MegaDrum w/ Hart Kit: Experiences and Settings

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

Hi all, I'm just starting this thread to catalog my experience and share my settings with other MegaDrum users and prospective users. I'll be adding to thread as new information comes up and as I tweak my settings. I've got a jam session lined up for tonight so hopefully I can come back and post what's working in a live jam and (hopefully not!) what isn't.

First of all, my setup:

• MegaDrum32 built using Synthex's v2.7 PCB (20081222)
• Hart Dynamics Studio Master 6.4 Kit
• BFD 1.5
• MacBook Pro

So far I've assembled Synthex's kit (with much help from my solder-savvy Guitarist friend), mounted it in a temporary tin case, attached all jacks, LCD and buttons. Basically, it's built. My case isn't optimal, but I'll reserve building a nice case for it when I'm 100% satisfied with MegaDrum and my settings. It's too early to make any final judgement calls although I'm quite positive about it thus far.

There's one minor issue with the build so far. The LCD unit I got is an HD44780 compatible w/ backlight... but the backlight doesn't work. I've read elsewhere on the forum that this could be due to the 470k ohm resistor. Someone mentioned success by moving to a 33 ohm one in its place. I'll try that soon and report back.

I've spent about three evenings now sitting down with my kit testing things and going through all the settings to try and find the response I'm looking for. It took a while, but I'm getting there.I just want to make a quick note for anyone that's built the MegaDrum and is now trying to find the right settings for their pads: Be patient and have a strategy!. When I first plugged everything in, the defaults provided poor response. While playing with the settings without any strategy I didn't have much success trying to improve the response. Now that I've spent the time necessary to tweak the settings and used a better strategy, the response is quite good. The jam session tonight should easily expose the last few necessary tweaks.

So now for my settings:

I have "All Gains Low" set to Yes. I suppose my Hart pads are considered "hot". If anyone is interested, I may be able to whip out the DMM and measure the max output voltage of my pads.

SnareH
==========
Curve: S1
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 8
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 1
Threshold: 25
Gain: 0
High Level: 1000
Retrigger: 1
DynLevel: 6
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20
DualHead: Yes

SnareR
==========
Curve: S1
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 0
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 1
Threshold: 100
Gain: 0
High Level: 1000
Retrigger: 0
DynLevel: 0
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20
DualHead: Piezo

I'm still not confident about my velocity curves... I've tried them all and I still haven't found one that provides a smooth quiet to loud transition. Could be a combination of other settings and/or BFD (V2A is 0% for the snare, no velocity randomization).

I'm also not sure about my settings for DynLevel and DynTime on the rim. I need a high DynLevel and DynTime on the head to prevent my head from massive double triggering, but I'm not sure where I need them for the rim yet. Those settings (0, 64) work for the rim so far but I haven't spent a lot of time figuring out if there's a better setting.

Also of note is the the High Level was of critical importance. With my rim High Level set too low, all hard head hits would turn into rim hits! Turning up the High Level on the rim solved that issue very well. Now I just need to find the sweet spot for that setting as well.

Kick
==========
Curve: Log2
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 16
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 0
Threshold: 75
Gain: 0
High Level: 900
Retrigger: 8
DynLevel: 7
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20

Again, to prevent nasty double triggering I had to raise the DynLevel and DynTime to maximums. Raising just or a combination of Retrigger and the DynLevel/Time did not solve the issue, only raising DynLevel/Time to maximum did.

I'm also not sure about the velocity curve yet, but it's pretty good. I don't know why I have Xtalk at 2 because there's no mechanical Xtalk between the kick and other piece in my kit, I'll try turning that down to 0.

Toms
==========
All my toms have identical settings to my snare right now (they're all piezo/piezo!). I'm sure I'll want a few tweaks but for now, the same as snare.

RideB
==========
Curve: Log2
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 0
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 3
Threshold: 10
Gain: 0
High Level: 450
Retrigger: 6
DynLevel: 1
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20
DualHead: Yes

RideE (Bell)
==========
Curve: Log2
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 0
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 3
Threshold: 70
Gain: 0
High Level: 900
Retrigger: 6
DynLevel: 1
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20
DualHead: Piezo

The ride tracks really well so far. No issues here. I don't seem to require the same value of DynLevel/Time with the ride as I do with my Snare. There's no double triggering without it.

