HSS suppression

[Mr_Bluesguy]

Hello Everyone- first post from a noob edrumin user here, but LONG time edrum DIY'er. Recently purchased an edrumin10 unit and am quickly learning its capabilities and how to implement them. Rob- what an inspired piece of engineering and phenomenal support!
Ok, here's my deal- I built a center mount snare trigger with 5 spokes (.5" C channel aluminum) on a 10 lug snare drum extending from a 6" diameter aluminum center plate. Inconsistent SS and RS triggering, but HSS working nicely. Moved rim piezo from underneath head piezo to basically a shell position. Center, RS and SS are now wonderfully separated, consistent, and sensitive. No HHS suppression registering at all when it worked before. Used same head tension and made sure suppression amount didn't exceed 75%. Clipping not occurring.
To be clear, I'm not asking for suggestions on how to solve this, just some insight on how HHS suppression is supposed to function. If I can understand that, I will be able to engineer my own solutions. Specifically, is the waveform analysis for HSS performed on the head signal, or rim signal, or relative strength between the two? Another issue that's come to light is "dirty" trigger signals due to spoke resonance. I've seen Rob's posts talking about wrapping spokes with cloth/rubber to improve the situation. Again the question is which signal does this affect the most? I'm trying to assess if and how my trigger move affected HSS and center/rim consistency. Might help me determine an educated guess at a better location.

Thanks in advance for any info and insights. LOVE this module!

[Rob]

Can you send me a screenshot of your settings?

[Mr_Bluesguy]

Thanks for the response. I will try to get you a screenshot today

[Mr_Bluesguy]

Hi Rob - I went to get a screenshot and in setting up for it, I just for the hell of it revisited the HSS threshold setting. Nailed it. Turns out I had a misconception on how the threshold control is supposed to work, and had it set too low. One more step up the learning curve!
I am definitely intrigued and interested in your approach to control through waveform analysis. The reason being that I'm a tech geek with years of experience with piezo electric devices. I'm always experimenting with new approaches for drum triggers. Edrumin is an awesome test and development tool for this.
For example, when I said I moved the rim trigger, I actually replaced it with a length of piezoelectric cable running the whole circumference of the snare drum, sandwiched between the hoop and the head's rim. Night and day improvement. Extremely consistent in all zones.
I just prototyped an under the bell sensor disc, not attached to the cymbal itself. Its for a low volume 16" metal cymbal totally unmuffled. Thanks to edrumin it triggers amazingly well even with zero dampening. Anyway, the point is that I just would like to better understand how edrumin works so I can hopefully create better triggers. Edrumin brains are powerful enough to compensate for a buttload of cheap piezo disc and mounting method shortcomings. So, the hope is that I don't create solutions just looking for a problem to solve. But I do find that better hardware does nothing but improve the brains ability to do its job in an extremely consistent fashion. In addition to rock solid consistencty and sensitivity, other things get improved, like less unsightly cabling and cumbersome dampening, endless tweaking for the perfect response just out of reach.
Apologies for the long post. Kinda passionate about this stuff...

[dsteinschneider]

Hi Mr Bluesguy,

Welcome to the eDRUMin world! Would be very interested in learning more about the piezo wire for the rim sensor.

What are you using for your hi-hat pedal?

Thanks,

Doug

[Mr_Bluesguy]

Hey Doug - thanks for the kind welcome words.

The piezo cable I'm referring to appears to be a well kept secret. I can't believe that no one in the e-drum world has tried this, and I've done an exhaustive search for ANYTHING related to it. A few have tried various schemes using the the short lengths of guitar bridge piezo pickups, but that's about it. What I'm talking about is this:

https://www.te.com/usa-en/product-1005801-1.html

You can buy it from DigiKey for about $35/meter. That's about 3 feet, so not horribly expensive, and almost the perfect length to go around a 14" drum. In the real world, it's typically used for traffic sensing. As such, it's extremely durable. Its construction is that of a co-ax cable, which means a flexible piezoelectric polymer plastic is wrapped around a center core of stranded flexible wire. This in turn is surrounded by standard braided shield seen on ordinary coax cables. The inner core and shield are the electrodes. The shield is akin to the black wire, the inner core to the red wire. What makes this cable different and incredibly useful is that it senses mostly impact (strike) stress and is relatively insensitive to vibrations. Of course being flexible it is easily formed into circles of almost any diameter. I have also successfully used it as a circumferential edge sensor on a low volume metal cymbal.

[Mr_Bluesguy]

Doug- I forgot to respond to your question about what I'm using for a hi-hat pedal. It's the Magnatrack REMEDY HC-2. I'm still evaluating it but like it so far. The cool thing is that it attaches under the pedal instead of under the hat cymbals.

[Rob]

I am definitely intrigued and interested in your approach to control through waveform analysis.

I'm sure you've already seen the thread about troubleshooting HSS. That's all the information I will provide.

[Mr_Bluesguy]

Hi Rob. Totally understand. I know DIY is not your main concern, nor should it be. But your product IS an incredible tool for DIY'ers. I did manage to work my hotspot issues out, but only after getting a better understanding of your approach to things. Thanks so much for the support you provide.

[dsteinschneider]

Hadn't seen the MagnaTrack Remedy - I like how they engineered it

Speaking of trade secrets do you know how it senses the travel?