How close are VST drums samples programming to a real drum recording?

[georgeusa]

How close are VST drums samples programming to a real drum recording that you would do in your recording studio?

comparing to vsts such as addictive drums, superior drummer, Ez drummer

 

[SYMBOLIC DEATH]

Heard any new music lately (last 15-20 years)? Most of the drum sounds have been sound replaced. It's a fairly common practice now from what I've heard.

 

[SmoothOperator]

Heard any new music lately (last 15-20 years)? Most of the drum sounds have been sound replaced. It's a fairly common practice now from what I've heard.

I think it depends. Hihats seem to be the exception, producers have these and record them, very few program hihats. Those that don't have hihats, use prerecorded loops of real hihats. From what I have seen there are many drum recordings, but they tend to be single tracked, spliced and edited. Microphones are expensive. Acoustic bass/toms tends to be difficult to work with.

 

[Hypercaffium]

VSTs sound even better than real drum recordings, imho.

 

[Mediocrefunkybeat]

Digital sample replacement or virtual instrument is probably the better terminology to use here if we're being pendantic. VSTs are one format of digital instrument but not all virtual instruments are VSTs. There are other formats like AU and AAX too.

In answer to the question it would be difficult to find a modern commercial recording (outside of Classical, Jazz, etc.) where sample replacement or enhancement isn't used. Sometimes it's just subtly layered on top of the original recording and used to enhance it, sometimes it's complete replacement. Sometimes, a drummer will manually play a part using an acoustic kit with triggers attached and those triggers will lay down a MIDI track - which is then quantised and used as the basis for a sampler. This happens across a lot of genres.