Can you tell the difference between a real drummer and a machine? Forty five percent of audiophiles can’t!
OK, that’s a huge conclusion to jump to, but in a recent survey on Pro Tools Expert, 45% of respondents picked “replaced” drums to be real. Wait – what are replaced drums? Well, technology these days lets you record a human drummer, then replace the sounds of their kit with whatever you want. In the survey, they used a recently released program called Superior Drummer to replace the sounds.
So what does this mean? Well not all that much, really, unless you’re an audio engineer that works a lot with drummers who can’t afford a great sounding kit. Often you can work with the kit to get a better sound, but sometimes you just can’t, so a tool like this lets you catch their feel without being tied to using their sound.
And this result just highlights how far this technology has come – the majority of visitors to the Pro Tools Expert site are pretty hard-core audio people, and most of the rest know at least a little bit, so the fact that so many of them couldn’t tell the difference speaks volumes.
For the record, I did pick correctly, but I was only around 75% sure…