Review: Quantum Leap SD2

Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jason Scott Alexander

STORMDRUM HITS EVEN HARDER THE SECOND TIME AROUND

The Stormdrum concept came about several years ago when award-winning soundtrack composer, sound designer and Quantum Leap founder Nick Phoenix recorded some big film grooves for movie trailers he was working on. Some of the best percussionists in the world were hired, filling up the studio with hundreds of drums in such a complex setup that studio staffers said they'd never seen anything like it. Indeed, SD1 captured a sound so massive and stunning right out of the box that it became the best-selling acoustic drum and percussion virtual instrument ever.

That legacy grows with SD2 — The Next Generation, a 13 GB collection of 24-bit/44.1 kHz multisampled acoustic percussion instruments and MIDI performance loops. More than twice the size of the original, SD2 draws from the private collections of three well-traveled percussionists. None of the instruments are carryovers from volume one and were sampled exclusively for this project — except for the Metallica “Black” drum kit hauled in from Quantum Leap Ministry of Rock.

SD2 was recorded in Studio 1 of EastWest Studios (United Western Recorders), best known as Frank Sinatra's fave soundstage back in the day and arguably one of the finest percussion rooms on the planet. After using its legendary mic closet and arsenal of rare vintage recording equipment, Phoenix passed the digital transfers through expensive Meitner converters.

FOREPLAY

Whereas Stormdrum was driven by Native Instruments' Kontakt, SD2 is powered by EastWest's brand-new Play Advanced Sample Engine. Lots of time and money were invested in that engine, with the intention of it hosting many future Quantum Leap/EastWest instrument libraries. As such, the core engine is the same for all, with each library merely presenting a customized GUI. That allows you to mix and match other Play titles simultaneously within a single instance. Both 32-bit and 64-bit stand-alone versions of SD2 are included for Windows XP SP2 or Vista and Mac OS 10.4 or higher, along with 32-bit Audio Units, VST, RTAS and a special 64-bit PC VST plug-in version for supporting hosts. Authorization comes via an iLok USB key (not included), requiring that you set up a free account at SoundsOnline.com for one-time product activation. You cannot activate the license from your iLok.com account directly.

SD2's graphics provide you with controls for mostly basic functions. A prime example is the simple lowpass filter with knobs only for cutoff and resonance — no selectable filter type, envelope, modulation source or slope selection. An equally simplistic AHDSR amp envelope; stereo spread control; delay effect with time, feedback and level controls; and convolution reverb module with pre-delay and amount are also provided. Especially in a library geared toward radical sound design such as this, I wish for at least individual multimode filters and envelopes per key zone, not to mention playback directionality and customizable LFOs to really twist up a sound.

In a thoughtful move, SD2 responds with special behavior to certain MIDI control codes compared to other Play libraries because some users will want to select sounds from multiple SD2 instruments to create a kind of ad-hoc drum kit and trigger all the notes within a single track in the sequencer. Therefore, individual percussion instruments within an instance of Play respond independently to MIDI CC11 and CC12 messages to affect the volume and the pan position, respectively. That is in contrast to CC7 and CC10, which affect all notes in a track.

SKIN ART

The library opens to a folder containing a variety of rock, orchestral and specialized drums. Among the most notable is a kit of nine brooding Ludwig Octaplus toms played with mallet, rod and stick; single hits are featured on white keys and double hits on black keys. Remo built the world's biggest floor tom (42-by-42 inches) specifically for this project. Eleven hits with four variations are spread over four octaves, and to say this sucker rocks is an understatement. The dynamics are huge, and the soundstage is fantastically wide.

The Ethnic Drums folder sounds insanely good. Setting the stage are three African bowl drums, seven Chinese kettle drums, separate kits of custom bongos and congas with plenty of inside-to-out hits and roll articulations. A lively sounding Egyptian darabuka with rattles provides dozens of taps, sizzling rim-hits and scrapes, while a two-headed dholak drum from northern India is equally expressive with nearly 40 hits incorporating psychedelic pitch bends. Earthquake Ensemble trumps SD1's six-man thunder-drum program and features 11 musicians hitting drums of various sizes in unison.

A collection of distant-sounding o-daikos, a Middle Eastern dumber “goblet drum,” Malaysian djembe, Moroccan darubaka (sounds like a PVC pipe), Spanish timbales, West African udu and other worldly skins round out the truly ethnic selection. Elsewhere, a table gets whacked with a stick, and that same Remo floor tom receives brush treatment — from beautiful, light caresses to walloping slaps and detuned presses — across 16 keys. At times, it sounded like hand drumming, and its stereo imagery suggests a “tribe” surrounding you.

Generally, there is a lot of velocity switching going on, with upward of 24 velocity layers per multisample for incredibly realistic dynamics. Even the simplest SD2 instrument can often fill an 88-note keyboard with an ample supply of hits and articulations organized with the middle of the drum on the lowest keys, and moving to the outside of the drum on up the keyboard. Left- and right-handed hits, plus a clever round-robin mode ensures no two same sounds ever “machine gun.” With so many samples to keep tabs on when compiling these programs, it's with no great surprise, albeit a little disappointing, that the odd grunt or errant instrument noise kept popping up on certain keys, rendering them difficult to use.

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