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Heya, musical maestros. I'm looking for the sophisticated stuff in the title. At the moment, I'm still working with the drum samples of my Independence Pro Premium Suite - which are really good in my opinion. But I guess, they are just around 1 GB in total - so, either they are highly compressed in size or they just lack some crucial audio information of realistic acoustic drums played by a rock-solid drummer (I think so, mainly because of a problem that occurs after I upload my tracks to Soundcloud, which is mentioned a few lines below). Or what 's your opinion if you check the sample preview of the "Acoustic & Electronic Drums" of this library (just click on the speaker symbol)? https://www.magix.com/de/musik-bearbeiten/independence/libraries/ In this video there's also a small MIDI passage with some of these acoustic drum samples (at 3:27): So, they don't sound really bad in the music project or in audio files at or above an audio bitrate of 192 kbit/s. But whenever I upload a remix on Soundcloud (just happens at this platform) these drum samples tend to degrade (especially the cymbals and hi-hats) - as you might hear in the newest version of my Goldfinger remix I uploaded some days ago: If you check the same upload at Youtube (better quality) and Niconico (best quality), this problem won't occur: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm41413951 In the first place, I thought it must have to do just with the Soundcloud platform. But if you check some other drum recordings and drum sample demonstrations on Soundcloud, you won't perceive such problems with the cymbals and hi-hats: So, the problem must have must to do with the sample quality as well. Maybe it's also the audio bitrate of the upload - but if I upload a track on Soundcloud usually as MP3 file with an audio bitrate of 320 kbit/s (WAV file doesn't make a perceivable difference for the stream since the audio bitrates of streams at Soundcloud are just around 128 kbit/s - and with 320 kbit/s it has at least a proper size for possible downloads I might activate sooner or later when I'm fully satisfied with my tracks) it still sounds worse than my video version I upload at Youtube and Niconico (there, I always upload the WAV in my Movie Maker program, but the highest audio bitrate I can set for the export of the movie file as WMV is an audio bitrate of 192 kbit/s - and even then, it sounds much better than the upload on Soundcloud with 320 kbit/s). ... Since mostly the drums are affected by this issue, I might solve this problem with some better drum samples... maybe. An online friend tried to convince me to get some stuff from Toontrack like Superior Drummer 3 - but with around 300 GB in size (obviously contains lots of loops, grooves and repeating stuff I don't use - I just want the raw samples for composing via MIDI editor), I don't want to clutter my 2TB big hard disk drive just for better drums. I guess, the many possibilities of settings in Superior Drummer 3 are far too complex for me and my needs. And I'm not sure. The bass and snare drums or the toms sound really good - but the cymbals and hi-hats don't sound too convincing for my ears (at least not for this big library size): ... So, I'm really looking for a not tooooooo complex drum VSTi software - but still one with excellent raw, unprocessed (no compressors, limiters or other effects - which you can't deactivate - used on the presets) high quality acoustic drum samples with lots of different drum units as well as many articulations, velocity layers, round robins, drum variations and possibilities to play. Maybe you know some good drum VSTis which may satisfy my needs. ... Some days ago, I also got a newsletter of different Black Friday special offers with various VSTis from different developers. And from there, I also got to a drum collection of the Abbey Road series from Native Instruments. Since I'm quite a big fan of the high-quality VSTi stuff from Eduardo Tarilonte and from the developers of Native Instruments, I got dragged into the collection much deeper, checked some audio demos and videos of the virtual interface, the content and the settings - and I kinda fell a bit in love with the stuff: - 6 different drum kits from important times of drum-based music since the 30s to the modern times (quite useful for compositions of different music genres as well) - obviously really raw, unprocessed and natural sound (or what's your opinion about this?) - over 200.000 professionally recorded high-quality samples - useful settings and an overseeable interface that isn't bloated with too many things - different, interchangeable drum units - library size of around 43 GB compressed and around 105 GB uncompressed data content (somebody knows if there 's an option to install the uncompressed data content as well?) might be totally okay (still, I hope you can leave out all the unnecessary grooves, loops and MIDI patterns for installation - because you can always perform much better and go more into detail with the real single samples in a way you really need it for your composition via MIDI editor) - reduced price from almost 600 bucks to around 100 bucks (which is quite an offer for an ordinary worker) And for the sound... If you check out only the first raw preset in this video (at 0:14), you might be also blown away of how greatly deep-sampled and velocity-sensitive these libaries are: Even the hi-hats and cymbals of these libraries sound really good and not so stiff, lifeless and indifferent like in Superior Drummer 3, for example. There also seems to be a feature of choking the cymbals like this video shows (after 4:30): I think I've nearly made my decision of going for the Abbey Road Drummer Collection. ... But first I wanted to hear your opions as highly critical composers, remixers and listeners. Maybe there's also a professional drummer around who could give some additional tips on this topic?