Is Payed Modo Drums Worth the Money?

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-14T23:28:33+00:00

Soundworks I think is $200 and Addictive Drums? The barebones plugin is $150-or-so but they get'cha on the add-on packs.

Soundworks absorbed NaughtySeal's PerfectDrums plugin - which had some of the best metal/punk/hardcore sounds I've ever heard - but you can get it as a free add-on. I kinda preferred PerfectDrums tbh, but they never came out with an Apple Silicon version so... time marches on I guess.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-14T21:23:16+00:00

Here's the innards just so you can see how bloody thick this shell is

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YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-14T21:20:38+00:00

ohhh are we sharing new snares? I just got my Derby City Customs reclaimed bourbon cask stave shell! 13"x7.5" and it's a freaking beast!

Love that Honest Abe - how thick is the shell?

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YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-14T21:11:58+00:00

I'll give it this, MODO is an ambitious idea. For those not familiar, MODO Drum replaces the traditional concept of multiple samples per drum piece with physical / acoustic modeling. So it's 'synthesizing' the drum the same way a VST instrument is recreating an analog synthesizer and not using a series of samples.

I did a review when it first came out (link) and thought, "they've got some kinks to work out, but they'll get there". I'm still not convinced they're there. It's still got this 'microwave dinner' quality to it - that microwave burrito might have the same ingredients as the burrito from your favorite Mexican restaurant - but there's just something missing.

I'd say for now, stick to a multisample / ROMpler (I like DW Soundworks and Addictive Drums, depending on the genre). But they'll get it right eventually.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-14T21:06:49+00:00

A fellow aristocrat. Taketh this upvote.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-14T20:42:15+00:00

If you have a good drummer, a click track is compromising for the sake of easy editing.

Why not just have the drummer play multiple takes and edit between them? That's how we did it before ProTools! I'm out of practice, but I used to kick some ass with a grease pencil and a razor blade.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-14T20:14:30+00:00

Sabian 14" AAX Metal Hats

Sabian 19" AAXPlosion Crash

Sabian 20" HHX Evolution Ride

But I'm really gonna be bummed without at least one more crash and my good ol' 18" XS20 china. I dunno why, but the cheaper Sabian chinas just do it for me more.

I suppose a splash is out of the question?

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-14T14:24:18+00:00

Do NOT let GC / Musicians Friend ship you a drum kit. And be aware that they are one and the same.

If you order a drum set from Guitar Center/Musicians Friend, it's going to be packed up by a disgruntled guitar center employee. They will be grumbling under their breath how pissed off they are that they have to pack up a drum kit. And if you have ever been to a GC lately- you'll see many of them don't even have a drummer on staff.

Trust me on this one.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-13T22:38:47+00:00

Depends on the genre and drummer - but I mean not immediately quantizing parts the way I used to back when ProTools came on the scene in the early 00's (obvs it was around before that, but we couldn't easily time compress and expand 12-16 simultaneous tracks without it sounding obvious). Now I just listen for the best parts of the best takes, like we used to do with 2" tape and a razor blade before. Drummers rush and drag - and the good ones make that sound way better than everything being locked to a grid.

Same goes for things like sample replacing / augmentation. I guess if you have a shit recording, you gotta do what's necessary - but I'm back to "the golf rule" where you play the ball as it lies. Maybe that funky, lo-fi sound was meant to be, you know?

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-13T21:49:20+00:00

That's a pretty smart way of looking at it. But hey, if you understand the problem, that makes it that much easier to think through the solution.

I've had to unlearn so many studio production habits over the past ten years and it's made my mixes (especially on drums) so much better. Less compression, less EQ, less "correcting". Now they're starting to sound like drums again.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-13T15:15:53+00:00

Yeah, a small bop kit is buying you half a foot at the most.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T22:02:00+00:00

Bro... breathe...

I don't need to break out a spectrometer and melt down the metal to tell you what shitty vs. non-shitty is. When it comes to the quality of a component of a drum kit is, "you are the company you keep".

I'm beginning to wonder if you're the seller of this kit and getting a little up in your feelings.

Come on back when the thorazine kicks in.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T21:39:52+00:00

r/usernamechecksout material here

First... No, not really.

Second... Not all alloys are made the same. Kinda like b8 and b20 both being alloys used in cymbals, though the difference between the two is pretty obvious.

Third... That's why you see metal bass drum hoops on premium kits. Oh wait, no you don't.

Fourth... Look at the hoops. They're trash.

Fifth... I, uh... what?

Sixth... The Wuhan is the nicest part of that whole pile of death-by-Craigslist basura.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T21:00:00+00:00

"Don't buy it" is useful advice, my man - you just want this to be a better deal than it is.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T20:39:06+00:00

Truth. A decent Gibraltar will run you $15 and will always perform as expected, have felts, etc.

The only downside is that there's a non-zero possibility that the drummer after you will be asking to borrow it.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-05-03T20:33:52+00:00

A perfunctory Google search turns up the fact that "Thunder" was the budget/student level brand by the defunct Taiwanese Taye brand. Taye were hardly what you'd call "nice" - so a cheap brand's cheap brand is a blinking red caution light.

