Regardless of the midi location you will route mono drums and stereo drums in the case of overheads (after you've chosen a kit in the software) pointed to the empty audio tracks in your DAW assigned to each sound and record them from the plugin. Building the midi inside superior however doesn't sound like something you will need as drummers are sending the midi to you. If you want to move it from the plugin, you just drag and drop the performance into your DAW. In Superior this midi file can exist either in the plugin in VST/AAX or in your DAW. In the case of SSD, this midi file will exist in the DAW. Thanks!Both take their performance from midi. I don't want my time devoted to recreating the wheel. Which is better for that, SSD or Toontrack? - OR, maybe I should just create my own samples and use Trigger? Problem with that is the variations on the hits. I don't need or want processed samples I just want raw drum samples I can manipulate like real drums with compression eq and such during mixing. I have always recorded live drums in my studio and never had the need for drum emulations, but now I'm finding some drummers want to send me MIDI files they've recorded at home. So in summary, the options in SD3 are definitely worth the cost. rare drums, tonal strangeness which I find useful for ear candy. Another reason I like SD3 is there are more quirky options i.e. I also tend not to use the internal FX in SD3 and do that either in Protools or externally. I rarely find that some set of kits doesn't match a piece I'm working on. The Hansa kits alone, in the various recording spaces, are an amazing set of add ons. I write music in several genres i.e Indy rock, ballad, R&B, country, and end up using SD3 95% of the time. If you like tapping out or edrum building from scratch then it may not matter but I still think the range of tonal options, drum kits and room options are much larger in SD3. Slate drums sound great but the interface is a bit in the dark ages and not as intuitive. Also easy to change tempo if you need to. Then you can quickly prebuild the drum trak by song section and finally drag and drop into Protools. By tapping a few beats, SD3 search engine offers hundreds of options which can be quickly tagged and demoed. The power of SD3 is building a framework for a song. The range of rooms and drum options in SD3 is, well, Superior. Some of the sounds in Slate are stellar i.e. But like i said, having control over room mics, having some bleed, etc is very attractive.

My question is, is Superior that much better where it's is worth an extra $250? I imagine I will still use some samples and just don't want to be paying for a bunch of grooves I might never use. What I do care about is having good realistic sounds complete with room mics, some mic bleed, which SD3 checks that box - but most importantly i need a good price. I don't really care about onboard effects, I have plenty of plugins for that. The routing was cumbersome but the sound is good. I've tried Slates demo and liked it - I'm a big CLA fan and them having his signature pack is cool.

I like to program all my own drums and occasionally jump on the E-kit to program fils but I'm not against using a groove here and there. I want something more in-depth to save time but also very realistic. I've been using a variety of Logic kits, samples (ThatSound, NoiseHome, etc.), and an ancient version of EZDrummer 1. I do demo work and some producing/mixing.

Ezdrummer vs superior drummer 3 reddit