eDRUMin 1.5 BETA now available

[jacko]

unreal rob

i love how you just say 'i want to do positional sending on cymbals' and a few days later it's there

meanwhile development in the rest of the edrum world creeps along soooo slowly

[Mylo]

Is this going to work with ATV cymbals?

I doubt I’ll buy an SDX to get the the two bow tip articulations but I think it would be cool to setup the bow shank and bow tip for the different zones instead of using the gates out of SD3.

[Rob]

Is this going to work with ATV cymbals?

I really have no idea, but my suspicion is that it won't. At very least, you would likely need to prevent the cymbal from rotating and ensure that one of the piezo is facing directly towards you. I'll need a couple weeks to add a few more features and then I'll release a BETA and you can test and let us know.

[monospace]

That looks and sounds awesome, but there’s no way I’m going to spend money on expansion packs that I don’t even like. But if the articulations are user assignable and will work with the Core Library, I’m all over it.

[Rob]

For the record the expansion pack sounds excellent and is very well recorded. The hihats have loads of fidelity too. And after listening to the playback in the video, I can hear the subtleties between the two tip articulations a lot more easily than when playing with cans on.

[lalo]

Yeah, you can even hear the clutch and pedal noises, unreal.
So how far is 1.5.x out of the Beta phase? couple of weeks?

[Rob]

I think version 1.5 is done already. I'm working on version 1.6 now, which is going to be a lot smaller. I'm just planning of including positional sensing for cymbals and proper crosstalk controls for external MIDI. Should have a BETA by the end of the week.

[monospace]

It’s a total tangent but I burnt a lot of money on expansion packs for Superior Drummer 2 back in the day that are pretty useless now (I know they’re technically compatible but they sound pretty lousy in comparison.) I understand it’s the business model but I’d much prefer new features be part of the core release. Rob’s work is fantastic but I’m not going to spend money on a SDX just so I can play a single ride cymbal that cannot be combined with other libraries in a way that sounds sonically coherent.

[Mylo]

It’s a total tangent but I burnt a lot of money on expansion packs for Superior Drummer 2 back in the day that are pretty useless now (I know they’re technically compatible but they sound pretty lousy in comparison.) I understand it’s the business model but I’d much prefer new features be part of the core release. Rob’s work is fantastic but I’m not going to spend money on a SDX just so I can play a single ride cymbal that cannot be combined with other libraries in a way that sounds sonically coherent.

I’m with you. I’m waiting for a drum modeling VST like ModoDrums to become mainstream. I use Pianoteq for my piano VST. Pianoteq is based on modeling and it is incredible.

[monospace]

(Continuing this tangent.)

Modeling is what Roland has been doing all this time, and on the surface it seems like the obvious direction for the industry. I personally don't like the sound of Roland, but that's not to say someone else, like Modo, couldn't come along and do it better. At least in theory, modeling every aspect of a drumkit seems like it would be a highly effective way of creating every drum sound you could possibly think of.

However, I am also a big fan of Toontrack's approach: record every piece of kit known to man as best as you possibly can. It's just that the problem with samples, as we've been finding out, is that they're hard to combine. A well recorded drumkit beats a well modeled one anytime, at least in my opinion, but that strength is also its greatest weakness, which is the recording environment. A snare recorded in Studio A with Equipment X will sound horrible when combined with Drumkit B recorded with Equipment Y.

In my opinion, the best of both worlds would be a combination of high-end samples of real-life instruments, with state of the art modeling of ambiences that can blend of all that into a harmoniously sounding total package. Add to that an interface like eDRUMin that can squeeze every last drop of performance out of every possible trigger device, and that's what I think electronic drumming will be like in the near future.

We're not there yet, but we're getting close.