx and many others in the «skate punk» music scene, but also for his work with Megadeth, Jay-Z, Alice Cooper and others. This shows his range of knowledge on the audio field.
When I learned about the ALT DRUMS release I was more than excited to receive a copy and test it out to the maximum on a really bad session of drums which I had from a local band.
I received a package which has 5 DVD’s full of samples for use with the amazing Drumagog software. Alt Drums are not just another vsti to use for midi programming but instead, it is a product for triggering samples straight from your home/semi pro or even pro studio, and receive instantly professional results. It actually eliminates any problematic recordings. So if you are used to receiving job offers for mixing and mastering of local bands, with almost destroyed drum recordings and really «bleed» feeling drums, you won’t find a better solution than Alt Drums.
First of all it is focused on the rock genre (punk/alternative/metal field), but it also includes amazing vintage sets and it really gives you a much wider variety than expected. You will find snares from way older times (Beatles) and you will find at the same time Snares from the «in your face» sound generation. You will straight away understand that these samples really can stand since the beginning of a mix, or even at the end when the mix will be already filled with instruments and crowded in terms of frequency and dynamics. This is because these samples are made with the concept of «ready from the start» , so you can worry about mixing strategies and not recording issues. The quality is outstanding. In the samples where room is included, you can really feel the room and you can really feel the warmth in the toms when they show full dynamics (in a part that you might need them, for example at points of the song where the drummer plays a really flat and dull tom filler). To stress out the test even more I put all the kit samples in to more compressing/eq/ fx processing to see if the sound becomes more «dull» or if it loses the quality and the interest of its character. Nope. It doesn’t. It works perfectly, which is because it was recorded just as it should, with pro standards from scratch.
The procedure to install them was not anything more than copy – paste the dvd’s in the place we want (it is better to put them in Drumagog folder so it can read them from the first / open window). The dynamics of the samples are more than enough, way more than the also great triggering samples library plugin of Steven Slate Drums. The dynamics felt like really played by a human being and not «triggered» at all, which is also outstanding.
All the samples are about 20GB so you’d better have some room on your hard drive. The rooms of the samples recorded, are really great, it feels real 100%. So I don’t think that there will be any need with this product to also use an extra reverb or any fx from the Drumagog window.
So to sum it up in more detail lets take a look at each aspcet of this product :
1. sound quality – 5/5 – you won’t find easily any better recorded drums to use for triggering while keeping dynamics
2. pluralism – 4/5 – mostly for rock / punk / alternative
3. rooms – 4/5 – great recording of rooms / not for something really experimental, mostly for rock situations, covers most cases
4. dynamics – 5/5 – big selection of sample layers / great dynamics
5. processing – 5/5 – processed but ready for everything without losing their character, even on over compressing
6. price – 4/5 – depending on the general field of sample libraries like this, it has a normal price, still mostly looking towards to semi – pros and not pure home studios, maybe a selection of sets (1 snare + 1kick…) could be released with a cheap price to also get the most from the home-studio field
7. demo – 5/5 – it is the most important thing that they give you a demo kit to check them out (through Drumagog web page)
Rating: 
ALT DRUMS for Drumagog – The complete package includes:
- 5 DVD Collection
- Over 20,000 high quality samples 24bit 48kHz
- Drums kits ranging from vintage to modern
- 3 different stereo versions of all samples: «Dry», «With Overhead» and «With Room»
- 34 different stereo snare drums
- Over 180 different kick drum variations
- 9 complete sets of rack and floor toms
- 9 complete sets of stereo crash cymbals
- Hi hats with multiple articulations: open, closed, half and stomp.
- Ride cymbals with multiple articulations: bell and shaft.
- Compatible with Drumagog (version 4 or 5) for VST, RTAS or AU host including: Pro Tools, Logic, Digital Performer, Nuendo, Cubase, SONAR, and more!
- Mac and Windows Compatible
