Kronos drums: terrible?

[Davegraham193]

I just pulled the trigger for a Kronos 2 73. I'm integrating it into a classic rock, pop music MIDI show. All the drum sets are too processed, over-synthed, and over-thought. The cymbals and snare drums are unbearable. I bought thinking to replace my rack mount Roland JV 1080 which I use exclusively for drums.
I'm still wading in the wilderness of the thick learning curve, but what am I missing?? I can't be the only person who noticed this. Just give me thin, whispery high pitched cymbals, and not trash can lids... Oh yeah! And a snare that doesn't say "tank! ... tank!"
Can anyone help me with this? I'm sure I can create my own drum set, but until then, all the preset ones suck....to me.
Thanks!

[pete.m]

Hi Dave,

I don't use the Kronos drum sounds much either. What I do is to build my own drum kits from samples. You can buy sample sets but, to be honest, there are so many good sites offering free drum samples that I rarely bother. Just search 'free drum wavs' or 'free drum samples', and you'll soon find what you're after. As I say, there are specialist sites offering sample sets for sale, and ebay can also be a good (and cheap) way of building up the drum sound library you want.

You have to load the samples in, of course, and assign the sounds to the keys as part of making the multisample that will ultimately provide you with your drum program, and that will take a few minutes, but once it's done, it's done. Make sure to back up, needless to say! Over the years, I've gradually built up about 100 drum kits that I can use, and which are permanently stored on my Kronos.

As far as the thickness and over-production of drum sounds is concerned, I agree that it can be a problem and it will also be the case with some sets you'll find online. That's just in the nature of using dry, sampled sound instead of a live drummer. But you can mitigate against it by altering the EQ, adding effects etc. I also make sure that I don't over-quantise and also tend to use subtle bits of pitch bending on my drum tracks, just so that they don't sound too mechanical. Once you get the sound you want and it sits in the mix the way you want it, it's really okay.

[blazerunner]

They're HD drums. I've found them to be extremely usable but depending on what you're trying to create they may not fit the rest of your mix. The secret like anything is not to use them out the box but to use the EQ and Effects to adjust them to how you want them to sound for your mix otherwise they sound to perfect and strangely perfect drums never sound good. They need the Grit.

[Davegraham193]

Thanks for the advice guys! I kinda arrived at the import/sample idea anyway, but to be honest, I have a gig in a couple weeks and I'm just going to use the JV drums. Kronos is the last keyboard I'll ever buy, so I have time to explore and tweak whatever I want. I do believe the GM Standard kit should be useable right out of the box, and I'm glad to not be the only one who agrees that the Kronos drums....well, at least out of the box, kinda suck.
Cheers!

[rickster1]

Generally I don't think the drums on the K are one of it's strong suits..
I don't think there's enough simple "groove" choices, in Latin especially, but also swing.
Alot of the choices sound like a bunch of tin cans. Just give me something simple.
I record alot of MIDI tracks to play with, & the latest one I'm doing is "Sway", the Buble arangement. Not happy with the Latin drum offerings so I ended up combining three drum tracks to get close to what I wanted.

[Liviou2004]

I'm quite satsfied with Kronos drums.
Not so many people are using the 4 aux' outputs. I'm using them and process drums sounds in an external mixer. Sounds Really good like that.

[wocongming]

Generally I don't think the drums on the K are one of it's strong suits..
I don't think there's enough simple "groove" choices, in Latin especially, but also swing.
Alot of the choices sound like a bunch of tin cans. Just give me something simple.
I record alot of MIDI tracks to play with, & the latest one I'm doing is "Sway", the Buble arangement. Not happy with the Latin drum offerings so I ended up combining three drum tracks to get close to what I wanted.

ive recorded traditional latin salsa etc recordings and it sounds amazing. although, i DID completely change the effects settings to almost nothing(its way better) and then i tuned a lot of the samples to a much better tuning. Like the bongo bell to a C note above middle C for instance where most of those bells sound. its killer on my recordings. although a good setting for each percussion group is key also. congas have to be just right to sound good. i like bring up the bass on the congas and giving it like a mid of 800 at like 4 level. and treble about a 3.5. for instance