Waves Maserati DRM Drum Slammer

Tony Maserati is mostly known as an R&B style producer, so my approach to drums and his approach are a bit different. This plugin is meant for those more acoustic sounding kinds of drums instead of the heavily sampled ones that I tend to utilize. The plugin has knobs for sensitivity, thump, snap, treble and output. There are also a ton of buttons at the bottom to select what you're adjusting -- bass drum, snare top, snare bottom, toms, hi-hats, room, overhead, etc. There's also a meter selection switch on this which helps with monitoring. The plugin is super easy to use; simply enable it on whatever drum busses you need and start adjusting.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

Waves rules when it comes to things like performance and stability. I've never had a crash while using this plugin, and that goes for all of the Waves plugins I've used. They all seem super rock stable, and in something as mission critical as a recording environment, that's a huge plus. The plugin works on both Windows and OS X, so nearly anybody can use it without a hassle. The plugin itself doesn't take up much RAM or processing power which is another plus. There is one issue I have with it, but it's a somewhat minor complaint. The plugin itself is a 32 bit plugin inside of OS X. For my DAW, Logic Pro, to fully utilize this, it needs to run a special bridge application. Performance is still the same, but it's just a pain with the way Logic implements that bridge application because the plugin doesn't remain visible in the background. I've been using the Mercury bundle for the past six or so months, and it's been a wonderful experience.

OVERALL OPINION

Considering that I play and record metal most of the time, this plugin had a more limited usage for me. On my more rock productions, it did a fairly solid job, and I believe the sounds I was getting out of this is what Tony was thinking of when he helped co-design this. However, considering that most of my drums are triggered, it didn't seem to give me the tone I was going for.

The Waves Ltd. Maserati DRM Drum Slammer is a plug-in that comes in the Tony Maserati Collection of plug-ins. These plug-ins were designed in tandem with famed producer/engineer Tony Maserati, whom everyone reading this presumably heard his work whether they know it or not. This plug-in in particular is designed for drum bus compression. I wasn't involved with installing the full collection, as I don't have it at home and have only used it at the studio where I work. We've got the full Waves Complete bundle, so this bundle is of course included in that. The interface of the plug-in isn't too difficult to understand, but some of the parameters are definitely pretty ambiguous. These parameters include knobs for sensitivity, thump, snap, treble, and output. It took me a little messing around to understand what the parameters do, but they pretty much do the same thing that you'd get with a traditional compressor. A manual isn't necessary for use with this plug-in...

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

The system that we're running the Waves Ltd. Maserati DRM Drum Slammer on at the studio where I work is Pro Tools HD 8 based. We have an Apple Mac Pro Intel Xeon computer consisting of dual 2.66 processors and 10 GB of RAM. I've never had a problem running any plug-ins on this system whatsoever, as is the case with this plug-in in particular. For this reason it's hard for me to say whether or not this would run well on a lesser system. I'm thinking that if you're considering adding these plug-ins to your suite that you probably have a decent enough system to run them on...

OVERALL OPINION

The Waves Ltd. Maserati DRM Drum Slammer is a pretty awesome plug-in, perfect for adding on your drum bus for a little extra life. I only recently started using this plug-in and the others int he Maserati Collection, and I've definitely been impressed with what they can do. The DRM Drum Slammer in particular is probably my favorite of the bunch, as it sounds great and is easy to use. I've used the other plug-ins in the collection a bit, but not as much as this one. If you've got the Waves Complete bundle, this plug-in is in there and is absolutely worth your time...