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Messages - welshsteve

#856
DrumIt 5 Hardware / Re: 2box snare not responding
December 08, 2015, 03:12:39 AM
Just recently found the same thing. Slacken the head off, so it's really spongey, triggers fine. A couple of turns to tighten the repsonse, no triggering at all. I took the head off a and had a look at the piezo wiring, no break, at least none I could see.
The Ddrum Cast precision pads were the best, I wish they'd bring these back! The old Ddrum3 and 4 also has position sensing. The 2box module is by far the best sounding, but I miss pressure and position sensing.
#857
Just curious, does anyone else have issues with the rotary dials? Turnin clockwise up voices only to see it skip back 5 not forward. And vise versa? It's random, sometimes I skips several increments, others just the one or two. Other times, it doesn't move at all. I was wondering if it's a dust on the contact issue or something. I've only ever used my module so I've nothing to compare it to.
#858
Quote from: Jman on October 03, 2015, 01:06:37 AM
.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MroONulN7rM

I know the guy in the video. His name is Ben Stone, from South Wales. Plays with Tom Jones, Mike And The Mechanics and Roachford! He's a lovely guy and not only a superb drummer, but a general excellent musician on various instrument.

Hi Ben (if you're reading this by any chance!!!)
#859
Quote from: wildhorse5678 on May 28, 2015, 10:01:54 PM
By the way on the 2box triggers both the snare and toms have rim triggering.

Yeah my apologies, I took for granted they'd follow suit of all the others I.e. Snare, two sensors, toms and kicks, one.

I'm expecting a pack plus some extras through the post any day now. I'm about to embark on a 90 or so date tour and am really excited to be using them but a little nervous as to their reliability, hence I've asked to be supplied with a few transducers incase I need to make some repairs. I did with every Ddrum trigger they make and even the pintech ones. The latter being a lot easier as they don't require any soldering, just a quick whip off the ashesive of the new transducer, snap in the connector and you're away. The downside is they don't work well with the 2box module, I had to dampen the drums down a LOT to get them to trigger okay.

So how have they been for you, any trigger failures?
#860
Quote from: wildhorse5678 on May 16, 2015, 06:37:48 PM
As previously reported i got a set of Trigitt trigers a couple of weeks ago. Owing to holidays its only today that i have had opportunity to upgrade my module to the new op system and try out the triggers.

The acoustic set im using is Sonor Select Force jungle kit ...16" kick, 10 + 14" toms, 12" Tama snare all  with normal plastic drum heads.

First, i had not used any type of trigger before but i found it quite easy to fix them to the metal hoops. For the wooden hoops of the kick drum, the trigger also came with an additional rubber spacer and it took a bit longer to get the possitioning right.

I then connected the triggers to the Dumit5 unit. I chose toms 2 and 3. As well as kick and snare.

It was quite easy to select the trigger setting for the new triggers in the drumit5 unit. I connected the unit to a roland drum monitor.

Initially i found it difficult to tell if the triggers were working. This was because i could hear the acoustic drum sounds. I found that i had to turn both the output volume of the Drumit5 unit and the volume on the monitor up fully before i could tell that there were other sounds being tiggered in addition to the natural sounds of the acoustic drums themselves. 

The real drum heads mask a lot of the different characteristics of the different inbuilt kits, so you cant hear the same layers and sublties of the sounds that you do with the mesh heads on the 2box pads. However, running through the 100 sets, it did become obvious that there were differences... But they are not as pronounced.

However, remember that i was playing a small kit of drums and what this system did do  was make them sound HUGE in tone and fattness of the sound.  Particularly the 16 inch kick drum and the toms, not so much the snare.  The rim triggers worked fine ... You just have to remember that not all the kits do have rim sounds.

I havent yet played this set up with my band... Or via a PA.. That will happen next week as we have a gig lined up in one of Sheffields top music pubs.  Ill report back any comments.

Oh one last thing the ”synth drum sounds" particularly are not as pronounced because of the acoustic drum sounds ... It may be when fed through a PA they will be more prominant.

I have toured triggering the 2box with Ddrum triggers which triggered great, almost NO dampening at all and on a pretty resonant Tama Starclassic maple kit. The kick was the only challenge. If I was a single pedal player, it would have been fine, just some fast double kick stuff it didn't trigger perfectly unless I dampened the kick drum, which I did and it was fine. Until the triggers themselves started failing, systematically! (not great if that happens mid show) So I have been eager to check out these new triggers when I tour later this year.

