Problem with choosing

[@oM Registered Member Find all posts View Profile Close @oM]

Hi,

I am thinking about a new drumkit for quite some time now. At the moment I own a Yamaha DTXpress. I like it, but it's limitations are getting in the way.
What I want is a kit which is very expressive, lots of dynamics, very good (acoustic) sounds.
I listened to some mp3's of the vdrums and played them once, but I'm not really impressed by it's sound. I also listened to the samples on the ddrum site, and I am impressed by how they sound, but I've never played a ddrum kit, but I guess that'll sound very neat. My biggest problem with the ddrum is the number of inputs and the amount of memory (and maybe after seeing those new products of roland cymbal features). If the module was really cheap, I would buy I think (or two), but since it's expensive (for me anyway), I don't consider the ddrums a very good option.
Last week I surfed to this site, www.toontrack.com/drumkit where they've made a sample cd with very high quality drum sounds. There are also some mp3's on it, and after listening those mp3's I almost fell of my chair I think they really sound very cool.
Then I checked some prices on how expensive samplers are, and I found out that it's not very expensive.
The E-MU ESI 2000 sampler is 800-900 dollar, 128 mb second hand (4 x 32MB) ram is about 100-150 dollar, and a second hand or new external scsi disk of 2gb is 100 dollar or so. All I then need is a trigger-to-midi interface. I can then buy sample cd's of very quality, what the heck, I can even use the ddrum samples! I can also use this sampler for a lot more, like other instruments, etc.
But if my triggers to midi configuration is not so good, it's no use having super great samples. So I went looking for a good solution for that. But I still don't really have one. I was thinking of Marcel's trigger2midi-interface and the eventstation by Kurzweil.
Yet I don't really have a good feeling about them. I fear that the trigger2midi isn't as good as on like the ddrums or vdrums.
So the ideal thing would be to buy a vdrum module with pads and use that only for midi. But that's way too terribly expensive for me.

So... I don't really know what to do
I know there has been a lot of posts on whether to buy the td8 or td10, but this is kind of a new problem and I'm sure jrcel is also very interested
Any thoughts or solutions or suggestion or whatever on this?

Tom

[puttenvr Registered Member Find all posts View Profile Close puttenvr]

Tom, you mention the object money a few times but if you want good drumpads, proper sounds and a decent system you must spent some money.

Just buying some cheap MARCEL pads didn't work ... eh? Did it? The same problem will appear with a budget sampler and a trigger to MIDI interface. Perhaps for some trigger signals it will work, but never for the full ddrum functionality (positional sensing, pressure sensing, velocity switches) or Vdrum functionality (positional sensing and the brand new Vcymbal functionallity).

Perhaps buying your goodies second hand is suitable for you. In holland many people sell their Vdrums. Check out http://www.marktplaats.nl or http://www.drummersweb.com/ads or http://cgi05.planet.nl/aanbod/planet...kinstrumenten/

[@oM Registered Member Find all posts View Profile Close @oM]

Hi Puttenvr,

I'm afraid that if I want that full functionality, you're right and that buying a sampler with that trigger2midi interface just won't work as well as the vdrums or ddrums, unless I'm very very lucky, which I'm probably not.
I realise that if I want to have something real good, I'll have to spend a lot of money. I'm just looking for a way to get the most out of my money. And I always think way too long about this kind of stuff.
Also that Marcel pad wasn't as good as I hoped, so I guess you don't pay all that money, when you buy a Roland pad, for nothing.

Thanks for the reply,
Tom

[loose id reamer Registered Member Find all posts View Profile Close loose id reamer]

hey, if you are wanting to go the sampler route, check out the drumkat. it may not look like to much but they are actually very powerful midi controllers. it has 10 built in fsr pads plus 9 trigger inputs for pads, 4 footswith inputs, 2 midi ins 4 midi outs, breath controller stack , alternate and melodic modes. etc etc etc go to alternatemode.com

[jrcel Registered Member Find all posts View Profile Close jrcel]

With a Drumkat and sampler, you have a completely open system. You can add sounds at any time, upgrades are also possible, not like closed systems. Offshore manufacturers use the term "design life" frequently, this means that their products are designed to be used for a certain peoriod of time, it used to be around 7 years for advanced edrum systems. Now I'm afraid we're talking 5 or 6 years. Then you are expected to buy the companies "hot new" product. I just bought two new sensors for my offsore pads, $25, I also replaced piezo's for my small company American pads, the guy literally gave me a bunch of the for free. The drumkat came out in 1988 and has been upgraded too many times to couunt, do you think any of these other products will still be around in 13 years? The Kat has automatic pad training and crosstalk rejection set up, it is more advanced than anything I have seen. Ddrum offers absolutely no midi control parameters. Roland , very little. Another thing to consider is that Ddrum has no crosstalk rejecton parameters. Since the Ddrum uses independent analoque triggering technology, the independent modules don't talk to each other, so there is no rejection in the design . The only parameter used to control crosstalk is threshold. I've heard of people having alot of trouble when using Ddrums in high volume environments. In that situaltion you'd have to use something like a Marc 1, which is like an electronic gate/limiter between the pads and the inputs. Ddrums are very nice, don't get me wrong, alot of top pro's use them, but be aware of the fact that you may need outboard gear, depending on your needs.

[This message has been edited by jrcel (edited January 22, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by jrcel (edited January 22, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by jrcel (edited January 22, 2001).]

[puttenvr Registered Member Find all posts View Profile Close puttenvr]

Jrcel, What is a Marc 1 ?

BTW: I don't have so much problems with cross talk. Sometimes the red leds do flash but don't give a sound at all or a very low volume sounds and I consider this as the acoustic tom tom who triggers the snare. Kind of natural feeling.

But perhaps I need the gates for studio work, so can you tell me a bit more about them?

[jrcel Registered Member Find all posts View Profile Close jrcel]

They were popular in the bad old days before midi when guys were first attempting to trigger from acoustic drums. All it does is send out an anaogue voltage to the pad inputs and cleans up the signal before it sends it. Denny Foghieser used to just stripe the tape with thing, and the producer cold decide of what to do with it after he was long gone. You can use it to fire a sampler drum machine etc....The modern day equivalent is probably the Trig Master from K&K . http://www.kksound.com/trigmaster.html Then again, that was the Ddrum 2 I was talkig about in my previous post, it may not be much of a problem at all with the lasted modules.

[This message has been edited by jrcel (edited January 23, 2001).]