Chocolate Audio Contemporary Vintage Drums

NEW: now includes Drum Particles Kontakt instruments – Contemporary Vintage edition, for even more power and flexibility
Two classic drum kits with a modern twist
Contemporary Vintage Drums features 3 full drum kits sampled from:

• a Ludwig “Beatles” tribute kit (stick)
• a Ludwig “Beatles” tribute kit (brush)
• a 1977 Gretsch Concert Rock kit (stick)

The kits come with 3 sets of cymbals sampled from a Zildjian A series set (stick and brush) and  and UFIP set (stick) and 2 additional Ride Cymbals (Turkish and UFIP) and 7 snares overall (Ludwig, Gretsch, Pearl and Tama).

These kits have set the bar for classic drum sounds due to the large number of classic hits from the mid sixties and until the beginning of the eighties that were recorded using them.

Our production concept was to give users access to these classic kits, but with a more modern approach to sound production and mic choice. This approach guarantees fresh new sounds out of these drums.

Features

• BFD Expander and Kontakt versions – all in one pack
• 27 GB BFD Expander version (9 GB on BFD 3 if installed compressed)
• 12 GB Kontakt version
• between 21 and 39 GB both versions (based on install options)
• 52600 samples
• 3 full drum kits (2 stick 1 brush)
• 60 drum pieces
• sampled in full detail: up to 245 samples per articulation and up to 11 round robin (Kontakt)
• the best of both worlds: the power of BFD for drums, the ease of use and integration of Kontakt
• recorded in a top-notch studio with choice mics
• up to 4 close mics
• 4 room mics: Overhead stereo, Overhead mono, Room U87 and Room PZM
• warm and deep sound, processed through an analog tape machine
• advanced mixing and management (Kontakt) thanks to our custom advanced scripting
• recorded at 24 bit / 96 KHz, released at 24 bit / 44.1 KHz

The user interface is thought out to be easy and quick to learn and use while featuring the power-user tools some of us love to tweak when working with drums.

Hidden beauty
Behind the curtains of the engine allows us to:

• feature up to 11 round robins – hitting a drum many consecutive times will hardly trigger the same sample
• give you the chance to easily build the kit in both the 3D (DrumKit) and Mixer pages
• manage RAM very efficiently with purge – no need to load separate .nki just to load another kit
• feature a full-fledged mixer with mute, solo, 4 insert effects: EQ, comp, transient and tape
• insert a built-in global and channel-specific preset management
• be a MIDI mapping agnostic – we already built in support for a large number of articulations (input from you for future productions is very welcome!)
• color-coding for easy recognition of drums on Kontakt keyboard
• feature up to 4 Room mic channels
• give you up to 4 mixable Close mics on Kicks and Snare, 2 for hi-hats, rides and toms
• grant drum-specific control on tuning, velocity curve and attack, hold and release times – instant damping, gating or creative effects
• feature an exclusive ADH envelope on Room channels for creative effects
• intelligently switch pan-pot and width controls in case of mono or stereo channels (and stereo Rooms get both width and pan for maximum flexibility)
• insert channel-specific controls in the settings page, like hi-hat control, snare bleed, or cymbals/percussions management
• … and much more

Reverb, with class
The IR Reverb module in our engine currently features 36 unique proprietary impulse responses. These are originated from vintage plates, hardware and coveted real rooms, which, when used with drums, push the limits of what can be done with a single drum kit.

Ready-to-go
20 global mix-ready factory presets ease your way into using these drum kits, to which we add presets for each channel, including the reverb.

The drum kits

Gretsch Kit

1. Gretsch 14×5 Snare
2. Gretsch Concert Rock Close Kick Felt
3. Gretsch Concert Rock Close Kick Plastic
4. Gretsch Concert Rock Close Loose Kick Felt
5. Gretsch Concert Rock Close Loose Kick Plastic
6. Gretsch Concert Rock Floor Tom
7. Gretsch Concert Rock High Tom 1
8. Gretsch Concert Rock High Tom 2
9. Gretsch Concert Rock Mid Tom 1
10. Gretsch Concert Rock Mid Tom 2
11. Gretsch Concert Rock Open Kick Felt
12. Gretsch Concert Rock Open Kick Plastic
13. Ludwig 14×6.5 Maple Snare
14. Pearl 14×8 Maple Snare
15. Ufip China 18
16. Ufip Crash 16
17. Ufip Crash 19
18. Ufip HiHat 14
19. Ufip Ride 22
20. Ufip Ride Riveted 22
21. Ufip Splash 10

