Weak drum sounds...any quick tips?

[AudioMajik]

I'm dealing with drums from a couple of synths that are a bit dated. Anybody got any quick tips for improving dated snare sounds? The kicks I pretty much have under control but the snares aren't "popping" that well. They are synth sounding and I'd ideally like to make them sound more contemporary R&B but natural. I have quite a few plug ins but I don't have sound replacer. My only options are to work the compressors, EQs and verbs. I can do this but if anyone has dealt with the situation before, any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[skycraft]

Old trick...
You will need, a few cables, guitar amp or active speaker, a snare drum and a mic.

1. send the snare track out one of the hardware outputs
2. send this signal then to the guitar amp laying on its back with the speaker pointing up.
3. place the snare drum on top of the speaker or if you can figure out a way, so that it is a few inches above it.
4. Stick mic where it sounds good and record track and mix it in with original snare.

You can try it with the snares facing down or up for different sounds. Also try playing around with the eq on the amp. I find that this works really well with hip hop and programmed R&B tracks. For live music it works as well but you might want to keep it lower in the mix, maybe gate it and just accentuate the frequencies that you feel are lacking.

I think the old school cats call this re-amping. Some call it re-snaring.

YMMV

[Naagzh]

Try sneaking in a Sansamp'd snare alongside the original, on a duped snare track (not an aux track; this plug has a 36-sample delay). Really make the duped track crunch, then sneak it in underneath. Might be just the "pop" you're looking for.

If you have Pitch n Time, you could shift the snare sample up a few steps. Contemporary R&B seems to favor smaller piccolo snares these days.

[albee1952]

All good ideas above. How about using SoundReplacer and putting in a whole new snare sample? I just did this with a live recording that had weak kick and snare and had great results.

[AudioMajik]

Thanks for the suggestions, people. As I said, I DO NOT HAVE SOUND REPLACER. If I did, I wouldn't be making this post. I'm going to try all the techniques and see what happens. Thanks for the feedback.

[albee1952]

Depending on how complex the track is, you could manually replace the sounds. I have done this with snare, kick and crash cymbals. Its a bit tedious, but might be worth it if you're brave enough(and the recording is important enough). Just import some good drum hits onto a new audio track(that you will delete later). This way you can select the hit you want to copy/paste over the weak sound. Trim your good sounds by using tab-to-transient to find the exact front of the sound(trim to that point). The use tab-to-transient on the weak drum track to locate the original hits and paste away. You may get away with just 1 or 2 new hits(1 loud and 1 soft) depending on how the original drums were played. The timing will be spot on so the feel stays the same. Even if the drums are real with leakage on other drum tracks, this still works good.

[Matt Whritenour]

http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...ev=#Post922747

[The Dougfather]

The transient tab post is spot on. I recently did this with a weak kick drum and it worked perfect. A little time consuming but if you had to do it manually you would be there all day. By muting the track using command M so it greys out you can paste over the top with no hassle.

Good Luck

[ejwells]

There are a billion free drum samples out there, easily downloaded from the internet, and there are countless great quality inexpensive libraries of one shots/single hits available from all the online suppliers, as well as the McDonald's of music stores....Guitar Center. That'd be a start.
If your question is how to make old crappy drum samples sound better, EQ and compression help.
Personally, I love old crappy drum hits, but I also love pristine 24 bit one shots, recorded with microphones that cost more than my car.
I have about 30 Gigs of drum loops, and am always adding more.
Have fun!