Slate Trigger 2 compared to SPL DrumXchanger

What is the difference between SPL DrumXchanger and Slate Trigger 2?

We offer instrument files for the 2 most popular trigger replacement plug-ins: SPL DrumXchanger and Slate Trigger 2. While both of these trigger replacement tools make replacing or layering your snare sound incredibly easy, they each perform the task in a unique way.

Bottom-line:

  • SPL DrumXchanger offers unique tools for single sample replacement, including SPL’s legendary Transient Designer.

  • Slate Trigger 2 offers intuitive controls for up to 8 sample replacements simultaneously.

SPL DrumXchanger uses SPL’s famous Transient Designer technology for its drum sound recognition, in addition to levels detection. This makes it an easy to use and very precise drum replacement tool. Because it relies on transient and level analysis combined, it recognizes the faintest ghost notes — regardless of their dynamic level.

Additionally, you can adjust the sensitivity and gain of each of these, allowing you to experiment with more transient detection versus more levels detection. Plus, you can adjust the overall “wet” mix, allowing the actual sound replacement to be done gradually (0 to 100%) in order to mix both the original and the sampled sounds.

The other big differentiator with SPL DrumXchanger is that it also includes a Transient Designer section in the plug-in. It offers high- and low-pass filters, Attack and Sustain controls for which SPL Transient Designer is known, as well as a Tune control which allows you to change the pitch of the sample. It also includes the Transient Designer controls for the original triggered sound, allowing you to fine tune the blending of the augmented sample while enhancing the original sound.

Another unique elements of SPL DrumXchanger is a separate sensitivity control for rimshots. You can determine the level at which rimshot samples are triggered, separate from standard drum strokes. Even though our SPL DrumXchanger instrument files (these are the files that contain multiple velocity and round robin samples that can be loaded into SPL DrumXchanger) include two separate files - one for all mics and one for room-mics only, DrumXchanger only allows you to load one sample at a time. So in order to blend different snare drums or different mic placements, you’ll have to do so across multiple tracks in your DAW. Some engineers prefer this because they can ride the faders of several snare drum tracks, for example, blending in the sound to taste without having to dig inside of a plug-in.


Tip: Adding our Room DrumXchanger instrument file to a track allows you to dial-up the ambience of our world-famous drum tracking room to you snare sound.

Slate Trigger 2 offers an intuitive interface that allows you to easily blend multiple samples for a truly unique sound. The interface has a familiar mixer-like style with expected features like Pan, Solo, Mute, Gain, Phase for each sample, but also includes a Tune knob for changing the pitch of the sample.

There is also a real-time graphical display of the triggered sounds and intuitive sensitivity bands that can dial-in ghost notes. Slate Trigger uses a phase accurate multi-layered triggering engine, which is different than SPL, but allows you to seamlessly trigger 8 stereo samples simultaneously. So, for example, you can blend 8 different snare drums together to augment or replace your stock snare in your song. You can also blend different mic placements of the same snare drum together, which is why our Slate Trigger Instrument files (these are the files that contain multiple velocity and round robin samples that can be dragged-and-dropped onto Slate Trigger) contain 2 articulations - one for all mics and one for room mics only. This allows you to “dial-up” our incredible sounding tracking room if that’s the type of unique snare sound you are looking for.

Additionally, you can further refine each of the 8 samples by adjusting curves for Attack, Sustain, and Release, as well as Dynamics and Velocity. you can even adjust the overall Range of minimum and maximum MIDI velocity values (0-127).

All of these controls are intuitively at your fingertips, making Slate Trigger a standard among engineers.

Tip: Adding the same instrument file to two different tracks in Slate Trigger and selecting each of the 2 articulations, allows you to mix the snare drum with All-mics with the Room-only mics to dial-up the ambience of our world-famous drum tracking room to you snare sound.