Drumtracker Sample (in)Accuracy

[Ermz]

Have any of you guys noticed that Toontrack's Drumtracker tends to mis-align its hitpoints quite frequently to the drums over the course of a track? I've found myself frequently going in and aligning each hit by hand, and it's like the most time consuming, boring process ever. Before you say it, I've tried just about every imaginable setting and threshold you can imagine. Once drumtracker is 'set' on where it wants that hitpoint, it's going to put it there. Also doesn't help that the only way to exit it in Windows 7 is to crash and force quit.

Is there a better way to trigger drums at the moment? Is ApTrigga's sample-accuracy really as great as people claim? Is ProTrig even better? Are we stuck waiting for Slate's plug-in to finally give this thing the kick up the ass it needs?

 

[Morgan C]

I haven't tried Drumtracker or ProTrig, but since switching to ApTrig I've had zero problems. Sure a couple hits might be off if the original audio track isn't great, but with ApTrigga its consistent, whereas with Drumagog sometimes it would flam, or play off-beat, then I'd stop and replay that section and it'd do it fine. It seemed to do all its calculations on-the-fly and fucked up a lot. Even when I went thru and edited the notes that messed up, they still sometimes would.

Only issue with ApTrigga is that it seems to have some inbuilt latency. And you cant bounce the effect to the track (might be my DAW, altho other plugins are fine), so you have to export the track and reimport it.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Is ApTrigga's sample-accuracy really as great as people claim?

Yes....
I've hear of one person for whom it doesn't work perfectly accurate, no idea why.
for me it's 100% sample accurate....
just move the entire printed sampletrack so that one samle lines up with the mic track and ALL the samples will line up as perfectly.

No latency in Cubase4 or PT8HD here

 

[HandsOfDespair]

Is there a way in ApTrigga to trigger random samples from a midi track, even if the velocity stays the same?

 

[::XeS::]

yes

 

[Ermz]

The biggest problem is ApTrigga doesn't OUTPUT to MIDI, so there's no way to use it with Superior Drummer etc. This is the benefit of Drumtracker, but seriously it's been mistriggering snares and toms so often for me it's not even worth using. I may as well paste samples myself with tab to transient.

 

[Soundlurker]

When I tried it I thought it was really nice, actually. I didn't notice any problems apart from occasionally a mistriggered hit which was easilly remedied by adjusting the threshold during quieter parts.

Are you saying it places the hitpoint slightly to the left/right of a transient or do you mean it misses hits and/or adds a hitpoint where there shouldn't be one?

BTW there's a way to replace drums without a dedicated plugin but honestly I think drumtracker would be a far more convenient way to do it. Anyway:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug05/articles/cubasetech.htm

---
The macro thing is an awesome idea which I'm actually using for drum editing. Calculate the hitpoints for the snare, then convert them to markers. Select and group the snare, overheads and cymbal events. Go somewhere before the first marker and use a macro consisting of the shortcuts for "go to next marker" + "cut" or in my case a macro which repeats the first macro 20 times. Quantize. (I edit the kick seperately).

 

[Ermz]

Are you saying it places the hitpoint slightly to the left/right of a transient or...

Yeah, that. On the current project im triggering it's constantly putting snare hitpoints ahead of the transient enough to cause the samples to trigger almost out of phase and kill the bottom end. At worst it audibly sounds like a flam.

Tried just about every setting under the rainbow, but no dice.

 

[Machinated]

no use to you ermz, but logic's built up "drum replacer" function, has always been really tight for me, I'm actually making midi tracks of the drums now as I can do it so quick. way more accurate than anything else i have done.

 

[Soundlurker]

Yeah, that. On the current project im triggering it's constantly putting snare hitpoints ahead of the transient enough to cause the samples to trigger almost out of phase and kill the bottom end. At worst it audibly sounds like a flam.

Tried just about every setting under the rainbow, but no dice.

Select all the hits and press ctrl + right arrow (edit -> nudge right).

 

[Ermz]

The issue is that they are usually mis-aligned by differing amounts, and some occasional hits are even 'on'. So it's not a matter of it being consistent enough to be able to pull that off sadly.

Lasse's description of ApTrigga is great, so I might give it a shot. That sort of convenience would be unreal.

 

[avrinder]

I JUST purchased M-Powered Pro Tools, and cannot use ApTrigga 2 with it. Aside from Sound Replacer, are they any cheaper plug-ins for replacing drums?

 

[Soundlurker]

^^ As you said aptrigga doesn't have a midi out, so no DFH.

Here's another idea: in cubendo use advanced-> detect silence to leave only the transients (it's a pretty flexible feature and imo works well). Bounce the track and load it up in drumtracker.

 

[006]

avrinder: VST -> RTAS adapter d00d.

Ermz, really strange you are having these issues, I've never noticed the hits being off at all, and DrumTracker doesn't crash on me (OSX though...). Maybe it's a Win issue? Shadow's advice is good, this is how I do it too. apTrigga can definitely deliver, it's a really great plug-in. I've never had issues with it, really easy to setup and it's, for me, a set it and forget it kinda deal. On a rarrrre occasion I will have to automate it or something for a part in a song but otherwise I can set it once and never open it again the rest of the time.

 

[Ermz]

On another note, have any of you Win7 users experienced this thing only being able to exit via crashing? RC1 and the final release have had the same issue. When I reverted back to XP, it was all fine. This way I can only run one track per session, and each new one requires a force quit.

 

[avrinder]

avrinder: VST -> RTAS adapter d00d.

oops, I forgot to mention I have a mac. It's an AU plug-in. Is it still possible to convert this to work in Pro Tools?

 

[006]

I use apTrigga as a VST in Cubase every time I work... Contact apulsoft you should have a VST version available if you paid for it. I'm on a Mac too btw.

 

[avrinder]

great! thanks a lot. I def. will do that. cheers

 

[006]

No problem, and just realized even easier than contacting him, just download the apTrigga VST demo, you can put your serial/info in it and unlock it.

 

[avrinder]

Even better! thanks again for your help