Review: Nomad Factory Drum Tools Multi-FX Plugin

In this review we will be discussing a new tool for the one of the most important parts of your music, the drums. Processing your drums right is essential for getting beats that punch through the mix and make your track stand out above the rest, with a beat that punches your listeners’ right in their soft gooey center and commands them to move even if it’s just the tapping of a pen as they sit at their office desk listening to their iPod.

When processing in your daw of choice the signal chain for drums is usually pretty long with all kinds of native and non-native plugins which in some cases can be quite annoying and confusing.

Enter Nomad Factory’s Drum Tools this awesome new plugin is packed with all you need to get your drums to sound the best they can sound with all of Nomad Factory’s trademark effects like the Gate, Compressor, Drum selector, Modeling convolver, Low eq and high eq, Tube saturation, Solid state saturation, Reverb Convolver, HP and LP filters, DLA2A NF Compressor and a clipper we can safely say this plugin is pretty packed and will shorten up your processing chain quite a bit.

On the left of this plugin we find the drum selector these are some presets made to fit the type of drums you are working on at the moment these work will on single Kick, Snare Tom tracks but also have a setting for a full drum track which is nice to get you into a ball park so you just have to tweak it a bit to fit into the mix you are working on.

The DLA-2A NF compressor this is the same compressor we would find on the popular Bus driver plugin also by Nomad this compressor is known for giving you some really nice and punchy drums. This compressor is switched on by engaging the opto gain switch and can be set to either compression or limiting with the switch under the reduction knob.

The modeling knob in Drum Tools are a collection of nine convolution impulse responses Taken from Some of Bernie Torelli’s Collection of studio gear and these each bring their own subtle character to your drums.

For some the saturation we get two modes of saturation modeled after the characteristics of Tube and solid state saturation.

We also get two filters in Drum Tools a LP that goes from 20hz to 2000hz and a HP that goes from 2000Hz to 22000Hz and do a good job of filtering out all the unwanted frequency’s.

The gate we get in Drum Tools has six different settings Relaxed, Moderate, Aggressive, E-Fast, E-Relaxed and E-gentle each of these settings has differing modes of attach and release settings with the threshold being controlled by the big control knob the modes on this gate sound natural and will work well in any drum track you throw at it.

The other compressor in Drum Tools is really nice and has a dry wet knob so you can do the parallel compression techniques with it too so that’s nice, this compressor has seven different settings Natural, Vintage, Modern, pumper, Impact, Punchy and dirty with each differing ratio, attack and release settings the threshold is again set with the control knob.

We also get 2 EQ control knobs for high and low these also have differing settings to them Low has Sub, Fullness, Make room and low end trick and the high EQ has Presence, clarity and Air. These setting do exactly what they are stated to do so no more searching for the right frequency range just punch in what you want and dial it up with the control knob.

The reverb we get with Drum Tools is also really nice with six different city settings to choose from like Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Tokyo and London I really like this reverb it is really easy to just dial in and your drums sit nicely in the “city” (Room) you have chosen.

All in all I really like Nomads Factory’s Drum Tools it is a great tool to get your drums sounding just right it has all you need packed into one neat and powerful little Vst gone are the days of setting up a huge confusing signal chain just slap this on your drums and you will be in drum heaven in no time.