Thanks forum and Dan at StudioXchange!

[charliec]

I couldn't wait any longer and called Dan at StudioXchange on Monday night.  

On Thursday I was playing my Drumit5 in Los Angeles.... EXCELLENT service and fast action from Dan and the crew at StudioXchange.co.uk.  Highly recommended!

Based on my experience with ddrum3, ddrum4, Bengt and Clavia, I naturally assumed that the kit would sound and play better than any other electronic drum system ever.... and I was not disappointed... what a fantastic instrument!  As with the ddrum products, it just feels "right".  

Yes, the supplied stand seems a little Ikea-flimsy in places, but once it's all tightened down it snugs up a bit, and in any case I haven't snapped anything off yet.  It's okay for studio use, but I'll be using a bigger rack system with my normal hi-hat and kick pedals, and mounting the pads on conventional snaredrum holders and cymbal stands.  The pads themselves seem at least as heavy-duty as the old ddrum4 pads, which held up very well over the years, although we shall see about the rim sensors.  In years of touring I've never had a ddrum product fail completely.  (Same with Dauz.)  Killed a lot of Alesis and Roland gear though!  

I did find the phantom ".file" problem after copying .dsnd files over via USB from my MacPro running 10.5.6, but a quick cleanup using FileBuddy fixed that.  

So count me among the enthusiastic early adopters.  If you're worried about the cheap-o stand, that's a fair cop, but just use your real stand.  Don't worry about the mesh pads, they seem as rugged as the old cast-aluminum ddrum ones, and as long as we can get spare heads then we're okay.  RadioShack Enercell 18-24v AC-AC adaptor (with tip type "M") to replace the UK adaptor and you're done.

Thanks Bengt!  Thanks 2box!  

And thanks to all on the forum (photobeat!) for posting your experiences and info... this place was invaluable in my pre-purchase research.  



EDIT - FileBuddy did NOT fix the ".filename" problem (where extra files with "." at the front of the filename appear in the Drumit after transferring sounds via USB)... it looked like it saw the files and was trashing them, but they were still there in the Drumit when browsing from the module itself.  Oops. 

[charliec]

UPDATE:

Okay, after two days, not so much.  The brain works fine with DsoundTool and USB, thankfully, but it didn't take too long before I snapped something.  Hooray!

1 - Yeah... the stand.  What to say?  Use a real one.

2 - Ummm... the rims.  Yeah, I broke all four of mine by playing along to XTC's "Black Sea" all the way through.  They all went flying on "Travels In Nihilon".  Maybe they are supposed to be removable for service, but mine are flapping all over the place and basically disassembling themselves... and that ain't right.  Hot melt glue gun?

3 - It appears each drum channel is 4-voice poly, and rim and pad zones steal from each other.  Not good.  Methinks these should be on individual voice-stealing routines.  More polyphony is definitely needed.  I would happily buy a DSP expander board that would raise the polyphony so that I never hear a sample cut short again, but that's just me trying to avoid MIDI and Kontakt and all that.

4 - All my trigger gains are set to zero, and the pads are still way too sensitive.  That parameter might need a bit of internal remapping to bring it into range more?  I'm not hitting THAT hard.

5 - Whoa... crosstalk.  Moving pads to proper stands seems to help so far... but some weirdness is still there.  We need a retrigger limit time parameter to eliminate the kickdrum flam phenomenon, which I seem to get on other pads as well occasionally.  Re-ranging the gain parameter on the trig inputs might help here as I'm at the lower limit already?

6 - MAN does it trigger fast though.  And MAN does it feel right when things are functioning.  Despite the janky stand, low polyphony, and iffy rims, the thing still smokes the competition as a musical instrument to just sit down and play.  So no regrets at all, just hope for some minor tweaks.

[Scottie]

UPDATE:

Okay, after two days, not so much.  The brain works fine with DsoundTool and USB, thankfully, but it didn't take too long before I snapped something.  Hooray!

1 - Yeah... the stand.  What to say?  Use a real one.

2 - Ummm... the rims.  Yeah, I broke all four of mine by playing along to XTC's "Black Sea" all the way through.  They all went flying on "Travels In Nihilon".  Maybe they are supposed to be removable for service, but mine are flapping all over the place and basically disassembling themselves... and that ain't right.  Hot melt glue gun?

3 - It appears each drum channel is 4-voice poly, and rim and pad zones steal from each other.  Not good.  Methinks these should be on individual voice-stealing routines.  More polyphony is definitely needed.  I would happily buy a DSP expander board that would raise the polyphony so that I never hear a sample cut short again, but that's just me trying to avoid MIDI and Kontakt and all that.

4 - All my trigger gains are set to zero, and the pads are still way too sensitive.  That parameter might need a bit of internal remapping to bring it into range more?  I'm not hitting THAT hard.

5 - Whoa... crosstalk.  Moving pads to proper stands seems to help so far... but some weirdness is still there.  We need a retrigger limit time parameter to eliminate the kickdrum flam phenomenon, which I seem to get on other pads as well occasionally.  Re-ranging the gain parameter on the trig inputs might help here as I'm at the lower limit already?

6 - MAN does it trigger fast though.  And MAN does it feel right when things are functioning.  Despite the janky stand, low polyphony, and iffy rims, the thing still smokes the competition as a musical instrument to just sit down and play.  So no regrets at all, just hope for some minor tweaks.

Hi charliec

I am going to send you a PM about the rims.

Thanks
Scott

[hwasser]

Yeah +++++++++++++++++ for that idea with a retrigger setting. I really have problems with the kick doubble and tripple triggering (sometimes on every beat i do), again.

[charliec]

Yeah... although I dearly love the brutal simplicity of the Drumit's edit pages, back in the bad old days of Akai samplers and Roland PMC10's, you'd scroll through tons of parameters to tweak your trigger response.

I remember two that were particularly useful - RTLimit (Re-trigger Limit Time, which let you set the minimum time that must elapse after a hit before another hit can trigger), and XTalk (variable rejection of false triggers from stand vibration; if the same signal occured at more than one input, they were compared and only the highest one used with the others being rejected... this parameter controlled the amount of "ducking" of all but the loudest trigger signal).

I'd hate to see the Drumit screens get messy, but the RTLimit and XTalk parameters were very helpful when working with very high stage volumes that created false triggers from bass notes etc., but we were using ddrum triggers on acoustic drums, not pads in that case. 

[hwasser]

One thing that really improves against the bassdrum doubble-triggering is play with your foot closer to the beater on the pedal.

About crosstalk. I don't have this problem, I use a real snarestand and my hihat isn't attached to the stand. One of the cymbals plays really low if I play hard as hell on the kickdrum with doubblepedals though, but thats accepteble, can set lower threshhold but I think its fine.

The Re-trigger Limit Time and Xtalk seams like great features though.

Good news the new update use a new cymbal technique though (cause the old technique was really bad) and including a metronome, really miss that for practicing.