Messages

[10 years]

Dude, I doesnt own the drumit five, but u promised the people who bought it the version 1.0 in the end of oktober. I understand that there is a delay, cause more and more buggs is reported which has to be fixed, but for good will i think you should release a version 0.9 or something this week if you're not done soon!

I'm no 2box employee so I can't do much to help on that score - any dates I've posted up here have been given to me by 2box themselves. They're a small company achieving amazing goals that a huge organisation like Roland can't reach. Cut them some slack

I feel your pain though, I don't have my kit yet either and I've bothered the good people at Wembley Drum Centre repeatedly over the last few months, playing on their shop floor kit. I was in there this weekend, and I spent a bit more time on the TD9, TD20 and the Yamaha DTX, and I honestly can't imagine ever buying one of those.

The very latest kits that are in same sort of price range are in my opinion, not as good as the DD4 that I've had for over 10 years. I wouldn't trade my DD4 for a TD20 unless you threw in a whole heap of other stuff.

...So that's why I'm happy to wait for Drumit 5, it's the DDrum 5 I always wanted

I think it's all of Europe...Looks like my kids will get an extra month of attention from their Dad

...In the meantime I'm getting some mesh heads and a can of orange paint for my DD4

Good work
Have you tried swapping leads etc? Do you know if your shop will replace it for you if it's a damaged cymbal?

If you have no joy, maybe you could track down Scottie.

Cheers
Tom

Hi Tristan, welcome on board. 

 

Animal says Hola Amigo!

I've got a permanent marker pen you can borrow 

Hi Anthony and welcome to the board

I've recently heard from Bengt at 2box - end of October we should see Operating System 1.0 ...In december they plan to release a utility to download single samples with drag and drop to the Unit, and also OS 1.1 (no details what's going into that just yet - stay tuned).

In January there should be a test version of the full kit Editor (although whether there will be a public beta version remains to be seen)...The full-blown editor should be available in March, alongside a further update to the OS up to 2.0.

These dates are projections at the moment, so don't set your watch by them 

Hey Calimero

No, I think the OS update is on track for end of October still.

cheers
Tom

[anything]

@westerlu77 - basically a multisample takes the velocity value of your physical drum hit, and the drum brain (or sampler or whatever) plays back one of a number of samples that have been mapped according to that velocity - that way you can simulate more natural characteristics from each hit (like including audible snare buzz on a kick drum played more quietly, or getting rid of the  'machinegun' effect when you do a roll with an unchanging drum sound...). A single-shot will just trigger that one sound and it will sound the same every time (maybe just the volume will be changed according to how hard you hit).

@Calimero ...I know what you mean, but hang in there. I'm getting my kit in a few weeks - and in all honesty, if I could have afforded it sooner, I would have bought when the first batch hit the shops. I've spent a good few hours playing the drumit over the last few months, in a shop with whole rooms devoted to V-drums and Yamahas, and I've given them all a good thrashing, and I still feel that bang-for-buck, it's better than any other e-drum kit in the price range, even with the current OS.

If you're considering buying but not sure, I would say don't jump into getting something else if you can wait a bit longer. And certainly go to the Alesis site and listen to their samples. Hmm.

For multisamples (if you really can't live without a particular drum sound from BFD or whatever), one way to do it would be to set up a really simple midi track in a sequencer with say 4 - 8 beats on the same instrument, evenly spaced to play out the full tail of each hit, and draw in distinct velocity envelopes for each note, so you get a good range. Bounce down the audio to a wav, and then chop it up, naming each slice as you go. I can't see myself doing this to be honest, except maybe to add a subtle FX change on each hit and come up with some weird combinations, like filter cutoffs controlled by velocity, or maybe increasing overdrive or something. Would be great for some heavy d'n'b I reckon. You could even really mash up the pitch of the drum. Lots of possibilities!

@Nussbaum - Windows Vista became pretty good after Service Pack 1, and Microsoft never apologised for getting people to pay for it up to that point

Seriously though, I wouldn't spend this much money on anything without researching it carefully first. If you're not sure, wait until you're either happy with the product or decide it's not right for you.

I'd like to state for the record that no-one has paid me to write any of this, I'm just an old DDrum4 fanboy, and I'm putting my money where my mouth is in the next couple of weeks.  

Official word is that the utility (due Dec) will handle single shot samples.
Multisample functionality will be with the full-on editor. I can live with that!

Bengt is actually in China right now, checking over the latest production run which is nearly green for go. I think it's looking like we'll be getting the functionality we're clammering for but because of development issues, we'll be getting it incrementally - no groans please, I reckon it's better to get good updates slowly than bad updates quickly!

There's going to be a utility to port singles samples over (not kits yet), coming out hopefully before the end of the year, with the full-blown Editor software planned for early 2010, which I think most people expected.

The utility will actually do the "Drumitification", which means that if you want to use sounds from a library (eg from BFD), you'll need to resample them yourself to Wav and put them through the utility.

Here's a thought - maybe we can start pestering the Drum Library producers to include Drumit-compatible versions of their stuff, as they'll be leveraging existing assetts for relatively little effort? Worth a try perhaps...Let's start a petition!

I'll be honest, I was assuming that I'd be able to use available tools to create multi samples but that's got me wondering now. Time to fire off a quick email to Bengt...

Hi Calimero, nice to have you on board, and good questions - I'm going to have to leave the first to techie experts like Scott from Hand in Hand (come in Scott, you receiving?)

As for the second question... http://lmgtfy.com/?q=high+quality+drum+samples

My own real interest lies in importing less realistic sounds into the kit to play live trip-hop and drum'n'bass type stuff...my bag is chopping up breakbeats into individual hits and noises to trigger, in a package like Audacity...Free and simple and there are loops sites all over the interwebs to grab raw material from

lmao wbrs, I think you just came up with the best nickname for the kit yet

I think puttenvr is right - in that it's not the cymbal sounds themselves that will be updated (they're already great), but the way the drum-brain handles the input.

Imagine for instance playing a midi keyboard to trigger a really good grand piano soft-synth or rompler or whatever...If things like the latency of your soundcard or the keyboard's velocity handling isn't handled right, the 'feel' of the piano won't be good.

So if the responsiveness and consistency of the drumit triggering is improved further, it will definitely have a big effect on the 'feel' - ie how your brain perceives what's happening when you hit the cymbal and what your ears subsequently pick up and process and feed back in...

In terms of the cymbal hardware, have you broken one yet Nussbaum? (honest question about you saying they're less durable - I'm not trolling ).

I know there have been one or two reports of bad cymbals, but I think those individual cases have been resolved by good customer service, sorting out replacements. I think it's unfair to call them 'fisher pricy' - the Yamaha and Roland ones are every bit as rubbery, it's the nature of the e-drum beast - I guess most people don't want their triggers to have their own acoustic properties. I think the Drumit cymbals have a good weight to them. That's just my taste though!

The sounds themselves are (in my opinion) better than Yamaha's and Roland's, and anyway if you don't like them, you'll be able to upload your wavs or aiffs come the new software release