Trigger 2 Platinum
by Steven Slate Audio · Drum Instrument · Drum replacement sampler
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A drum replacement plugin that detects kick, snare and tom hits in a recording and triggers or layers samples from Steven Slate's library.
It can stack up to eight samples per drum (close, overhead and room layers), and its transient gate and spill-track leakage suppression help it ignore bleed.
Best for: Drums, Drum Bus. Genres: Rock & Indie, Metal, Pop, Hip-Hop & Trap.
Keywords: acoustic drums, sample-based, hi-fi, rent-to-own, standalone app.
What it does
Trigger 2 Platinum is Steven Slate Audio's drum replacer: it lets you "quickly replace or enhance kicks, snares, and toms" in a recording with samples from its built-in library. It is used both to swap out weak drum sounds and to blend samples under the original kit mics.
- Sample library: sounds from 46 snare drums, 33 kick drums and eight sets of toms, each with hundreds of 24-bit samples.
- Up to 8 layers per drum: stack close mic, overhead and room mic samples in one instance and balance them in the built-in mixer.
- Transient gate detection: hit detection designed to find drum hits without being fooled by background sounds, with multiple detection and latency modes (Sweetwater lists a Live Mode with latency as low as 4 ms).
- Leakage suppression: send spill tracks from other mics so Trigger ignores bleed, which helps when replacing quiet hits and ghost notes.
- Trigger Instrument Editor: a free standalone app for building your own Trigger instruments, with automatic velocity calculation; expansion packs (e.g. Chris Lord-Alge, Terry Date, Blackbird Studio drums) add more kits.
The developer page offers it on rent-to-own and a free demo version.
Source: Steven Slate Audio product page
When to use it
Trigger 2 is a drum replacer like XLN Audio's Addictive Trigger and SPL DrumXchanger. Pick it when you want a large library of processed, mix-ready rock and pop drum samples, multi-mic layering in a single instance and spill-track leakage suppression; Addictive Trigger draws on XLN's Addictive Drums sound library instead. For programming drums from scratch rather than replacing recorded hits, a full drum instrument like Steven Slate Drums 5.5 or Superior Drummer 3 fits better.
- Best for: reinforcing or replacing kick, snare and tom tracks in live drum recordings, especially when the recorded kit or room is weak.
- Genres: rock, metal, pop punk, country and pop, plus hip-hop and electronic productions that use live drums.
- Look elsewhere if: you want subtle, natural-sounding augmentation; several users find the samples very punchy and fake-sounding at 100% wet.
- Standout: spill-track leakage suppression combined with eight sample layers per instance.
What producers say
Users mostly praise the sound of the library and how easy it is to use, often blending samples roughly 50/50 with the original drums; the main complaint is a sound that can be too processed on its own.
- ReverbZone users rate it 97/100 over 18 reviews; one called it the "easiest, most coherent and pristine sounding replacement software" after trying Addictive Trigger and Drumagog.
- musicmarketing.ca Steve Castellano called it a "cleverly-designed drum replacement plugin" and said he "got a very usable result almost immediately."
- Gripe: one ReverbZone user said it "Sounds very fake if used at 100%"; another found it "a bit too punchy" and noted you can't delay samples inside its mixer to phase-align them.
- ReverbZone: Steven Slate Audio Trigger 2 Platinum reviews
- musicmarketing.ca: Steven Slate Trigger 2 Review
Where to buy
- Sweetwater: $119
- Steven Slate Audio: see store
Tutorials and reviews
- Steven Slate Audio: Trigger 2 Deep Dive
- Steven Slate's Trigger 2 Tutorial
- Trigger 2.0 Platinum demo/review (Steven Slate Drums)
- STEVEN SLATE DRUMS Trigger 2 : le trigger incontournable pour le mix de la batterie !
- Amazing drum plugin! SSD Trigger 2 Drum Replacer - Tips, Tricks and Techniques
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More from Steven Slate Audio
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