Am I using the mixer’s Unused Faders in the best way?

Dorico
1

Hi Everyone,
I have a player assigned to a drum kit in a score with 19 other players. I have edited the percussion kit to use the instruments the player needs, and I have assigned my Superior Drummer 3 VST in play mode. Using Marc Larcher’s amazing percussion map (thank you), I get sound routed to a single fader in the Dorico mixer. The single-staff drum notation looks great.

But I want to use my own plugins for EQ, compression and reverb as inserts on each instrument in the kit to tailor the sound, instead of using them in Superior Drummer’s mixer. This will allow me to tame snare transients and do other cool stuff.

I could create individual players or an ensemble and assign the Superior Drummer VST to play only one instrument per single line player, but that seems like a silly approach. I can’t use direct MIDI input into Dorico because only audio faders allow inserts.

So instead I edit the endpoint setup of the single drum player to add additional ports and faders. I enable multi-output in Superior Drummer and eliminate its mic bleed. Then I add “unused” faders to the Dorico mixer. Now, next to the main Drum Kit fader, I see new faders that are active when its corresponding instrument in the SD3 VST is hit (snare, kick, toms, hi-hat, with cymbal sounds coming from the overhead mic. ) I can relabel the new drum faders to match their instruments.

So pretty much I accomplished my goal, but still I have two nagging questions:

  1. Am I following the best practice here, and is there a better way to achieve my goal of tailored sound design for kit instruments from a single VST?
  2. I now have many, many faders in the mixer for all the players/instruments in the score. Can I hide the ones that are truly unused? After I relabeled the drum faders I wanted to keep, I clicked on the mixer’s Unused button, but it removed all of them. (That is, relabeling doesn’t tell Dorico I want to use a fader… :frowning: )

Thanks!

1 Like
2

This is a nice feature request. It would be nice if the drumset has a separate mixer by default and in the main mixer only the stereo buss of the drums. I’m afraid it is a lot off work. :grinning:

3

Yes, you can hide the others. In the endpoint config, you can limit the number of audio outputs to only the number that you need for each instrument. That will get rid of the extra faders.

Best practice is somewhat in the eye of the beholder I think.

4

Yes, that worked. I activated “Number of audio outputs to show in Mixer = 1” for every player except the drummer. Thanks.

5

That would be my approach, as it covers your needs… Why silly?
It should be as easy as using individual players for individual instruments instead of a kit, and use the same percussion map than in my playback template. Of course, it will require more computing process only for that, and adding your plug-ins will also add to the math.
I haven’t explored the Toontrack mixer but isn’t there any possibility plug-ins are are available there (even if not as powerful or cool as the ones you were planning to use)?
One thing you must keep in mind: SD3 samples are already (very nicely) curated, so they won’t need as much love as an original recording
Nice to know my work is useful out there!
[Edit] Now that I have read the whole thread, congrats with the solution you came with. I didn’t explore the “multiple outputs enabled from SD3” route, good to know!

6

I considered single instruments but I think I’d lose the single 5-line staff for the kit. Plus the player concept in Dorico has been so drilled into me that I laugh when I imagine 7 people crowded around a drum set to separately hit the instruments. I’m happy the way things are working out with the multi-output approach. True, it remains to be seen if I can best SD3’s stock plugins.

I have benefited greatly from many, many of your posts over the years. Let me take this opportunity to thank you for your generosity to the community.

1 Like