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Old 09-28-2020, 02:16 PM   #1
Osse
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Default Couple of q's on alesis dm5 and trigging vst drums from real drums

Hello, I'm trying to set up my dm5 for trigging vst drums with acoustic drums using piezo triggers, I'm close to getting very nice feel after messing a lot with settings/tuning/mechanical transition from the drum to piezo triggers, but I wanna ask here if anyone with knowledge of trig modules know whether the dm5 cuts the cake even due to it's age or if there are more sophisticated modules out there for this application? I don't nee a module with sounds as this is for studio work. Or is it more a question about damping the acoustics of the drums with moongel/damped tuning to make it work nicely? Ideal scenario would be to be able to tune toms low with a lot of sustain to make them big in oh's and have a nice blend with sampled drums, but I find it hard to make the triggers work properly if tuning my toms like that. I'm using double sided adhesive tape to stick the triggers to the heads as of now. Thanks for any tip!
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Old 10-02-2020, 07:03 PM   #2
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Drum triggers fed to midi have no sustain. Midi drum notes only indicate note number and velocity (how hard it was hit). Any sustain in the audio depends entirely on the drum sample chosen.
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Old 10-02-2020, 08:07 PM   #3
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Hi Osse. You may already know most of this, but it's what came to mind. It's generally a combination of not letting the piezo get too much excess vibration when the drum isn't being hit and setting the sensitivity in the module to where it reacts properly, and it takes a bit of fiddling to make both the module ad the drum happy. If you can get the trigger sensitivity right with just the parameters in the unit you may not have to alter your head tuning to accommodate it.

Not familiar with the dm5, but according to the manual, you have adjustments of gain, velocity curve, crosstalk, decay of trigger (to prevent double triggering) and noise, which will help it ignore rumbles and vibrations that are in the signal but not the stick hit. Try tuning the drum as your want it as the live drum and mount the trigger as unobtrusively and not too firmly to the side of the head as you can. Set the Alesis to be responsive to the trigger mounted like that, and If it triggers the sample but there are too many false triggers due to the ringing of the head, adjust the parameters, so that the head ringing when other drums are hit doesn't trigger it while the trigger keeps responding to hits. If you're lucky, you may be able to leave the drum tuned like this and the dm5 will handle all the honing in on the accuracy of the trigger.

If it can't, then it's time to affix the piezo a little firmer to the head. And to dampen the head very slightly at first so that it rings into the piezo a little less, and see how that goes. If it needs more, take a little more of the ringing out until the Alesis has what it needs to work with accurately.

If you want the head tuning to be very sustaining and the piezo mounted on the head is interfering with this, or the ringing is too much for the piezo, you can try mounting it anywhere else. If it's a hot enough signal you can put them on the shells, which keeps them from interfering with the head ringing.
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Last edited by vdubreeze; 10-03-2020 at 09:59 AM.
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Old 10-04-2020, 02:55 AM   #4
Osse
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Philbo King View Post
Drum triggers fed to midi have no sustain. Midi drum notes only indicate note number and velocity (how hard it was hit). Any sustain in the audio depends entirely on the drum sample chosen.
Hi Philbo thanks for your answer, I think I was not clear enough the problem is false triggering due to, what I guess, excessive vibrations from the head, the Tom sample sustain is great from the Sean Pandy drum kit vst for heavy music, highly recommended.
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Old 10-04-2020, 03:09 AM   #5
Osse
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vdubreeze View Post
Hi Osse. You may already know most of this, but it's what came to mind. It's generally a combination of not letting the piezo get too much excess vibration when the drum isn't being hit and setting the sensitivity in the module to where it reacts properly, and it takes a bit of fiddling to make both the module ad the drum happy. If you can get the trigger sensitivity right with just the parameters in the unit you may not have to alter your head tuning to accommodate it.

Not familiar with the dm5, but according to the manual, you have adjustments of gain, velocity curve, crosstalk, decay of trigger (to prevent double triggering) and noise, which will help it ignore rumbles and vibrations that are in the signal but not the stick hit. Try tuning the drum as your want it as the live drum and mount the trigger as unobtrusively and not too firmly to the side of the head as you can. Set the Alesis to be responsive to the trigger mounted like that, and If it triggers the sample but there are too many false triggers due to the ringing of the head, adjust the parameters, so that the head ringing when other drums are hit doesn't trigger it while the trigger keeps responding to hits. If you're lucky, you may be able to leave the drum tuned like this and the dm5 will handle all the honing in on the accuracy of the trigger.

If it can't, then it's time to affix the piezo a little firmer to the head. And to dampen the head very slightly at first so that it rings into the piezo a little less, and see how that goes. If it needs more, take a little more of the ringing out until the Alesis has what it needs to work with accurately.

If you want the head tuning to be very sustaining and the piezo mounted on the head is interfering with this, or the ringing is too much for the piezo, you can try mounting it anywhere else. If it's a hot enough signal you can put them on the shells, which keeps them from interfering with the head ringing.
Thank you, all great advice! I've been messing about with the settings in the dm5 a lot and they are 90% there, as I only have 4 recording channels (oh's, hh, ride) as of now I have to rely on triggers for close mic sounds which is very interesting to utilise with careful consideration and setup. I'm planning on sampling the actual drumkit and blend in with the awesome Sean Pandy drum vst I use for more personal sound. I've ordered a set of moongel, and attaching the piezo more firmly helps a lot as well (tried less firm and it accentuated the false triggering too). I'm not using any "down force" or foam on the top of the trigger to push it onto the drumhead cause it affects the tuning too much IMO, better to control it with moongel/more damped tuning is my guess. Will check into if I can get hot enough signal for the shell to trig as well.
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