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STORMDRUM 3
BUY NOW
Stormdrum 3 deserves its place by deftly bridging the world music and cinematic paradigms. In fact, I'll go so far as to say it's one of the best-sounding percussion libraries anyone has created to date.
— Keyboard
As with all EastWest instruments it's the detail which draws you in. I would go as far as to say that it is the best sounding set of acoustic sampled percussion I have ever heard. Highly recommended.
— Future Music
Electronic Musician Editor's Choice Award Winner
Created by award-winning sounds producers Doug Rogers and Nick Phoenix
Tempo synced percussion performances played by master percussionists Mickey Hart, Greg Ellis and Chalo Eduardo
FX section includes: SSL EQ and Dynamics Channel Strip, Transient Shaper, SSL's legendary Stereo Bus Compressor, and upgraded "true stereo" reverb
Features the best instruments from the private collections of Mickey Hart and Remo
The Most Extensive Percussion Library
For the Big Screen
Huge cinematic drums and ethnic percussion from around the world are nothing new in a sample library. But it is exceedingly rare to find one single collection as complete as Stormdrum 3. Designed for film and game composers looking to create bombastic and thunderous percussion, Stormdrum 3 delivers more power than you could ever ask for. And even when you want subtle, tame, more ambient drums and metal hits, it places all of this and more in your arsenal.
Drums From
The World Over
The true potency of Stormdrum 3 is that it enables you to craft a fantastic musical story of any culture, any era, in any context. A documentary of the Amazon rainforest would be incomplete without deep tribal drums, and an intense sci-fi thriller featuring a heart-pounding speeder chase wouldn’t be the same without futuristic, designed auxiliary percussion. Stormdrum 3 gives you vivid realism, clean recordings, and maximum strike on every hit. We put all of our focus entirely on designing the perfect tool to architect cinematic experiences on command. Whenever your stream of ideas begins to dry up and you begin forcing yourself to continue composing, Stormdrum 3 will jumpstart your inspiration with a bang.
Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart (of The Grateful Dead) brought his private collection to EASTWEST STUDIO ONE, in tandem with the Remo company. Nick Phoenix recorded an arsenal of drums, woods and metals hand-selected by one of the world’s greatest percussionists over his career. “In SD3, our focus was to capture Mickey’s unrivaled percussion collection in the best possible multi-sampled way. It is very flexible. And note that even the close mix comprises the input from 8 microphones. This virtual instrument is his legacy, and mine as well,” says producer Nick Phoenix.
As with previous versions of Stormdrum, the quality of the recordings is consistently high, with plenty of transient detail and just enough room ambiance (which, of course, can be fully controlled via the mixer) to give the instruments space to breathe. SD3 (still) marks itself out as one of the finest ethnic/cinematic percussion libraries money can buy. — Music Tech
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Taiko Family: The Holy Grail of taiko samples, these instruments were recorded from taiko drums in the collections of Mickey Hart, Remo, and the top taiko builders in Japan. Boasting individual hits as well as full ensemble strikes, Stormdrum 3 gives you the best source material possible to add a realistic taiko ensemble to your music.
Big Drums: Large, deep, and booming, this collection comprises the heavy backbone of Stormdrum 3, not including taikos. With names like The Beast, Lord Of Toms, and Dragon Ensemble, you should get a sense of the raw power in Mickey’s one-of-a-kind drum collection.
Gongs Clocks Waterphone: Mechanical and detailed, this is the perfection collection for you if you enjoy adding subtle, barely-noticeable layers that your music would be strangely incredible without. One of the coolest highlights is a set of recordings from 6 antique clock shops, perfect for creating complex rhythms without cluttering your percussion section.
Metals: You get access to the many bells, deep bowls, chimes, and cymbals collected by Mickey on his world travels. This unique collection includes everything from handmade doorstop drums and hammered copper pots to the Brazilian berimbau, played on a metal wire. If you like using a lot of auxiliary or “odd” percussion, this collection alone makes Stormdrum 3 an excellent investment.
Shakers: An assortment of uncommon objects: ganza, rainsticks, snake rattles, seed pods, and ever deer hooves from Mickey’s private collection.
Small Drums: The classics: bongos, frame drums, tambourines. The slightly more obscure: tablas, madal, and many more. Clean performances across all instruments, captured by microphones that allow the most brilliant high-end details to shine through. These may be the most fun collection of all to play.
Woods: Unusual wooden percussion from all over the world, including: unpitched wooden resonators to the chromatic gourd marimba and balaphone, mighty gourd drum, playable 12 ft. long redwood tree branch, and scraped Thailand frogs.
Microphones: Stormdrum 3 gives you control over a larger arsenal of drums, metals and miscellany than you’ve ever used, from all over the world. When Stormdrum 2 provides a solid foundation for your cinematic percussion work, SD3 provides many additional layers of depth and a much broader range of sampled instruments. If an instrument is in this collection, it was chosen for its unique sound, for the fact that very few libraries even have it. If you’re looking for a complete percussion solution for film, games, or world music, Stormdrum 3 will deliver every time.
Stormdrum 3 was recorded in Studio One, the same location as Hollywood Orchestra, allowing them to blend seamlessly in a single mix. The library includes 5 microphone positions, including: Close (set of 8 Neumanns and Sennheisers), Mid (mid tree, 15 ft), HiFi (super-clean and modern, 15 ft), Main (Neumann M50 Decca tree, 20-25 ft), and Vintage (RCA ribbons, 25 ft). You can blend these different tones and positions as you choose into a single composite sound.
As with previous versions of Stormdrum, the quality of the recordings is consistently high, with plenty of transient detail and just enough room ambiance (which, of course, can be fully controlled via the mixer) to give the instruments space to breathe.