But I thought I would suggest some tips that worked for me in terms of knowing if it's triggering well (you said you couldn't tell because of the acoustic noise of the actual kit)
1. Decent monitoring! I only had one 15" active wedge to my left for the first two weeks, then I opted for a headphone amp as my monitor as my I has my own mix, seemed like a better option than having to dick with a 15" active wedge, especially when stages can be a bit tight for space. I used a cheap Behringer 4 channel headphone amp that I had lying around doing nothing. I used my Bose headphones with shut out enough of the ambient noise to check a fantastic mix in my head without having the "din" of the rest of the band's amps and monitors confusing your perception of the on stage noise, which will change due to your threshold of hearing lowing through long and loud gigs.
2. If it's an acoustic representation your going for, it's a good tip to tune the drums as near as damn it to the note of each drum otherwise you'll notice the two-tones (triggered vs acoustic) conflicting. If you're using a kit which is an electronic sample (TR808 kick snare, Simmons) then this doesn't matter.
3. Careful setting up of gains and thresholds for each drum. This is a given but worth noting.
4. Selecting trigger type. You mentioned tom 1, 2, 3. Not sue if you meant "pad" or the new acoustic algorithms or not, again this is a given but I thought I'd mention it.
5. Don't get obsessed with drums false triggering a little. In my early days of triggering it a real problem but once you set gains right and threshold, a little false triggering especially as it will be very low on the velocity curve (not 30 or below) will actually make it sound a bit more realistic. After all, when you whack a snare, the rest of the kit will ring a little anyway.
6. A little bit of muffling can make a massive difference. As I explained, the acoustic noise and the sampled trigger together can be an amazing thing to hear together, oh boy! But I found a little muffling, Zero rings or Moon Gel, makes the samples stand out a little more. And this isn't to do with better triggering, though you might find that as a side effect on really ring floor toms, but just for you to pick out the sample.
7. Adjust velocity curve. In a perfect environment, the normal curve is perfect with pads and makes for a damn near perfect representation of an acoustic drum. But as we know, live with everyone else blasting at 104-106 db can be a different matter. I found having a more heavy curve on kick drum, slightly less so on toms and only a little on the snare will make the ghost strokes stand out, tom flurries and fast funky kick drum patterns definable. Of course, too much will make it sound robotic, but on a gig or a rehearsal, try starting with the next curve (can remember if it's linear or Pos1) and try and make out the improvement. Obviously you need to be able to differentiate between the sample and the acoustic noise of the kit.

Hope this helps.

Steve

PS you mentioned not all sound have rim voices. Are you talking about snare or toms? It's my understanding that the TrigIt toms are single triggers whereas the snare as the piezo for the rim too.
#861
Quote from: Murgen on May 04, 2015, 02:22:02 PM
Well organized!
Absolutely, I shocking attention to detail. Not that it matters, it surprises me someone with this diligence has and old Nokia Symbian OS phone!  ;)
#862
Quote from: jsnkc on May 22, 2015, 05:23:45 PM
Thats a bummer.  I was really ready to pull the trigger and buy one of these if it wasn't for this hi-hat issue.  I'm not a very technical person and would have no idea how to make anything like that.
As mentioned, Jman has a brilliant work round. It might actually be even better than than the 2box method and you get to keep the visualities!
#863
Quote from: edtc on December 04, 2011, 10:45:03 PM
... i hope they gonna sell a lot more !!!

we 2boxers have to make more promotion for this great product !!!

maybe it s the orange color that makes some people hesitate....

I felt the same about the red bit when they were Ddrum. They have a knack for standing out. I saw a video of a chap on youtube who'd painted his orange parts black and I have to admit, they looked great. I saw on a recent Namm video they 2box were displaying Green pads (and probably others too) so I am not sure if it was a reflection of them going into shipping the pads at least in various colours. 
#864
DrumIt 5 Hardware / Re: 2 box with Pintech
May 27, 2015, 12:55:01 AM
Quote from: hemiboy on October 20, 2014, 12:02:18 AM
Anybody using Pintech Phoenix and or Pintech concert cast pads with 2 box? Curious how they trigger!
The Drumit 5 has had a recent firmware update with some new trigger algorithms, I am in no doubt you'd have no issue even if the "pad" types didn't work perfectly, my guess is they'd be fine. I love Pintech stuff, absolutely BOMB proof stuff!
Vistalite hats aren't designed for it though as standard. But someone on here (can't think who) has an option for turning a normal hi hat stand into a decent (perhaps even better) working hi hat controller for the 2box module, so you could still use it where the foot plate becomes the magnet part instead of the magnet being the bottom hat on the standard 2box pad.
#865
Have you tried contacting the US distributor for a spare part? Or even 2box themselves, I always get a response from a chap called Bangj, a very nice chap and always has an answer for me very quickly about all sorts of stuff.

