Hello folks!
I've finally received my 2box ! :patbat2box: I'm more than a happy user, the kit is brilliant ! I've sold my acoustic set to afford 2box and no regrets whatsoever. The in-built sounds are really awesome and in my opinion Roland can stand no chance.
Recently, I've started to build dsnd sounds using Addictive Drums and the Drumit Five Editor. So as we know, files are automatically assigned according to the volume of individual samples. But... it takes into consideration the loudest peak (transient?) and not the average volume of the given hit. It actually causes trouble with Addictive drums because it happens that the loudest hits have lower volume then lighter hits (because of the peak, transient) and they are assigned as being more silent. But in reality, they are way louder but the transient is quieter.. ; but the RMS? volume is larger. I can supply you with the screenshot of a waveform of those sounds if something isn't clear.
And here goes my question: Is there any way to rearrange manually the layers in dsnd files? The arrangement of layers must be included in the file, duh. So any way? some workaround? thoughts? :)
And another one, I'm curious if anyone knows (I guess the developers of dsoundtool and sdse) how dsnd files are structured? Are they somehow compiled? Sorry for noob terminology but I'm no expert. So, is there any way to crack into such file and maybe then fiddle with the layers? :)
Hi and congrats on your new kit :)
This is an issue with some VSTs and Addictive Drums in particular. It can happen with both the DrumIt Five Editor and DSoundTool and is made worse by using a preset with compression (there is a much higher risk when many samples have the same volume).
The good news is that SDSE v2.0 has a fix for this so that the samples will never be out of order when exporting from a VST. It uses the velocity values from what was exported from the VST and feeds it to DSoundTool using its velocity.map feature.
Here's how you can rearrange the order in existing .dsnd files:
- open the .dsnd with DSoundTool
- click on the zone title on the left to open the sample list and find which samples need to be moved (click on a layer to hear it)
- File > Split to save the .dsnd as individual .wav files
- edit the velocities.map found in the folder with the individual .wav fils that was just created. You can use any text editor.
- build back the .dsnd: dsnd > generate > type > select the first .wav from the folder and set Input to "many .wav files"
Thanks :)
You Sir, are great ! Now, I do all the stuff manually in Cubase. It's fairly easy and fast but not perfect as you know. Detect silence and bounce selection and voila. But importing whole kit is a bit tedious. With every post about SDSE I grow in confidence that this is really a quality product.. I'm not so well convinced and I'm always more satisfied and feel secure if I do the process by myself. I really want to purchase SDSE in the future, now I just can't afford to buy one.. other priorities on the horizon. Just one question if I may, can we actually decide on to how many layers use in SDSE? Now I use 48 per instrument. I just made 48 midi hits in Cubase, and draw a linear line of velocity from 1 to 127. Can you explain how is it made in SDSE? Is it for instance linear as in my case, or for instance 5 hits on layers 10, 25, 40 etc. I'm amazed how well the samples are handled by the 2box module. I use the var option, not fixed and it sounds amazing.
I'm the same in that I always prefer to do things myself whenever possible: SDSE does exactly what I would do manually, just a lot faster and in one click ;) There's a setting to pick an export mode between High (default), Medium (half) and Single (for electronic sound packs like the Electronic EZX). By default SDSE uses the best mode for each VST, but you can also force it in settings. SDSE 2.0 improves on that so there's no need to worry about the amount of layers when using it, except when you need to export faster to try different versions (to quickly export different versions before exporting with "High" for the version you preferred).
I wouldn't recommend distributing the hits evenly from 1 to 127. The difference in volume is bigger between 127 and 126 than between 10 and 11 so if you don't have enough hits on the high velocities you risk missing some samples.
I've just tried out the evaluation version. Works fine ! ;) Toms have less layers than I expected.. If I understood you correctly, the full version of sdse does more layers, right? on the high settings? or that's the limit?
The full version is the same, except it can export all instruments from all supported VSTs. You can force it to "high" in settings (SDSE.ini in the current version, or the new settings menu in SDSE 2.0) to get bigger .dsnd files from AD but I wouldn't recommend it. There aren't as many samples in most VSTs as one would think, I'll give you more details by PM.