kick and snare acting funny

[kurtus420]

so I finally got my pic working correctly and managed to connect all my pads up but kick and snare inputs are acting funny. When I'm playing a somewhat faster hihat and snare combination with a repetative kick it starts to either output at full velocity with a light kick every so often or it just cuts out all together every once and awhile, the snare will just miss the odd hit but the velocity level is fine here. I find that the kick respond better when played on it's own but still kicks out a loud hit every 10 kicks or so. The kick is a kd-8 by roland with a double pedal, snare is a diy beatnik crossbar design c/w diy poron roland cone and 12" roland mesh head, any idea whats happening? Thanks

Synthex kit 3 v2.8

[dmitri]

Did you look at http://www.megadrum.info/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=761 ?

[kurtus420]

I figured it would probably be a tweaking issue rather than a hardware issue which is great. I just have to site down and figure out all of the setting for myself with a good strategy plan as well as a good understanding of what the setting do. I found a couple of threads last night that explained in great detail how to set up your pads, of coarse everyones milage will very.

[kurtus420]

I'm not really sure were to start here, I have tryed changing just about every function in megadrum and followed your instruction as far as set up goes but can't seem to get rid of the snare cut out and the kick belting out full velocity even on light kicks. The pads when played on their own work pretty good it when playing mutiple pads at once. I've tried aux 4 for my kick and still the same outcome. I'm beginning to wonder if it's hardware related, is this normal? If so what should I focus on changing? Keep in mind that I have a double kick so the sensitivty is lower, the snare is a 12" mesh head. I'm sorry to ask these questions but I'm not sure what to try next .

[dmitri]

Start with listing your settings.

[macca2004]

If I was you the items I would check first are......

1) The soldering to the piezo is OK, they break loose sometimes causing intermittant loss of signal
2) Make sure the cone (if you are using one) is making contact with the head. Roland type cones should be around 2mm above the bearing edge before tensioning the head.
3) Check the cone material is not too soft. I find it tends to shift around under the head after each hit if this is the case.
4) Head tension. Tighter is not always better...experiment a little
5) Check you don't have a Hot pad (i.e automaxlvl > 1000) as this will affect dynamics and velocity range.

Once you are sure about all these things the curve settings are a megadrum owners best freind!!

Good Luck!

[kurtus420]

Thanks for your thoughts on this though I'm certian it's not my pads. I have pots installed on all of them so getting hilevels around 800 right now, they are all made using roland mesh heads with diy poron roland style cones/35mm piezo, they are medium density and sit approx 1/16th - 1/8th of an inch above the rim. As for my kick, it's a Roland KD-8 and I did notice that it has a weaker signal, my hilevel with double kicks was around 300. My triggers work great for the most part, no retriggers to my ear though I have not checked with midi ox. I've spent alot of time dialing these pads in for my trigger io that I used to own.

If I was you the items I would check first are......

1) The soldering to the piezo is OK, they break loose sometimes causing intermittant loss of signal
2) Make sure the cone (if you are using one) is making contact with the head. Roland type cones should be around 2mm above the bearing edge before tensioning the head.
3) Check the cone material is not too soft. I find it tends to shift around under the head after each hit if this is the case.
4) Head tension. Tighter is not always better...experiment a little
5) Check you don't have a Hot pad (i.e automaxlvl > 1000) as this will affect dynamics and velocity range.

Once you are sure about all these things the curve settings are a megadrum owners best freind!!

Good Luck!

[kurtus420]

Ok, I' do it today. One thing that comes to mind is that my kick is not very sensitive, around hilevel of 300 for my double kicks, I'm wondering if I should put it on a strong curve and just lower the max velocity level through the vst so the beater doesn't sound like it's about to blow through my speakers? With the snare I found that when my curve is adjusted to log3 or using higher gain it doesn't cut as bad.

Start with listing your settings.

[macca2004]

I'm wondering if I should put it on a strong curve and just lower the max velocity level through the vst so the beater doesn't sound like it's about to blow through my speakers?

Another alternative to using the VST is to change your maxhighlvl setting...

For example if your automaxhighlvl is 300 then

Setting maxhighlvl to 350 will make acheiving max velocity of 128 much harder (similar to reducing velocity ctrl limit in Superior 2)
Setting maxhighlvl to 250 will make it easier to acheive max velocity hits.

Another thing to remember is that megadrum assigns velocity levels of 0-128 to the difference between threshold and maxhighlvl. The greater the difference between threshold and maxlvl the better the dynamics and velocity response.

For example

Threshold = 80 / highlvl = 300 (=220) 220/128 = 1.72 (low resolution)
Threshold = 80 / highlvl = 800 (=720) 720/128 = 5.63 (high resolution)

Hope this helps...

[kurtus420]

This does help quite a bit, thanks for spelling it out in such an easy way to read, I'm going to try these ideas tonight and post what I come up with. My next questions would be, how can I make my kick hotter? is possible that roland used reverse polarity on the kick thus making it less sensitive?

I'm wondering if I should put it on a strong curve and just lower the max velocity level through the vst so the beater doesn't sound like it's about to blow through my speakers?

Another alternative to using the VST is to change your maxhighlvl setting...

For example if your automaxhighlvl is 300 then

Setting maxhighlvl to 350 will make acheiving max velocity of 128 much harder (similar to reducing velocity ctrl limit in Superior 2)
Setting maxhighlvl to 250 will make it easier to acheive max velocity hits.

Another thing to remember is that megadrum assigns velocity levels of 0-128 to the difference between threshold and maxhighlvl. The greater the difference between threshold and maxlvl the better the dynamics and velocity response.

For example

Threshold = 80 / highlvl = 300 (=220) 220/128 = 1.72 (low resolution)
Threshold = 80 / highlvl = 800 (=720) 720/128 = 5.63 (high resolution)

Hope this helps...