ProDrummerTM Volumes 1 & 2 are the new additions to EastWest’s subscription service called Composer Cloud. Composer Cloud provides access to over 9,000 different instruments that run on EW’s Play engine—either standalone or as a plug-in in DAWs.
ProDrummer Vol. 1 & 2 are drum virtual instruments that contain everything you need to create realistic (or hyper-realistic) drum tracks. These are recorded drum sounds that use a 16-channel mixer with kit collections produced and mixed by top recording and mix engineers. The drums performances are by top drummers and include MIDI drum grooves.
I downloaded both Vol. 1 and 2 to my sample drive—adding up to around 100GB total for both. Vol. 1 by Mark “Spike” Stent tends towards more quirky and unusual sounds via the recorded samples and the onboard processing. Vol. 2 is Joe Chiccarelli’s collection with Matt Chamberlain playing. I was impressed by the immediate, overall polished and produced sound of the kit, proper drum tuning and the way the mics (tracks) were allocated across the onboard mixer.
The powerful mixer includes Solid State Logic’s channel strip processors and their Stereo Bus Compressor, Ohmforce’s Ohmicide and EastWest’s Velocity Processor, Amp Simulator and a convolution reverb. ProDrummer Volumes 1 & 2 are $199 MSRP each or use a Composer Cloud subscription to download them.
Barry Rudolph is a recording engineer/mixer who has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs and more. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing editor for Mix Magazine. barryrudolph.com
