emusonacid!

I was wondering if anyone out there has any tips for making hats + cymbals sound right in the mix of D&B trax. Ive tried all sorts of samples but often they sound too "toppy" in the mix, but filtering the top end off the sounds just makes them sound dull and muffled. Any ideas?
Cheers!

here is something you could try. don't know if it will help. take your samples of your hats and send them thru the FIR with a high pass setting, point at 99 and frequency at 1000 hz. that might work. i have done that with a bunch of cymbals and it seems to give the cymbals that knife cutting sound, kind of like the cymbals from "cum dancing" by london elecktric.

give that a shot. maybe some one else has a different solution. hopefully this helps.

Try using the resonance on the HPFs to accentuate the freq you want. Then turn down the overall volume = HPFing with less high end.

OR

Use the EQ (in the filter section) to lower the high end a bit

OR

Use the EQ (in the filter section) to boost the freqs you want (I love the EMU EQ boost it's the only boost I ever use!)

OR

Use an outboard EQ to take the edge off

OR

Get different hat samples

Also ... you said they sound too "toppy". I guess I'm not sure exactly what you meant (I assumed you meant too much high freqency). Maybe if you compressed them a bit they would "fit" in the mix a bit more?