SD3 (still) marks itself out as one of the finest ethnic/cinematic percussion libraries money can buy.
Stormdrum 3 combines stellar sounds with exceptional playability. For big, beautiful drums and percussion, you simply won't find better.
— Computer Music
Stormdrum 3 deserves its place by deftly bridging the world music and cinematic paradigms. In fact, I'll go so far as to say it's one of the best-sounding percussion libraries anyone has created to date.
As with all EastWest instruments it's the detail which draws you in. I would go as far as to say that it is the best sounding set of acoustic sampled percussion I have ever heard. Highly recommended.
A must-have for film composers. The combination of 86GB of incredible percussion layered into the PLAY 6 software makes SD3 once again an impressive and versatile virtual percussion instrument that's sure to inspire.
I love this library! It sounds exactly as a percussion collection of the highest caliber should sound. I especially love the very warm, direct sound that EastWest has captured.
— Amazona.de
Stormdrum 3 is definitely the best ethnic percussion virtual instrument on the market. Its 90 GB of sounds are more realistic, more expressive and more musical than anything else you can find.
An Aladdin's cave of exotic world percussion, pristinely recorded from five mic positions. Features powerful ethnic drums and percussion ensembles, and some great tuned percussion.
An Aladdin's cave of exotic world percussion pristinely recorded from five mic positions. Mickey Hart's 40-year love affair with ethnic percussion spills into the digital realm with this excellent new sample library. Based on the drummer's personal instrument collection and featuring a superb set of taiko drums and slamming ensemble impacts, Quantum Leap Stormdrum 3 contains over 150 instruments performing hits, licks and multi-percussion loops.
I can't think of a more varied and inspirational library of percussion than Stormdrum 3.
— Electronic Musician
The third in EastWest's acclaimed Stormdrum series sees producers Nick Phoenix plundering the percussion collections of The Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart and Remo Belli, founder of the Remo drum company. We've never come across a more expansive collection of massively multisampled drums, metals, woods and shakers. The whole lot weighs in at 90GB and can be bought either on a stack of DVDs or a portable 1TB external USB3 hard drive (€439). To be clear, this is very much a percussion library in the 'ethnic' sense of the word – there are no kicks, snares or hi-hats here.
The highlights are too numerous to list in full, but the extraordinary Taiko Family category might well sit at the top, closely followed by the Dragon Ensembles, Punjabi Dhol, a couple of Berimbaus, most of the Metals… It's all spectacular stuff, ultimately, and the round-robin implementation and extensive range of articulations available to each instrument make it incredibly easy to create convincing performances with any of them via a MIDI keyboard or pads.
As well as all the individual instruments, 23 loop patches enable you to string together and layer up looped 'snippets' of superb multi-instrument performances by Hart, Phoenix and Chalo Eduardo, to great effect.
The new PLAY 6 engine that powers SD3 is impressive, enabling multiple instruments to be loaded onto their own (or shared) MIDI channels and blended in the onboard mixer, with five discrete mic channels recorded for eeach and everyon one – Close (an eight-mic array), Mid (room), Main (Decca tree), HiFi ('super-clean' room) and Ribbon. Dynamics and EQ processing come courtesy of a licensed SSL channel strip, while further effects include Tuning, Delay, Reverb, amp Envelope and low-pass Filter modules. We did experience the odd glitch with PLAY 6, but nothing show-stopping.
Stormdrum 3 combines stellar sounds with exceptional playability. For big, beautiful drums and percussion, you simply won't find better.
— Computer Music
System Requirements
86 GB Free Hard Disc Space
Below are the minimum and recommended hardware and software specifications for using Opus on Windows and MacOS systems.
MINIMUM SYSTEM
CPU: Quad-core (four cores), running at 2.7 GHz (or above)
RAM: 16 GB
OS: macOS 10.13 (or later); Windows 10 with ASIO sound drivers
Drive: SSD for HW Orchestra Opus Edition
RECOMMENDED SYSTEM
CPU: Octa-core (eight cores), running at 2.7 GHz (or above)
RAM: 32 GB or more
OS: macOS 10.13 (or later); Windows 10 with ASIO sound drivers
Drive: NVMe SSD
The chart below outlines the MacOS and Windows 64-bit operating systems and sequencers that are officially supported and fully tested with the latest version of Opus. Please note that while most Sequencers / DAWs are VST 2, VST 3, AU and AAX plug-in format compatible, only those listed in the chart below are officially supported.
Product
Version
MacOS (10.13+)
Windows 10
EW Play 6 Stand-Alone
6.0+
YES
YES
EW Opus Stand-Alone
1.0+
YES
YES
Ableton Live
10.0+
YES
YES
Apple Logic Pro
10.0+
YES
-
Apple Garageband
10.3+
YES
-
Avid Pro Tools
2018.1+
YES
YES
Bitwig Studio
3.0+
YES
YES
Cockos Reaper
6.0+
YES
YES
Image-Line FL Studio
20+
YES
YES
Motu Digital Performer
9.0+
YES
YES
Steinberg Cubase(1)
9.0+
YES
YES
Steinberg Nuendo(1)
8.0+
YES
YES
Presonus Studio One
4.0+
YES
YES
VSL Vienna Ensemble Pro
6.0+
YES
YES
Notation Software(2)
Version
Avid Sibelius
2018.1+
YES
YES
MakeMusic Finale
25.0+
YES
YES
Steinberg Dorico
3.0+
YES
YES
(1) VST3 usage is recommended
(2) Sibelius / Finale / Dorico notation programs work with Opus, but do not support the full feature set of some Opus/Play Libraries, such as those that use WordBuilder. Please contact support for details.