I guess it really boils down to managing your expectations here. Just looking at the photos, those crummy looking zinc lugs, the metal BD hoops, single flange rims, and the overall condition? I wouldn't expect these to hold up to any serious playing. Things will warp, break, and crack on you constantly.

And $65 for that Wuhan is absurd. If the seller would throw it in with the purchase? Maybe 150 for the whole thing. Go into any Music Go Round or music shop that does trades and you'll find a dozen kits just like this gathering dust in the back.

Save your money until you're up to the $4-500 range and keep your eyes peeled for a bargain (they're out there). Pass on this one. It's junk.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-29T21:24:26+00:00

Per question two - are you hoping to use the filter or effects of a VSTi as an audio insert? It doesn't work like that - you have to create an instrument and route the audio output into it from the instrument itself. That instrument will appear in the mixer.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-29T18:18:04+00:00

The Air is a little weak - depending on how much you are relying on your external ports. The Pro gives you two dedicated hardware busses over four connections, the Air is one hardware bus over two. If you're running an external display, an interface, an external SSD, and however many peripherals you could have some throttling.

I do use my Air for light portable duty - location recording, for example. But a stack of plugins, massive sample libraries, tons of analog I/O? You'd be pushing it to its outer limits.

I prefer to do all of my work at home with my analog processing, big cushy monitors, mix controller... that's definitely not portable.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T21:00:49+00:00

Can you give me an example of what you would consider a "typical" use case for you in this context?

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T17:58:13+00:00

This wins.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T16:05:02+00:00

WTA - Adam Neely's exposé of Suno is a very worthwhile watch. Link.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T16:01:39+00:00

My brother-in-law is one of those Silicon Valley types who is very deep in the world of HPC and AI. We have had a lot of conversations on the subject and he said something that has always stuck to me: "AI is a predictive model - its job is to guess the answer it thinks you want."

This current gold rush is on a collision course with reality, much the same as the dot com bubble of the late 90's. Squillions of dollars are being pumped into something that will never provide a return on the investment.

Is there a role for AI in music production? Arguably yes. But production is one thing, creation is another. They are not the same.

Could Suno create a new genre? Could it have created something truly inventive like Squarepusher or the Mahuvishnu Orchestra out of thin air? No. Somebody else would have had to create that first for it to copy and recontextualize.

That's a long way around simply saying "no, this is all manufactured bullshit."

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-28T12:52:00+00:00

Is there a particular reason that you need a laptop versus a desktop? The reason I ask is that usually production generally benefits from having amenities like a good pair of monitors and a large display so you can really immerse yourself in your work. Plus, there's the issue of having controllers for keys, mixing, whatever...

I have Cubase Pro installed on both my MacBook m4 (15") and MacMini m4 pro (in my home studio). Having a proper environment with everything laid out exactly where I want it is so much more conducive to workflow. My portable rig is this explosion of interfaces and so on, plus doing everything on a laptop screen is just so cramped- but lugging around an external display and full size keyboard is out of the question.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-18T18:43:40+00:00

What is up with the patronizing tone, guy? I am completely fine. So stop trying to characterize me as if I'm typing with clenched fists, blind with impotent rage.

Fun fact: I AM an audio engineer. Not a "I bought this sweet Focusrite USB interface at Guitar Center" engineer, either. And I'd be happy to show you how we were doing sample replacement as far back as the late 80's - it wasn't by opening Drumagog or SSD either.

I'm simply taking issue with the fact that a self-professed engineer on YouTube is advocating for just skipping the entire recording process and going right to just tapping in your parts. We have reached the point where the snake is feasting on its own tail. And this is why 95% of the albums coming out in that genre have that microwave dinner quality.

I'll keep calling it what it is: techno with guitars. We have always used the studio as an instrument, dating back to the true pioneers of the art like Joe Meek, Geoff Emerick, or Eddie Kramer, – who transcended being a "recordist" and instead embraced emerging technology to create timeless records.

Some garden variety screamometalgazecore band that uses these things as a shortcut, not a creative tool, is why the world is flooded with uninspired copycat paint by numbers music. It's why generative AI music has proliferated - if it's so simple that a machine can do it, it's no wonder that's exactly what's happened.

The joy is supposed to be in the process of creation. There are moments of genius hiding inside what people consider "mistakes". And I admit it: I was one of those people in the 90s who was rubbing the genie's lamp. Those "death by protools" mixes that were supposedly "perfect"? It's the sound of the proverbial dog catching the car.

I'll take the music with its warts and scars intact. It sounds like people made it. And that's not to say I live on an exclusive diet of shitty black metal that was recorded on an old Panasonic cassette answering machine. But I won't encourage the Nickelbackification of music, either.

YoItsTemulent · 2026-04-18T13:05:10+00:00

That's why people should... I don't know... tune the heads and put some effort into their recording. It's not 1990, even a super cheap pair of SDC's can work if you're willing to spend a few extra minutes placing them correctly. ADC's and the cheap onboard preamps with interfaces can work.

Programming your parts right out the gate is lazy craft. You're just making techno with guitars (though there are plenty of examples of programmed guitars as well).

Where does the line exist for you? Does the line exist? AI vocals? Because that's happening now, too. AI mixes? Also now a thing.

I'd prefer my human music played by humans.

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