MegaDrum w/ Hart Kit: Experiences and Settings

[dmitri]

According to a post Dmitri made he specifically references "...If it's above 850 it is too hot for MegaDrum and your setup will underperform...." So I would think anything under 850 would be ideal. Somewhere else (don't have it here) I recall him saying anything under 300ish for your high level would also provide negative performance. I'd think you'd want it as close to, but not above, 850.

850 is a safe bet. Actually even above 900 may be just fine.

[gastric]

Why not 1000 then. Or 1021. I'm being completely serious. If the pad is anywhere below max on the very hardest hits isn't that acceptable? I'm just trying to understand why you've chosen 850, or a little over 900 as acceptable but not 1021 (anywhere below max).

[dmitri]

Why not 1000 then. Or 1021. I'm being completely serious. If the pad is anywhere below max on the very hardest hits isn't that acceptable? I'm just trying to understand why you've chosen 850, or a little over 900 as acceptable but not 1021 (anywhere below max).

This is exactly why I chose to give a pretty much arbitrary high number 850 and exact at that - to stop people from asking if 851 will be ok and so on;)

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

My toms where getting high levels around 900 to max before when striking hard on the center of the pad. This would lead to a Tom that responded poorly. Quiet hits wouldn't come through properly, even with tiny thresholds and different curves and what not. Rolls from quiet to loud would come through all patchy and crap. There were pretty big inconsistencies in the velocity of my hits to the velocity of the MIDI notes that MegaDrum was spitting out.

The only thing I've found that worked to get my kit playable with MegaDrum is by using voltage dividers made from two resistors... and once that is done, it works very well. Perhaps there really is a setting combination that I didn't try which would have tamed my kit with near-maxed out high levels, but I couldn't find it after much experimentation and reading.

[clock2113]

So has anybody got a Hart set working okay without adding additional resister and trimpots?

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

I just wanted to quickly follow up on this thread after a recent firmware upgrade to 20091101. I want to say THANK YOU to Dmitri, my MegaDrum just got better! I recently decided to upgrade my firmware because I was running the original FW I got with my Synthex kit for over 1 year now and I was really itching to peek at the new features and improvements Dmitri has made. I can't stress this enough, but Dmitri's dedication to fixing and improving the firmware is second to none.

Now, to the comments:

First off, response is better. I can't totally explain it, but the response from MD is better. Maybe it's the code improvements, maybe it's not. The exact same BFD settings in use, just upgrading the firmware and redoing all my settings, things are smoother and the dynamics are more controlled now. This might be a case of just finding all my settings again from scratch (improving them), though.

I'm quite eager to learn more about the new Hi Hat pedal settings which could yield some major improvements towards making the MD HH action more life like. I will also be looking into custom curves, which I grasp the concept of well but haven't done played with yet although I'm not finding myself having as much velocity curve issues now as I was before.

I had to install a VD on my ride bow and bell because I was previously using All Gains Low (and the ride was at max then) even though I had several VD installed on other pads already. Now I'm properly using the gains on all my inputs and ensuring my HiLevels are high enough to provide me with good dynamic range (coupled with the right threshold settings).

Maybe it's just that I've become more familiar with MD or that I finally solved my hot pads problem (and that I understand the solution properly now) but MegaDrum doesn't seem like nearly as much of a big black box of scary settings and pain to setup that it used to. I'm able to get my drums working really well from scratch in 30 minutes to 1 hour. Longer periods of time with jamming is necessary to fine tune the small details but compared to when I first started using MegaDrum, it's night and day. It took me weeks before to get MD working with my Hart stuff originally and now it's literally minutes.

If you have Hart drums, don't give up! MD work really well with them... you just need to cool off your pads and spend time learning/understanding the settings and it will all work itself out.

MegaDrum ROCKS!