Received my eDrumin today - does it support Hall Effect pedals?

[dsteinschneider]

Hi Rob,

I received the eDrumin today, right on schedule . I read the manual ahead of time so everything went very smooth setting up my 3 ply mesh heads on acoustic shells with UFO Drums ebridges and Yamaha 3 zone cymbals. What didn't work yet is my DIY Hall effect hi-hat pedal. Should it be working? I have a Yamaha FC7 but would prefer to use my converted hi-hat stand with the Hall effect setup.

Thanks,

Doug

[Rob]

Download the latest version of the control application and update the firmware. That should get your Hihat working properly.

[dsteinschneider]

The firmware update didn't change anything. Next trouble shooting step was unplug pedal and try reversing ring and tip. Then I decided to plug the eDrumin directly in instead of through my trusty powered D-Link DUB-H4, 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub which I've been using specifically to make sure everything is powered reliably. Now it's responding, just figured that out now and have to calibrate still.

This reminded me that I suspect port 1 on the D-Link USB hub may purposely not provide 5 volt power. I swapped the eDrumin to port 2 and it's working fine through the hub now.

Some background. I perform live on keyboards with just an Axiom 61 1st gen controller powered only by it's USB connection to the D-Link USB hub. A Behringer UMC204HD is also plugged into and powered by the same hub. The USB hub is plugged into a Lenovo laptop running Cantabile Performer.

The laptop is tweaked for performance by following Brad Robinson's "Glitch Free" guide which instructs on how to turn off all BIOS and Windows 7/8/10 power saving and CPU throttling. I then run a Powershell script I have posted on the Cantabile Forum (got it from the Spiceworks IT Admin forum) that uninstalls all extraneous Windows Store apps. I also run something called PC Decrapifier that uninstalls vendor provided apps. The laptop runs on an i5 3.6Ghz and has a Samsung SSD and 16GB of RAM. The whole rig became more reliable when I stopped plugging directly into ports on the laptop and instead used a powered hub.

My A2E drums are plugged into a backup rig that is an exact duplicate of the above that I sync from the main one via dropbox. I've been tweaking a MegaDrum I got in May this year. It took quite a bit of research on vdrums, megadrum and several other drum related forums to learn how to calibrate the pads and cymbals. They still aren't completely dialed in on the MegaDrum but playable and pretty close. I will be able to compare that experience with setting up the eDrumin after today.

Perceval over on vdrums never pulled the trigger (please excuse the pun ) on purchasing a MegaDrum so couldn't provide me a direct comparison but I decided to purchase an eDrumin based on his input and based on my experience playing around with DSP Trigger.

[flaurez]

Very interested to hear your review in comparison to the Megadrum. I myself have been attempting to tweak a MD for a year. Like you I have it sort of there but not quite. It's so hopelessly convoluted and poorly explained I'm ready to give up on it and give the Edrumin a shot. The software control application looks like a wonderful dream in comparison to Megadrum Manager, and the manual is professionally laid out and very well written.

[dsteinschneider]

Hi flaurez,

Perceval on vdrums wasn't exaggerating how well the eDrumin works. In less than an hour which included a lot of re-reading the manual I have my A2E 3 ply mesh snare completely dialed in including edge and rim and the hot spot eliminated. I'm not a performing drummer but I took lessons for a couple years. My test has been doing exercises from "Stick Control" that my teacher had me become proficient at. No missed hits now.

The really huge improvement is the Yamaha PCY135 for hi-hat into Superior Drummer. I can convince a visiting non edrummer to use this hi-hat now. I actually had the PCY155 working pretty well with the MegaDrum but it's noticeably better going through eDrumin.

I was constantly improving the pad and cymbal responsiveness on the MegaDrum but what happened is, after about 3 months of pulling together what all the parameters do I kept hitting plateaus where I would solve an issue but trying to get a further problem solved caused new issues. An example is I would get something sorted out like making velocity from low to high more even but then I would discover fixing that caused some new problem like missed hits at mid to low velocity rolls.

The eDrumin doesn't automagically dial your pad in perfectly by hitting a few times (although you are pretty damn close). You need to carefully read the manual and learn how to adjust things manually after you do the Calibrate.

[flaurez]

As long as I never have to 'send all' or 'get all' ever again in my life I can stand a little bit of adjustings lol

You are getting all zones on the pcy-135? With good separation of zones? I've been thinking of buying one of those to replace the roland cy-8 I'm currently trying to use for hi-hat, which it is a complete nightmare to try to make it work with megadrum.

FYI I'm also playing an A2E conversion kit through SD3. The kit is awesome, as is Superior Drummer. Just the module is giving me headaches at this point and is the weak link in the chain. The 4 input limit on the Edrumin is concerning, but I'd rather have 4 inputs that work rather than 16 which don't. Lately I've moved almost all inputs over to an Alesis Nitro module. All I need the Megadrum for right now is the variable hi-hat control which the alesis can't do. But even dialing that in on the MD is like a journey through tech hell. Now that it sort of works I live in constant fear of changing or otherwise losing any setting and having to start the painful saga all over again.

[dsteinschneider]

Yes I'm getting good separation of the PCY135 with the eDrumin. I'm also not getting missed hits which I think was happening with my previous TMI because of zone separation issues. I would do patterns on the edge but the notes would jump between the edge and bow (tip) and sometimes just not register a hit

[flaurez]

Well eDrumin certainly sounds highly promising then. Of the parameters you are needing to tweak following 'Calibrate', which parameter or parameters do you find need the most adjusting?

[dsteinschneider]

After you run the Calibrate step you are getting very even dynamics from soft to hard hits and no missed hits.

At this point you click on the "Hotspot Suppress" section and hit the pad around the piezo cone and watch how they register. You set it so hits around the hotspot are in the dark section of the threshold meter and hits over the piezo are in the green part (higher values). Then you adjust the amount (of suppression) dial to what sounds even to you. At that point hits that register in the green area of the threshold meter are lowered automatically.

For a snare setup with rim piezo detection you can adjust "Rimshot Range". It's a cool design, you have a green square, the left edge of it is the transition from the snare head to rimshot, the right edge is the transition to sidestick. You can then slide the bottom of the green square up so hits below that velocity don't register as either rimshot or sidestick.

The next step for a snare is to turn on Positional Sensing and adjust the width of a green bar. Any hit that registers outside to the left of the green bar will send a 127 CC message (edge hit) , any hit that registers outside to right of the green bar (center hit) will send a 0 CC message (center area hits).
Any hits inside the green bar will be between those values lowering as the hits register more to the right.

Finally you can adjust how the pad plays by adjusting the "Response Curve". This control is nice because it has two handles, one for the upper portion of the curve and one for the lower portion. Once you grab the handle you can slide it up or down and pull it above or below the diagonal line which represents even response to hits.

I only covered the snare here but tom setup is similar, especially if the toms have rim piezos. I haven't hooked up my toms yet because I only have one eDrumin.

BTW, I wouldn't do anything about your hi-hat setup until you try your existing one with the eDrumin.

[flaurez]

Thanks dsteinschneider, really appreciate the detailed review and information. I'm convinced this is the device for me and will be ordering soon. If eDrumin could make even this useless cy-8 work properly then it is a true miracle machine