Alternatively, if you know anyone (or yourself perhaps) that's a bit handy with metal, it wouldn't take much to rig one up yourself. There's a spare parts manual you can get from 2box you could use as a guide. It's basically, two sections, one L shaped piece which attaches to the kick drum pad on the vertical pat via 3 bolts with a drum key so it would be stock small tension rods you'd get at any decent drum store (like the ones you see on twin kick drum pedal linking arms) The horizontal part, two wing bolts which go through and attach to the second part, which in turn is attached to a pipe clamp. On the two box piece, its permanently attached to pipe clamp but if you were to make your own, I am sure a welded piece of cymbal arm thickness would be better and would mean you could use any gibraltar rack pipe clamp.

Just an idea. I am not good with metal work but my dad was a welder in his working years and fixed this exact piece when a thread got worn.
#866
Hi,

I have ALMOST sorted it (at least got it to a point where it's usable) I have top (open to close) edge (open to close) hats and foot press. Just need to map foot splashes now and it's there.

Because the drumit 5 brain only gives and option to move a centred note on the hats, I simply went into the mapping section of Superior drummer, found the sound I wanted (e.g. top hat) selected it by I think holding down cmd (on mac) and changed the note of it to the note that I wanted it to correspond. There's a learn function but whenever I tried that, it would ignore the control change of the hi hat opening from open to closed. But just changing the midi note worked.

In my case, the edge and top were the other way around. So Top was playing edge and vise versa. Just chaining them around worked.

I didn't mess too long to figure out the foot splash function. If anyone knows how to do this it would save me time. Perhaps it's an aftertouch control send I need to assign?

Another niggle is choke on cymbals, but I'll leave that for the minute.
#867
Hello people,
I have posted a topic on this before but am still trying to get full function of the hihat with superior drummer. I have got it to a stage where I have open, closed on the edge and hi hat pedal sounds. But nothing I do gives me foot splash and top hat sounds from open and closed. I can set superior drummer to set a top sound on the top of the hats but when I do, I lose the span from open and closed, just top sound.
Also, anyone know how to get a choke function? I get a choke sound when I choke the cymbal but without a hit. So when I hit a crash, I choke it, but get a cymbal being choked sound instead of the first crash just muting. I am sure all this can be done, but I am struggling to figure it out.
Thanks in advance.
#868
Hi,
I am trying to follow your steps, but I got stuck on the mapping section. I downloaded your mapping file but couldn't find a Toontrack folder in Application support to insert it, and the other way I tried that you suggested I found the "manage in finder" option greyed out.
I could spend the time to map myself but it seems quite complicated. The hat functions only lets me adjust a single note, not one for all the different zones etc. I assume I can go to every voice in SD and give them a note to which will correspond with the one generated via the hi hat, what else should I look for?
Thanks in advance.
#869
This is good news. Last year I toured the UK with a rockshow (www.circusofhorrors.co.uk) and I triggered a 2box module with my own custom sounds I made in Logic trying to get the Def Leppard/Mutt Lang snare and kick. I got pretty close!!!
Anyway, the module triggered very very well with the Ddrum triggers, no dampening needed at all except on the kick drum. But damn were they brittle! Within a few weeks they all started breaking, not just wiring breakages, but the piezo elements cracking.
So I bought the Chrome Elite set, they seemed a lot more robust to the eye. They weren't! So then I bought some Trigger Perfect ones direct from Pintech. They have a fast transducer replacement system where there's no soldering required, I replaced a transducer between songs in a show. The downside with these is that I had to muffle ALL the drums down so much, I missed the acoustic sound mixed with the samples that I had with the Ddrum ones.
I got in contact with 2box who said they have their own line coming soon. I was very excited to know this. So are they available yet and has anyone used them and can vouch for their reliability?
#870
No mac OSX version coming soon or have I missed that there is one already?