MD config problems with yamaha dtx pads

[dmitri]

That is a lot of text so I don't really know what to help with. What I noticed is that you do it by ear. That might be the cause of the problem for finding the right configuration. The reason is that the Curve you use for the input is not optimal for the pad signal output profile.
Set it up exactly as in "Settings for Yamaha XP120SD and similar 3 zone" and please post screenshots of visual MIDI Log for:
1. A dozen of light hits.
2. A dozen of medium hits.
3. A dozen of strong hits.

[hurstaudio1]

Dmitri, sorry for being all over the place. I have made some progress this morning and wanted to share it with you and get some input.

Snare: I downloaded your xp120sd alone.zip file you had in that thread you sent me. It didn't work right off, I had to adjust a few things and it worked amazing, super well, ghost notes and all of it. Then I was having fun playing it and my USB crashed again, didn't have time to save my settings and for the life of me I can't load those settings again. I even wrote down the settings and entered them back in and I cannot get the level of sensitivity as I had so I want your help. I do have successful rim shots but they are quiet kind of and not very dynamic...your preset was amazing and I cannot seem to load it again for whatever reason. I was able to get light hits and the rest of it but it was auto triggering initially. You had the gain set to 8 and threshold to 72 I believe. Minscan was 50 for both head and rim. I had to lower minscan to 20 on the rim.
http://www.codyhurst.com/snaresettingsgood.jpg

Ride cymbal: Ok. I actually got the bell to work, but the cymbal as a whole, specifically the bow area, isn't as sensitive as I'm sure it could be, and, the edge note is set but difficult getting it to trigger. Can you please give me your feedback here.
http://www.codyhurst.com/ridesettings.jpg

I'm getting so damn close man.

I now understand I have to get a "crossover" cable for my hh, I guess the cable that came with the dtx will not work. I also now know high impedance should be switched to on. I'll keep working at this.

[dmitri]

Dmitri, sorry for being all over the place. I have made some progress this morning and wanted to share it with you and get some input.

Snare: I downloaded your xp120sd alone.zip file you had in that thread you sent me. It didn't work right off, I had to adjust a few things and it worked amazing, super well, ghost notes and all of it. Then I was having fun playing it and my USB crashed again, didn't have time to save my settings and for the life of me I can't load those settings again. I even wrote down the settings and entered them back in and I cannot get the level of sensitivity as I had so I want your help. I do have successful rim shots but they are quiet kind of and not very dynamic...your preset was amazing and I cannot seem to load it again for whatever reason. I was able to get light hits and the rest of it but it was auto triggering initially. You had the gain set to 8 and threshold to 72 I believe. Minscan was 50 for both head and rim. I had to lower minscan to 20 on the rim.
http://www.codyhurst.com/snaresettingsgood.jpg

Settings in your screenshot differ from settings from viewtopic.php?p=24665#p24665. If it starts to autotrigger with settings from viewtopic.php?p=24665#p24665 - raise the Threshold, don't lower Gain.
If you still have problems, take the settings screenshot and take 3 screenshots of visual MIDI Log with light, medium and hard hits.

Ride cymbal: Ok. I actually got the bell to work, but the cymbal as a whole, specifically the bow area, isn't as sensitive as I'm sure it could be, and, the edge note is set but difficult getting it to trigger. Can you please give me your feedback here.
http://www.codyhurst.com/ridesettings.jpg

Do the same thing - take 3 screenshots of visual MIDI Log with light, medium and hard hits.

[hurstaudio1]

Dmitri,

Yes, the params in the screen shot I posted in my last post were because, as I already stated, the default settings in the xp120sd file caused the pad to auto trigger since the gain was at 8, so in the previous screen shot I lowered gain as well as threshold. Since you told me to raise threshold and not lower gain, I did just that this go around.

First, here is the screen shot of the exact settings loaded from your xp120sd mds file, there are no changes made to this config screen
http://www.codyhurst.com/snaredmitri.jpg

Next, the only things I changed to be able to perform your requested midi log tests were threshold for the snare H zone, which I increased from your 72 to 110. Even still, I am getting false triggering of the rim. Since I kept gain at 8 and raised threshold, I consequently had to raise threshold for the rim input from 16 to 19. I also changed the note number from 37 to 40 on the rim input but that should have no effect on what we're trying to do. I also lowered minscan from 50 to 20 on the rim zone. I'm not quite sure why you left min scan at 50 on the rim when I'm fairly sure you instructed others to lower it on rim zones. Yesterday morning, I made these exact changes except for raising threshold I lowered it to 51 and gain to 7 and things were amazing. But because I didn't save those settings I have not been able to regain that kind of responsiveness, even entering those settings back in. I wrote them down specifically because the response was so good, I couldn't get back to where I was for a mere 5 minutes.

Please excuse the false triggering here, you will probably see some light rim strikes which auto triggered. I did this so you could see my stick bounces and light/med/hard hit tests. So here those tests are:

Here are a series of several stick bounces. You will notice, other than false rim hits, only the first 2 or 3 medium velocity hits are registered
http://www.codyhurst.com/snaremodbounce.jpg

Series of consecutive similar light velocity hits
http://www.codyhurst.com/snaremodlight.jpg

Series of consecutive similar medium velocity hits
http://www.codyhurst.com/snaremodmed.jpg

Series of consecutive similar hard velocity hits
http://www.codyhurst.com/snaremodhard.jpg

What you will observe is that while my strikes were all consistent in terms of velocity:
A. Light hits were not registered other than a few out of 15 or so hits
B. Medium hits are registered but you will note some velocity differences
C. Same as the medium hits, still slight differences in velocity.

