Pretty much all the existing metal stuff nowadays has been Beat Detectived or quantized etc.
I wonder how do you guys use it and when ?
Does it depend on the "metal genre" (meaning thrash, death, metalcore, hardcore, etc.) ?
Do you quantize every hit (even the snare rolls) or do you leave some parts alone ?
Do you replace bad/weak hits before using it ?
I know there are no rules for that, but I'm curious about how the others do.
I find that my approach changes depending on the parts and what the band is looking for. If we're going for a more "raw but solid" approach, I'll just give the tracks a little bit of tightening up; leaving the rolls/fills alone and using maybe 85% strength on BD.
If we're going for a tighter, more modern and machine-like approach, it's usually pretty balls-out. Every hit on the grid, 100%. This really helps with getting ultra-tight guitar and bass tracks as well; they can lock in with drums like a click track. A lot of engineers will scoff at this, but we're not making records for other engineers.
I find that it helps to sample replace the kick (or preferably a copy of the kick track, grouped with the original) before editing, as it makes it easier for BD to identify and separate each kick hit. Most metal drummers are playing really fast and not hitting their kick very hard, so in most situations you'll have to sample-replace anyway if you want to hang with the major releases out there.
It also helps to close-mic cymbals if you can; it helps with definition and it's easier to edit any really intricate parts that need it.
Also, when you're separating regions in BD, I usually just select the inside kick, top snare, and tom tracks to generate the triggers, and then enable the entire drum group before actually separating the regions. This helps keep extra triggers and edits to a minimum and makes for cleaner sounding editing.
Depends on the drummer and the style of music. If it's more "groove based" and the drummer does that justice you'll use less strength for quantinization. If they want to sound like Chimaira or Avenged Sevenfold you'll want it basically snapped to grid like a drum machine.
I just had a fairly long Beat Detective session on Sunday for a metalcore band, so I'm not even sure I want to think about this. Hee.