Ludwig Kit

1. Ludwig Black Beauty 14×6.5 Ring Snare Stick
2. Ludwig Black Beauty 14×6.5 Snare Brush
3. Ludwig Black Beauty 14×6.5 Snare Stick
4. Ludwig Chrome-plated Brass 14×5 Snare Brush
5. Ludwig Chrome-plated Brass 14×5 Snare Stick
6. Ludwig Close Kick Felt
7. Ludwig Close Kick Plastic
8. Ludwig Floor Tom 1 Brush
9. Ludwig Floor Tom 1 Stick
10. Ludwig Floor Tom 2 Brush
11. Ludwig Floor Tom 2 Stick
12. Ludwig Hole Damp Kick Felt
13. Ludwig Hole Damp Kick Plastic
14. Ludwig Hole Kick Felt
15. Ludwig Hole Kick Plastic
16. Ludwig Mid Tom Brush
17. Ludwig Mid Tom Stick
18. Ludwig Open Damp Kick Felt
19. Ludwig Open Damp Kick Plastic
20. Ludwig Supraphonic 14×5 Snare Brush
21. Ludwig Supraphonic 14×5 Snare Stick
22. Tama Copeland Sign. 14×5 Snare Brush
23. Tama Copeland Sign. 14×5 Snare Stick
24. Turkish Ride 22 Brush
25. Turkish Ride 22 Stick
26. Zildjan Trash China 14 Brush
27. Zildjan Trash China 14 Stick
28. Zildjian K Costantinopole Ride 21 Brush
29. Zildjian K Costantinopole Ride 21 Stick
30. Zildjian K Crash-Ride 18 Brush
31. Zildjian K Crash-Ride 18 Stick
32. Zildjian K Dark Crash 16 Brush
33. Zildjian K Dark Crash 16 Stick
34. Zildjian K Dark Crash 17 Brush
35. Zildjian K Dark Crash 17 Stick
36. Zildjian K Splash 10 Brush
37. Zildjian K Splash 10 Stick
38. Zildjian Vintage HiHat 14 Brush
39. Zildjian Vintage HiHat 14 Stick

Articulations

• Kick: Hit – up to 245 unique hits and up to 11 round robin
• Snare: Hit, Rim and Sidestick – up to 200 unique hits and up to 8 round robin
• Toms: Hit, Hoop – up to 70 unique hits and 4 round robin
• HiHat: Tip, Shank, Foot, Splash, Pedal – 6 openings each Tip and Shank position, 4 round robin for each dynamic
• Ride: Hit, Bell, Edge – up to 36 unique hits
• Cymbals: Hit – up to 24 unique hits

Each articulation features no less than 16 velocity levels and up to 40.

Microphones

• Kick: AKG D112, Shure B52A, Audix D6, Sennheiser e902
• Snare Top: Shure SM57
• Snare Bottom: Beyerdynamic M420
• HiHat: Shure SM81
• Ride: Shure SM81
• Cymbals: Shure SM81
• Rack Toms: Beyerdynamic M201TG
• Floor Toms: Audix D4
• Overhead Stereo (Gretsch): 2 x AKG C414B condenser
• Overhead Glyn Johns: 2 x AT3060 condenser
• Overhead Mono: Beyerdynamic M260 ribbon
• Room Stereo: 2 x Neumann U87 condenser
• Room PZM: 2 x Crown PZM30D condenser

Preamps and processing

• Neve 1081
• API 312
• SSL 4000 series
• Millennia, tube and solid-state
• Brunetti PAR400
• recorded through a Studer A800 MKII 2″ – 24 tracks tape recorder with Ampex 456 tape (pass through tape – no NR)
• EQs and compressors (on mono overheads) were used lightly to leave room for further processing on your side
• converters: Apogee with Big Ben master-clock

Now includes Drum Particles – Modern Retro Edition – FREE!
A no frills User Interface with just two simple pages:

• Load a full kit Multi NKM or a single kit piece NKI
• Select the controlling MIDI Channel
• Load the preferred sound
• Eventually:
  • Balance the microphones and optionally feed them into separate channels in your DAW
  • Set to taste macro and micro tuning, round robin, envelope and velocity-based interactions
  • Change the controlling MIDI keys in the Mapping Page
• Done!

Some applications

• Simplify workflow and reduce memory and CPU footprint when you do not need a full drum kit in the production you are doing
• Drum triggering:
  • Easily assign more than one drum or sample to the same MIDI Key allowing for real time drum replacement or layering using any of the available drum triggering plugins
  • Use the embedded audio to Midi functions present on many platforms (Logic, Sonar…)
• Stack as many drums as you want on a single Midi key
• Create hybrid kits using our sounds or integrate other developers’ kits with our drums
• Open up endless sound design possibilities having the chance to layer, re-direct, retune, change envelope on each drums separately
• Finely tune the velocity response of each drum allowing you to better complement a live e-drumming or finger-drumming or to create velocity split stacks of different sounds