Metal vs Wood - these Snares Sound the Same - Video by Sounds Like A Drum

Jeremy Bender said:
The two drums compared were close in comparsion. If they had chosen a stainless steel shell vs a tulip wood drum I think we would have noticed a greater contrast in tone.
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Agreed. I played my Starphonic Spotted Gum snare for a year, then switched to my Star Hand-hammered Brass and the sonic difference was huge.
 
striker said:
I am now on the road travelling otherwise, I would have written a much longer reply.

I notice that you seem to be very sensitive about your clips on YouTube. Do this. Keep making clips for the open minded and free thinking people only!!! Adios Amigo.
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I wouldn't say that I'm sensitive about our work (that seems to carry an oddly negative connotation) but I'm certainly quite passionate about these topics and the series. How else would we have produced 400+ videos for free with weekly releases for six years? Not sure if you're being sincere or sarcastic but we certainly aren't producing videos for the close minded, conformists. I'll happily clarify and even defend our work to the extent that I feel there's some value. Cheers!
 
No experiment is perfect-that's why science is a process. I think Ben does a great job with these videos-kudos for all your efforts. I like he points out how vision impacts our hearing observation-timbre does too. Fooling with my little shallow concert toms you can easily demonstrate how the timbre can fool your sense of pitch. I tuned 8/10/12 concert to same pitch yet they audibly sound different like ascending in pitch from small to large.
Freaked me out.

In my old big home I had my basement music room-it was finished with bedrooms and even a kitchen and bathroom. Separate garage too. Well anyways my drums always sounded different to me different times of day. I was thinking it's just my imagination running aways from me. Is it Ghost in our machine or is it real? I still don't know there well could be atmospheric conditions differences I guess but I'm thinking it's my thinking that is thinking it LOL.
 
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The drummer definitely greatly determines the quality and subtleties of the drum's sound, within that drum's characteristics, but I don't think you can play a drum drier or warmer.
Aluminum, more than any other metal shell, has a distinct sound that I really like.
 
GetAgrippa said:
No experiment is perfect-that's why science is a process. I think Ben does a great job with these videos-kudos for all your efforts. I like he points out how vision impacts our hearing observation-timbre does too. Fooling with my little shallow concert toms you can easily demonstrate how the timbre can fool your sense of pitch. I tuned 8/10/12 concert to same pitch yet they audibly sound different like ascending in pitch from small to large.
Freaked me out.

In my old big home I had my basement music room-it was finished with bedrooms and even a kitchen and bathroom. Separate garage too. Well anyways my drums always sounded different to me different times of day. I was thinking it's just my imagination running aways from me. Is it Ghost in our machine or is it real? I still don't know there well could be atmospheric conditions differences I guess but I'm thinking it's my thinking that is thinking it LOL.
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I believe weather could definitely affect it. The thing to watch IMO is the “density altitude”. I know in the combustion engine world, you will maximize compression on a cylinder when the density altitude is low (like negative feet). Density altitude is calculated with your actual elevation, air temp, relative humidity or dew point, and the barometric pressure reading. Cool temp, low humidity, high barometric reading equals low DA. Hot temp, high humidity, low barometric reading equals high DA.

This is a good little calculator


Have a beautiful morning and the drums sound great…..low pressure storms move in by the evening it could change what you hear and the drums might need a tweaking
 
BenOBrienSmith said:
I wouldn't say that I'm sensitive about our work (that seems to carry an oddly negative connotation) but I'm certainly quite passionate about these topics and the series. How else would we have produced 400+ videos for free with weekly releases for six years? Not sure if you're being sincere or sarcastic but we certainly aren't producing videos for the close minded, conformists. I'll happily clarify and even defend our work to the extent that I feel there's some value. Cheers!
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My comment was based on my own personal experience and had nothing to do about your YouTube clip. But you read into that comment that it is not only criticizing your clip, it is also launching an attack on the whole premise of that clip. If that is the case, then we should shutdown all posts about our experiences because it may be the opposite of someone else's experience. I hope it is now clear as daylight why I said you seem to be too sensitive about your clips.

Hmmm... I see. So the opinions expressed in your clips have become a standard for measuring how open minded a person is. So, if anyone has a different opinion or personal experience, then that person may be a close minded conformist. I see where this is going.

I have said all I needed to say.
 
Getting back on topic: of course the sound aspect is important but I think it also matters is if a drum inspires you to play.
Maybe 2 drums can (be set to) sound the same but one may inspire you more than the other.
Perhaps you prefer the looks, hoops, strainer, size, depth, if it stays better in tune, whatever.

A recent thread about the 400 yr anniversary Zildjan snare costing 4K comes to mind.
For the same money you could buy - say - 13 Worldmax Brass snares.
Does it sound (/look/play/whatever) 13x better? Not to me. They may even (be set to) sound the same.
But if someone can spend that kind of money and he/she is happy with it: go ahead and enjoy it.
 
There are thousands of amazing snare drums, that perform perfectly, in both metal and wood construction.
I've done a lot of blind testing in that we sample drums in the studio, then we go home to edit and aren't looking at any drum when we're listening back. 95% of the drums we sample sound fantastic and would work for any drummer.
Personally I gravitate towards wood, no axe to grind on the reasons, I just find the sounds I need more often in wood than metal, although I could work perfectly well for the rest of my career with a Black Beauty and Supraphonic.
To my ears, many metal shell snares are a little brighter than wood shells. But by the time something is mixed, eq'ed and heard in a music track with other instruments any differences are zero.
 
striker said:
My comment was based on my own personal experience and had nothing to do about your YouTube clip. But you read into that comment that it is not only criticizing your clip, it is also launching an attack on the whole premise of that clip. If that is the case, then we should shutdown all posts about our experiences because it may be the opposite of someone else's experience. I hope it is now clear as daylight why I said you seem to be too sensitive about your clips.