HH Pedal
==========
Type: F.Control
Curve: Linear
ChkDelay: 10
Low Level: 14
High Level: 100

I am very confident about my Low and High Level settings and I get much better response from the pedal that I did using this kit with a Roland TD-3 or with my previous kit, a Yamaha DTXpress VI. Very happy with the HH pedal motion so far.

HH
==========
Curve: Linear
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 24
Xtalk: 1
XtalkGroup: 0
Threshold: 8
Gain: 0
High Level: 600
Retrigger: 1
DynLevel: 6
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 16

Here I'm not sure about a couple settings yet, but the HH responds very well so I'm not too worried. I don't yet know if I need the DynLevel/Time set that high. Also not sure why I have MinScan set at 16 but as I said, it works well. Maybe some more fooling with those settings will jog my memory as to why I have them set there.

Crashes
==========
I don't have these dialed in yet. I'll post working settings sometime soon (likely tomorrow).





Well, that's that for now. Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments. More to come after the first jam session!

[dmitri]

Hi fuzzysnuggleduck, good to know you're getting there!

As you can see, it's very important to tweak settings for one's particular setup as MegaDrum is not developed for a certain kit like Roland or Yamaha. It's even more important for dual zone pads. It WILL take time find these settings but I'm sure you'll find them.

A few of my suggestions. As I understand your pads are hot. When pads are too hot for MegaDrum, you'll be loosing dynamic range even if you set HighLevel to 1023 (maximum). To test if a pad is too hot, set Gain to 0 (but since you already set "All Gains Low" to Yes, individual gain levels have no effect anyway) , HiLvlAuto to Yes, HighLevel to around 100 and hit the pad hard a few dozen times. After that see what HighLevel MegaDrum registered for the pad. If it's above 850 it is too hot for MegaDrum and your setup will underperform.
So if some pads are too hot, for optimal performance you will have too put a trimpot(voltage divider) between a hot pad and the MegaDrum input.
It is especially important that both the head and the rim of a dual zone piezo/piezo pad are not too hot.

Hi all, I'm just starting this thread to catalog my experience and share my settings with other MegaDrum users and prospective users. I'll be adding to thread as new information comes up and as I tweak my settings. I've got a jam session lined up for tonight so hopefully I can come back and post what's working in a live jam and (hopefully not!) what isn't.

First of all, my setup:

• MegaDrum32 built using Synthex's v2.7 PCB (20081222)
• Hart Dynamics Studio Master 6.4 Kit
• BFD 1.5
• MacBook Pro

So far I've assembled Synthex's kit (with much help from my solder-savvy Guitarist friend), mounted it in a temporary tin case, attached all jacks, LCD and buttons. Basically, it's built. My case isn't optimal, but I'll reserve building a nice case for it when I'm 100% satisfied with MegaDrum and my settings. It's too early to make any final judgement calls although I'm quite positive about it thus far.

There's one minor issue with the build so far. The LCD unit I got is an HD44780 compatible w/ backlight... but the backlight doesn't work. I've read elsewhere on the forum that this could be due to the 470k ohm resistor. Someone mentioned success by moving to a 33 ohm one in its place. I'll try that soon and report back.

This resistor definitely cannot be 470K. It may be 470Ohm or bellow. Most likely 33Ohm will be best.

I've spent about three evenings now sitting down with my kit testing things and going through all the settings to try and find the response I'm looking for. It took a while, but I'm getting there.I just want to make a quick note for anyone that's built the MegaDrum and is now trying to find the right settings for their pads: Be patient and have a strategy!. When I first plugged everything in, the defaults provided poor response. While playing with the settings without any strategy I didn't have much success trying to improve the response. Now that I've spent the time necessary to tweak the settings and used a better strategy, the response is quite good. The jam session tonight should easily expose the last few necessary tweaks.

So now for my settings:

I have "All Gains Low" set to Yes. I suppose my Hart pads are considered "hot". If anyone is interested, I may be able to whip out the DMM and measure the max output voltage of my pads.

