td-10exp compressor intermittency

[drumlogic]

Okay, check this out. I am in the process of recording a demo. While I was playing a few songs on my DELICATELY tuned kit I noticed that 1 out of every 3 or 4 notes played on my snare sounded strange. When I stopped playing and just hit my snare alone it was fine. Then, when I hit any other pad and snare together repeatedly every couple of hits sounded very trebly. Kinda like the sound of the snares rattling is extremely emphasized just loud and nasty. If you hit the snare repeatedly by itself it has a very consistent sound and it should be consistent because I am hitting the rim of a pd-120, in the exact same spot with the same dynamic. If I go and shut down the compression, this problem dissapears. I spoke to guys at roland and they setup a kit with my settings and were able to hear what I was talking about. they suggested that the problem was due to positional sensing on the pd-120. They suggested I remove the positional sensing capabilities of my snare by changing the pad type to 12B in my trig settings. I'm not sure about this though. I think the problem is the compressor. I do have the snare heavily compressed, but it should be consistent.
Here are my settings if your interested:

snare: piccolo3 on head
pco3rim on the rim.
It is brass/3.5in coated head, tuning 1, no muffle and loose tension on the snares.

compression:

threshold:-35
ratio infin:1
attack: 2.0
release: 200
output: +2

try hitting that drum and any other trigger at the same time repestedly, you'll see what I mean.

Let me know what you guys think.


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-Drumlogic, V-session, Visulite/roland cymbals, (2)Mackie srm-450's, bbe 482 sonic maximizer,

[drumlogic]

funny you should ask what I'm using to record. I'm actually using a G4 power mac 733Mhz, 1024MB of ram. We are running Digital Performer 3 with Waves plugins. The problem here is that the renassaince wave plugins, although they sound excellent, require alot of processing power. We will be running these plugins on all the drums, guitars and vocal tracks which require more processing power then computer I mentioned above can handle. I kinda thought this computer could do it all, but I'm now realizing it has many shortcomings. Since I was very happy with the way my drums sounded in my td-10 all we were basically doing was running 8 direct outs to our motu 828 interface and then using the wave plugins to try to reproduce the sounds I already had. So, in the interest of time(and processing power) we thought it would be best for me to use all of my on-board effects eq/ambience/COMP).

I turned of my positional sensing and it didnt help. I was able to eliminate the problem by increasing my threshold to about 28. It kinda sucks I lost the sound I wanted but gained consistency.


Not Happy



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-Drumlogic, V-session, Visulite/roland cymbals, (2)Mackie srm-450's, bbe 482 sonic maximizer,

[This message has been edited by drumlogic (edited February 20, 2002).]

[digitsone]

Originally posted by drumlogic:
funny you should ask what I'm using to record. I'm actually using a G4 power mac 733Mhz, 1024MB of ram. We are running Digital Performer 3 with Waves plugins. The problem here is that the renassaince wave plugins, although they sound excellent, require alot of processing power

that should definitely be sufficient for 8 tracks of drums with effects. have you tried downloading a CPU diagnostic to see what your CPU load is while trying to record? i agree with dr. jude that your computer is almost certainly beefy enough and probably misconfigured.

i just met a guy who runs a pro TDM set-up with a more scaled-down machine then this and can do many more tracks with waves. it doesn't seem to add up.

[drumlogic]

thanx for all the help guys. I hadnt thought of mixing certain groups down before the final mixdown to save processing power. That is an excellent idea. Also digital performer comes with a built in display which shows processing power and availble ram. We can use alot of plugins but the one that kills us is the "renverb". It would be on alot of channels and requires like 7% cpu usage per track. As you can tell I am new to computer recording and just got the mac and have to have the demo done very quickly, so we are taking alot of shortcuts with alot of compromises, but we really have no time left. Thanx again everyone. Im gonna post the entire demo on my bands website when it is done.




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-Drumlogic, V-session, Visulite/roland cymbals, (2)Mackie srm-450's, bbe 482 sonic maximizer,

[Space Ace]

Sound like you need to send all the tracks that you want the reverb on to one submix and put the reverb on the submix. This way you only have one instance of the reverb running, not 10 to 12. Also as previously stated you can bounce (record) each track to another track with the reverb in the mix. Then shut off all the different reverbs. This will give you the sound you need without all the processing power. Make sure to keep the old tracks for changes in the mixdown later. You should then be able to do the recording that you need to do.

Scott

[drumlogic]

I cant believe I didnt think of that one. Thanx guys.

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-Drumlogic, V-session, Visulite/roland cymbals, (2)Mackie srm-450's, bbe 482 sonic maximizer,