Hmmm... I see. So the opinions expressed in your clips have become a standard for measuring how open minded a person is. So, if anyone has a different opinion or personal experience, then that person may be a close minded conformist. I see where this is going.

I have said all I needed to say.
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I think you may have misunderstood- I responded to you with my first paragraph but the rest of my post was in response to the thread as a whole and was hardly an attack. I simply asked you if you'd ever engaged in the hypothetical experiment that you described. You didn't describe it as an experience but rather a challenge. I was genuinely curious, as you seemed quite confident but never responded to my question.

striker said:
Hmmm... I see. So the opinions expressed in your clips have become a standard for measuring how open minded a person is. So, if anyone has a different opinion or personal experience, then that person may be a close minded conformist. I see where this is going.
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Well, if you're just gonna put words in my mouth and misrepresent what I have to say that I'm really not interested in engaging with you further either. Cheers!
 
BenOBrienSmith said:
It's really interesting how many people fixated on the title and cover image and just skipped over all of the context and the real point of this video (not so much on this thread but particularly in the comments section of the video)
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Ben … thanks for the video. But realize you have just told thousands of drummers Santa doesn’t exist anywhere but in their minds. ;)
 
striker said:
My comment was based on my own personal experience and had nothing to do about your YouTube clip. But you read into that comment that it is not only criticizing your clip, it is also launching an attack on the whole premise of that clip. If that is the case, then we should shutdown all posts about our experiences because it may be the opposite of someone else's experience. I hope it is now clear as daylight why I said you seem to be too sensitive about your clips.

Hmmm... I see. So the opinions expressed in your clips have become a standard for measuring how open minded a person is. So, if anyone has a different opinion or personal experience, then that person may be a close minded conformist. I see where this is going.

I have said all I needed to say.
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Well you're just a great big bunch of superior disingenuousness, aren't you?
 
Some of the snares that I enjoy the most are ones that I didn’t *think* I would like because of features/qualities that aren’t what I typically dig. And conversely, I’ve bought several drums that should have been perfect for me on every detail, but they left me flat and disappointed. That includes customizing— I regularly swap hoops and wires, and I can’t remember how many times it turned out that the boring stock hoops/wires ended up sounding better than the expensive custom ones I was excited to use.
 
BenOBrienSmith said:
And, above all else, don't let a spec sheet define what you're willing to imagine and experiment with in pursuit of the sound you want.
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"...don't let a spec sheet..." Truer words have never been spoken! Now that we live in an era where every possible detail in a drum's construction has been commoditized and turned into a bullet point the degree of "paralysis from analysis" is staggering.

30+ years ago "select hardwoods" and "it's metal" were enough of a description of what a drum was made of. Now that we've been conditioned to expect to know what zip code the tree came from before being turned into a shell I've seen more and more people have a hard time buying anything because they're going back and forth looking at specs and agonizing over fractions of a millimeter in thickness or an inch of depth. I can't say I haven't been guilty of sweating tiny details before, but the rabbit hole seemingly gets deeper every day.
 
bongoman said:
And conversely, I’ve bought several drums that should have been perfect for me on every detail, but they left me flat and disappointed.
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Yep. I owned a first generation N&C Zildjian drum for years and never enjoyed playing it, in fact I never used it.
Likewise, reading much online hoopla I bought a Canopus Zelkova. I never gelled with it and again never ended up playing it, so it was sold.
 
Winston_Wolf said:
Now that we live in an era where every possible detail in a drum's construction has been commoditized and turned into a bullet point the degree of "paralysis from analysis" is staggering.
...
I can't say I haven't been guilty of sweating tiny details before, but the rabbit hole seemingly gets deeper every day.
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As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! We all have had "just enough knowledge to be dangerous" before. One of my favorite aspects of producing this series is investigating these concepts through experimentation rather than conversation. I can't tell you how many times Cody and I feel like we've struck gold because we've managed to find an example of something that disproves a widely accepted generalization or something like that. You'd be hard pressed to find two people that are more passionate about this stuff while also working hard to keep it all in perspective for the sake of practical application. Cheers!
 
From what I have seen the "groupthink" and "marketing hype" exists in many industries including the music industry. I have seen people paying a ton for a new luxury car just to send it to a repair shop a year later. The Internet is also full of contrarian ads that claim to have all the answers. They play the role of David verses the Goliath.

For me, it has paid off to not only look at the specs carefully to see exactly what I am buying but I have seen valuable feedback from YouTube product reviews. Based on one of these reviews I decided against buying an aluminum sare from a major drum company. The feedback from the professionals on this forum that make some or all their living by playing live or recording has been extremely helpful to me.

On the subject of wood verses metal sound, a few months back a fellow forum member created a thread with sound samples that compared wood to metal and indeed it was tough to tell them apart. I am on the road right now but later if I find that thread I will post it. Another YouTube drummer and educator fellow will be posting an informative clip tomorrow about a vintage Ludwig wood drum which supposedly should sound close to a metal snare. It will be interesting to hear how this Ludwig snare sounds like.
 
All of these differences are MOSTLY apparent when you are the player, and when you are playing alone, no music, listening with the naked ear not through microphones.
When we sample drums we have to achieve variation. It is very hard with bass drums and toms. You have to use different sizes, different heads, different tunings, even then a kick is a kick. It is much easier to hear variation in snare drums. The tuning is the biggest factor, but shell material does impact the sound - not the difference between birch and maple, but between metal and wood and acrylic.
 
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