SnareH
==========
Curve: S1
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 8
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 1
Threshold: 25
Gain: 0
High Level: 1000
Retrigger: 1
DynLevel: 6
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20
DualHead: Yes

Did you set LvlShift to 8 for any particular reason?

SnareR
==========
Curve: S1
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 0
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 1
Threshold: 100
Gain: 0
High Level: 1000
Retrigger: 0
DynLevel: 0
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20
DualHead: Piezo

For dual piezo/piezo pads I would suggest to set Retrigger on the rims not lower than Retrigger on the heads.

I'm still not confident about my velocity curves... I've tried them all and I still haven't found one that provides a smooth quiet to loud transition. Could be a combination of other settings and/or BFD (V2A is 0% for the snare, no velocity randomization).

Again, did you set LvlShift to 8 for a reason? If not, it will effect the velocity curve behaviour. Of course the whole combination of a pad output/MegaDrum velocity curve/sampler audio output will effect the perception.

I'm also not sure about my settings for DynLevel and DynTime on the rim. I need a high DynLevel and DynTime on the head to prevent my head from massive double triggering, but I'm not sure where I need them for the rim yet. Those settings (0, 64) work for the rim so far but I haven't spent a lot of time figuring out if there's a better setting.

Also of note is the the High Level was of critical importance. With my rim High Level set too low, all hard head hits would turn into rim hits! Turning up the High Level on the rim solved that issue very well. Now I just need to find the sweet spot for that setting as well.

Also I would suggest to set DynLevel/DynTime on the rims not lower than on the heads.
Since it appears that even the head of your snare is very hot, the rim will be even hotter. You have too either dampen rim's piezo, if it is a DIY pad, or use a trimpot.

Kick
==========
Curve: Log2
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 16
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 0
Threshold: 75
Gain: 0
High Level: 900
Retrigger: 8
DynLevel: 7
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20

Again, to prevent nasty double triggering I had to raise the DynLevel and DynTime to maximums. Raising just or a combination of Retrigger and the DynLevel/Time did not solve the issue, only raising DynLevel/Time to maximum did.

I'm also not sure about the velocity curve yet, but it's pretty good. I don't know why I have Xtalk at 2 because there's no mechanical Xtalk between the kick and other piece in my kit, I'll try turning that down to 0.

If a pad is not mechanically connected to any other pads, you definitely should set XTalk for it to 0.
I guess you set LvlShift to 16 here to reliably get max velocity hits on the Kick. If I'm right, than your Kick is like mine and instead of setting LvlShift above 0 I would suggest to lower HighLevel to, say, around 500.

Toms
==========
All my toms have identical settings to my snare right now (they're all piezo/piezo!). I'm sure I'll want a few tweaks but for now, the same as snare.

RideB
==========
Curve: Log2
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 0
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 3
Threshold: 10
Gain: 0
High Level: 450
Retrigger: 6
DynLevel: 1
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20
DualHead: Yes

RideE (Bell)
==========
Curve: Log2
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 0
Xtalk: 2
XtalkGroup: 3
Threshold: 70
Gain: 0
High Level: 900
Retrigger: 6
DynLevel: 1
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 20
DualHead: Piezo

The ride tracks really well so far. No issues here. I don't seem to require the same value of DynLevel/Time with the ride as I do with my Snare. There's no double triggering without it.

HH Pedal
==========
Type: F.Control
Curve: Linear
ChkDelay: 10
Low Level: 14
High Level: 100

I am very confident about my Low and High Level settings and I get much better response from the pedal that I did using this kit with a Roland TD-3 or with my previous kit, a Yamaha DTXpress VI. Very happy with the HH pedal motion so far.

HH
==========
Curve: Linear
Comp: 0
LvlShift: 24
Xtalk: 1
XtalkGroup: 0
Threshold: 8
Gain: 0
High Level: 600
Retrigger: 1
DynLevel: 6
DynTime: 64
MinScan: 16

Here I'm not sure about a couple settings yet, but the HH responds very well so I'm not too worried. I don't yet know if I need the DynLevel/Time set that high. Also not sure why I have MinScan set at 16 but as I said, it works well. Maybe some more fooling with those settings will jog my memory as to why I have them set there.

