Ever heard of high fidelity? We used to use the phrase about audio a lot but nowadays we take it for granted. Fidelity comes from the Latin word for faith and having faith in your sound is about more than just high bit-rate audio. It starts in the studio. It's very hard to record the bottom end of a kick correctly outside of a studio with a substantial subwoofer for monitoring. Many also struggle to blend the top end of the cymbals between mics and achieve the perfect phase control when doing so. This is why there are famous studio engineers, because this kind of fidelity is an art. In a traditional studio, sound engineers provide these techniques and knowhow to the musicians, and that is exactly what Drum Tree does for you. Without fundamentally correct mic placement and mixing at the start, some may find themselves trying to correct their sound by tweaking their tracks with EQ and compression at the mixing stage. This isn't a solution, is a symptom of a sound library that was incomplete in the beginning. This can lead users on a wild goose chase for quality. We wanted to make a sound library that wouldn't waste your time and energy, and let you put both into your creativity instead. To give you everything you hoped for in a virtual drum kit, we intended the mixing, mastering and recording process to be meticulous. We knew that 96khz 24-bit would be a given. We wanted conditions to be perfect from start to finish, so that your drums didn't get lost once other elements were added to the track and so you didn't have to 'fix' anything later. We wanted a sound that did not lose presence when you lowered a fader, and wouldn't lose its overall groove in a mix. Any veteran engineer would tell you… the drums' contribution to a mix is what's important, not just how they sound solo. Ease of use and consistency were also a priority. We wanted a library that would sound perfect from the first time you load it, rather than only sounding good after fiddling with options hidden in menus. It wasn't simple to make something this easy-to-use and we gave it uncompromising focus for over a year and a half. Many veteran engineers rely on physical analogue gear instead of plugins for a superior sound and feel. There is much technical knowledge that went into Drum Tree but the most significant is that we only used the best physical equipment from start to finish. Also, the entire recording process was dedicated to recording drums whereas a normal studio session would focus on recording multiple instruments. When we say that there is no need for EQ with Drum Tree, it doesn't mean there's a lot of EQ already, it means that you won't have to rely on EQ to fix things. We used a pristine recording process that involved the best of both analogue and digital equipment to capture a sound with sweetness and power. The result is a vivid drum sound that represents a true-life performance with premium instruments. It has been my personal dream to release this virtual instrument, putting the mixing and mastering skills I have learned over a 20-year period into a unique product. I wanted a drum library that was head and shoulders above the competition and because of that I put all my enthusiasm and experience into the project. To be the best, I knew that I had to use all the original techniques and industry secrets I knew to make something special. I wanted everyone to get the perfect sound at the touch of a button.

We felt that a drummer's ambition is more important than brand loyalty or a logo on a cymbal. This is because sounds are chosen to have an effect in each specific track. A rock track needs a kick with speed and clarity to cut through a wall of guitar. For a neo-soul or R&B track, a fat and tender bass drum is crucial. Traditional jazz wouldn't be right without a balanced drum kit instead of a dominating kick. Good equipment is important, but we should choose our equipment by the sound. Consider also that the same drum might be tuned, finely adjusted and treated differently according to genre. There are many ways to mix and master, but basic drum sounds can roughly be divided up into music styles and organised into about 20 varieties. There are variations on this although they tend to have their roots in each initial template genre. We wanted maximum authenticity in our recording. Digital recording has made some serious improvement in recent years so although our last drum product was recorded entirely on 24 channel analogue tape, we decided it was time to go digital. But even in this digital age, there are those who swear by analogue equipment and we can't disagree… so for some Drum Tree genres we used tape recording to get the right tone and feeling. We combined modern recording techniques with the flavour of past successes to give the best of both worlds. Everyone has a song that speaks to them, or that captures a time and a place in the way that nothing else can. Those songs grow to inspire the next generation and stay with us throughout our lives. Because of this, the reference songs we chose for each genre are beloved classics that capture the best of each style. We wanted to give the feel and taste that have defined popular genres, and help you create your own greatest hits for the future.