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Old 06-18-2018, 01:56 PM   #59
brainwreck
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 20,859
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After spending the weekend with this thing, my overall impression is that I like it. I much prefer playing on a real kit, but for low volume playing and practicing it's is a good tool. I can definitely get on with it. I have much better control over dynamics and mobility on this kit than with keys or pads. The playing experience is fun, where when playing on keys or pads I felt frustrated. And I feel like I can play and practice on this kit and actually progress, where I felt the opposite when playing drums on keys and pads.

The builtin acoustic drum sounds in the TD-11 module are pretty blah, but they would be good enough for practicing. The electronic sounds (808 and 909) can be fun to play with, though. Other than the builtin sounds, I like the module overall, especially when using it as a usb audio/midi interface for triggering a drum sampler plugin and monitoring through it. I wasn't expecting it to have good enough latency peformance, but I think it is better than when connecting the module via a MIDI cable to my audio interface, where routing through my interface felt just a bit too sluggish. But I would say that the latency performance of the module when used with a sampler is right on the cusp of being good enough, where latency performance feels faster when using the module standalone. Overall, the best playing experience so far has been using the module with addictive drums after making some quick velocity tweaks and adjusting zones for openness of the hi-hat in addictive. The headphone output of the module is about what you would expect from a laptop, being a bit on the low side at times. But there is an additional level control for the usb audio which can bring up the headphone output to more than enough volume. Roland did a good job with the user interface on this module, where everything is easy to get to and nothing feeling clunky.

The mesh snare pad is pretty good, having the main trigger mounted near the rim. So playing in the center isn't hot, but hotness does graduate from the bottom of the snare to the top (by bottom and top I mean rim to rim across the head). The rubber pads for the toms are hot in the center. They are usable for now, but I wouldn't call them good. I haven't spent much time tweaking velocities on them yet, though. The cymbals are fine, and with a little velocity tweaking in addictive they are quite a bit better. The hi-hat controller is ok but not great. Making adjustments to the zones of openness of the hi-hat in addictive's settings is a big help, though. Overall, I would say that the biggest weakness after only some quick velocity tweaking is the rubber tom pads, followed by the hi-hat pedal. But both are usable after some quick tweaking in addictive, and I think I can get them better dialed in after putting in some more time with it. The kick pad seems fine enough, although it could use some bracing on the sides as it tends to wobble a bit when doing steady 1/8 notes. The only false triggering that I have experienced so far is an ocassional low velocity false ride note when playing hard on the floor tom pad. But I haven't changed any internal module triggering settings yet, and I think I can dial that out.

At some point I will do some latency testing of the module's usb audio and MIDI and 5-pin MIDI. As I said above, the best overall setup I have found so far is using the module's usb audio/midi through addictive. I have local control turned off in the module, which turns off triggering of the internal sounds and is reported by others to lower the latency a bit. I wish that addictive drums had a zero latency mode, because it does add an additional buffer, likely for all the builtin effects processing stuff. Playing through addictive feels just good enough, but lower latency is always better in my experience with virtual instruments and processing.

Anyway, it's definitely a keeper. If I were solely dependent upon the module's internal sounds, I would be disappointed. The sounds are very much in casio keyboard territory, being synthesized/modeled rather than purely sampled sounds. Supernatural my ass. Other than that caveat, the module is a nice piece of kit. The snare pad, kick pad, and cymbals are pretty good. The rubber tom pads and hi-hat pedal, less so, but usable.
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