Crashes
==========
I don't have these dialed in yet. I'll post working settings sometime soon (likely tomorrow).





Well, that's that for now. Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments. More to come after the first jam session!

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

Thanks for the feedback dmitri, it's very helpful.

I too fear my pads are too hot for MegaDrum which is robbing my dynamic range. Perhaps that also factors in to why my velocity curves don't feel smooth? If my pads are indeed too hot, would it make sense to put a trimpot in parallel with the input jacks? Will that work? My pads are commercial and I don't want to hack them up.

Just to confirm... I should be able to use a DMM and set it to "VDC" with Min/Max and then hit my pads hard and see the peak (Max) voltage, correct? Or do peizos produce AC voltage?

After jamming yesterday I did end up changing a bunch of settings. I'll review them tonight and see what's changed.

[dmitri]

Thanks for the feedback dmitri, it's very helpful.

I too fear my pads are too hot for MegaDrum which is robbing my dynamic range. Perhaps that also factors in to why my velocity curves don't feel smooth?

It's certainly a factor.

If my pads are indeed too hot, would it make sense to put a trimpot in parallel with the input jacks? Will that work? My pads are commercial and I don't want to hack them up.

See this thread: viewtopic.php?p=3092#p3092. A trimpot can be anything between around 3k3 and 47k.

Just to confirm... I should be able to use a DMM and set it to "VDC" with Min/Max and then hit my pads hard and see the peak (Max) voltage, correct? Or do peizos produce AC voltage?

You may try but remember you have to measure voltage on pads connected to MegaDrum to account for low input impedance.

After jamming yesterday I did end up changing a bunch of settings. I'll review them tonight and see what's changed.

[japi]

There's one minor issue with the build so far. The LCD unit I got is an HD44780 compatible w/ backlight... but the backlight doesn't work. I've read elsewhere on the forum that this could be due to the 470k ohm resistor. Someone mentioned success by moving to a 33 ohm one in its place. I'll try that soon and report back.

Yes, I fixed my lcd replacing the 470k for a 33 one.

[ruffneck]

Hi,
i noticed that you are also using Mac and BFD. I'm using BFD2 and this might not apply to 1.5 but you might have a look at it. Is there any reason why you have your curve on S1 on the snare? This would imply that every hit is near max or max. I had the same issue as well, my drums laked dynamics and no matter how soft you hit it would sound like you hit at max velocity.

Now BFD2 has something called global dynamic setting as well as dynamic setting for every slot/drum. Per default the global is set to 50% and the individual is at 70%. If you set the global to 100% all hits would be played at max. So i have my global set at 28%, and this really gives a much more dynamic range. Soft hits are soft and hard hits are hard. This setting has nothing to do with the dynamics of the sound themselves.

See if BFD1.5 has the same settings and play around. Also if you have a sc. velocity to amp settings, adjust this to 0.

my 2 cents,

Kari

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

Thanks for the tip ruffneck, I'll definitely take a look for those settings and see if they exist in BFD1.5. I know they have a V2A (velocity to amplitude) setting for each pad, not sure about the global though.

So your Hart pads work well in MegaDrum? Did you find them to be too hot?

[ruffneck]

So your Hart pads work well in MegaDrum? Did you find them to be too hot?

Actually i don't have Hart pads, mine is DIY. But still they where too hot. I endedup putting a 8k ohm resistor in series with the piezo. It had to do with the foamcone i had. Once i got hold of Roland cones i could remove the 8k ohm resistor.

Thanks,

Kari

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

Hmmm, I was just experimenting putting some resistors in series at the jacks... I found I had to use a 100K ohm resistor to make my pad register a High Level somewhere less than 850 (High Level Auto) with my Gain set at 0 (All Gains Low @ Off).

How is it possible my pads are so freakin' hot!?!?

[dmitri]

Due to high piezo impedance, putting a resistor serially to it to lower output isn't a best idea. It also makes the input more susceptible to parasite electricmagnetic noise. I really suggest you to use a voltage divider using two resistors or a trimpot as shown in the thread I gave you link to a few posts above.