In terms of the ride, I was able to get the edge to trigger by raising the threshold on the edge by only a couple of numbers. Let us focus on the snare for now and I'll apply my knowledge to the ride later.

Question: Have you found Yamaha PCY pads to be just as cool as you've found the pads themselves to be?

Last, I purchased the following adapter to use on my hh controller input to solve the crossover issue. I am hoping this is going to solve my problem. I am also assuming the reversal of polarity was done inside the Yamaha module input jack and not the cable itself
https://ramblefxdirect.com/products/1-4 ... ng-adapter

Thank you for your help

I am also attaching my current working config. The ride and snare zones all work, though fine tuning may be necessary obviously.
http://www.codyhurst.com/dtx-config.zip

[dmitri]

First of all, you can attach screenshots directly to your posts. It is really inconvenient to jump to external links. When you attach an image(s) to a post, you can insert this image anywhere you need in the post.

Please do the following:

1. Set Gain on the head to 7.
2. Set HighLevel on the head to 150.
3. Set Threshold on the head to 30. If it autotriggers, keep raising it until it stops autotriggering and then raise it a bit more (~5-10%).
4. Enable HighLevelAuto.
5. Hit the head hard a dozen of times.
6. Disable HighLevelAuto.
7. Post a screenshot of settings.
8. Post 3 screenshots of light, medium and hard hits.

Both Yamaha pads and cymbals tend to be rather "cool" from my experience.

[hurstaudio1]

Oh sweet baby Jesus.

I think I may have hit the jackpot. I followed your instructions as you outlined. I dropped gain to 7, then found my lowest threshold I can use without it auto triggering was 44. It is not 100% but I'd say it is 98% where I want it to be. I applied those same steps to the ride, and basically all I had to do was lower the threshold to around 45 and it is very sensitive. I am now able to get very soft hits

My kick pad however, works great, but I want to let you know the high level is only about 250. Since it works fine would this be acceptable to you?

The only thing left to do is wait for my adapter and configure my hh pedal. After doing so I will write a beginners guide with step by step instructions which I feel will help a lot of people this has been a long painful experience and I'm not even certain of all of the settings but I've got a better grasp now than I did a week ago.

Question: I was jamming out earlier and noticed that if the square usb connection on the back of the module is jiggled up or down slightly, my pads trigger. I can't recall this happening before but I want to add too that I got my 7 port USB hub today and it is a powered hub I think it says 36V or something. Now I know I read that md can only handle about 5v coming from a wall socket and md does work great connected to my new hub I just want to ask you if this sounds like weird behavior to you. My USB failing problem has now been solved.

I'll follow up in a bit with my config and screen shots.

[dmitri]

My kick pad however, works great, but I want to let you know the high level is only about 250. Since it works fine would this be acceptable to you?

If (HighLevel - Threshold) is more then 127 then you will get full dynamic range. But more important, if it works as you want it then you don't need to worry about HghLevel at all.

Question: I was jamming out earlier and noticed that if the square usb connection on the back of the module is jiggled up or down slightly, my pads trigger. I can't recall this happening before but I want to add too that I got my 7 port USB hub today and it is a powered hub I think it says 36V or something. Now I know I read that md can only handle about 5v coming from a wall socket and md does work great connected to my new hub I just want to ask you if this sounds like weird behavior to you. My USB failing problem has now been solved.

If jiggling a USB cable causes triggering then it means the connection is not very good and causes power noise which in turn causes triggering.

[airflamesred]

After doing so I will write a beginners guide with step by step instructions which I feel will help a lot of people this has been a long painful experience and I'm not even certain of all of the settings but I've got a better grasp now than I did a week ago .

We'll be holding you to that!

[hurstaudio1]

Dmitri, when you say the connection is not very good, do you mean it needs to be resoldered or the cable is the issue. It is plugged in all the way. The cable is too long for my needs so I'll need to buy 2 shorter cables. Are these USB type A? I can't keep these USB straight.

And yes, once I get the hh pedal working I'll be writing that guide, for sure, possibly making a video tutorial about it. There is a bucket of stuff that really needs to be clarified. Digging around the forum for hours is honestly not necessary if the documentation was fleshed out a little more. It is as if knowledge of electrical circuitry is required to buy mega drum yet not said explicitly. Although not required, that knowledge will greatly help someone just knowing whether a pad is hot or cool and which settings to adjust first. Not knowing to disable every input to prevent auto triggering and configuring one by one. How the inputs on the back of the unit do not start at the top left, they start with the kick, (jack 2). How under pedal settings it asks for hh input number and the lowest value is 2, because starting from the kick, the hh cymbal is jack #2 even though it is third from the left. How Yamaha hh controllers are high impedance and have reversed polarity and if not electrically inclined, which adapter to buy. Just knowing these few things and more will really help someone but no where in the documentation is it really said specifically at least in a newbe fashion. Remember, people buying mega drum have no clue what they're clearly getting themselves into as evidenced by many forum posts asking the same exact questions. Referring them back to documentation which posed them to ask the same question in the first place isn't too much help. No fault of Dmitri's, but sometimes developers don't write the clearest documentation.

So yes, hold me to it, because if someone with near 0 sight can do this, you can to if you have the information.

[dmitri]

Dmitri, when you say the connection is not very good, do you mean it needs to be resoldered or the cable is the issue. It is plugged in all the way. The cable is too long for my needs so I'll need to buy 2 shorter cables. Are these USB type A? I can't keep these USB straight.

I mean the cable might be too loose in the USB socket. The cable is USB B male at the module's end. At the PC's end it is usually USB A male but it can be USB C male if you have a new PC/laptop with a USB C socket.