EQing audio tracks for maximum triggering accuracy

[Eschatologist]

I know this has been posted somewhere before, but looking for a quick and easy answer (hopefully!), how do EQ audio tracks, specifically a kick drum, so that aptrigga will respond as accurately as possible? I don't have drumagog and I want to use SSD samples with SDMF and I can't be bothered with the NI player anymore! uke:

 

[Fox Mulder]

I always go for a lowpass at 200hz.
Also, use a transient designer.

 

[Joematthews]

don't you mean high pass filter?

 

[LeviathanMetal]

dude much simpler way is just to overcompress the tracks with a low threshold

 

[Lasse Lammert]

I'm erasing silence between hits.
takes some time but gives the best result...especially for rolls and doublestrokes etc

 

[botus99]

dude much simpler way is just to overcompress the tracks with a low threshold

How? Compressing brings UP the parts you don't want triggered

If your using Drumagog, screw around with the trigger filter section. Sometimes a simple high/low pass will work wonders, other times filtering out a certain frequency to trigger from works great. For that just sweep around until you find the frequency with the least amount of mic bleed, and you're good to go.

 

[Fox Mulder]

don't you mean high pass filter?

A low-pass filter passes low-frequency signals but cuts the higher frequencies. It is aka a hi-cut filter.
A high-pass aka low-cut filter does the opposite.
I wouldn't wanna hi-pass the kick.

Edit: As per the question, if you're a victim of bad micing + bad player dynamics, triggering to midi is the way to go. Otherwise, the suggestions in the posts above are great.

 

[LeSedna]

I think he was thinking about keeping only the clic of the kick, erasing all low frequencies, I think I did it once on a tom track that was buried in the mud, and I got the clic of that particular tom this way. It was very specific though

 

[Fox Mulder]

Tom tracks aside, the triggering accuracy for a kick may or may not be vulnerable to snare leakage due to hi-passing. In order to get the 'low-end transients' right one must cleverly implement a transient designer. All in all, it depends from situation to situation. If someone's getting good results from just hi-passing a kick - thumbs up

If you're gating it, I guess hi-passing would be just fine. But then again, it completely depends on the drummer.

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

It depends on the source material - kicks have a lot more low energy than high, especially if they haven't been tuned up because you know in advance you'll be replacing it, and singling out the 'click' can be more difficult (and it's more prone to bleed from the snare etc. anyway), so sometimes low-passing the kick is the easier option.

The thing to remember is that if you cut all the highs on the kick and trigger off off the 'thump', you'll probably have to move the trigger track back a tiny bit, as the transients on the low-end happen slightly later than on the highs.

Personally, I don't normally bother with EQ'ing on the trigger track if I can get away with it. I just put a really extreme gate on it and adjust that until all the hits are registering properly. If that doesn't work, then I EQ the source.

Like Lasse said though, if you want to make absolutely certain everything is spot on, just cut the track up and remove anything that isn't from the kick. You don't have to be madly accurate, just avoid cutting off the start of the kick hits - so it doesn't take that long unless you've got a lot of double kick.

Steve

 

[Fox Mulder]

It depends on the source material - kicks have a lot more low energy than high, especially if they haven't been tuned up because you know in advance you'll be replacing it, and singling out the 'click' can be more difficult (and it's more prone to bleed from the snare etc. anyway), so sometimes low-passing the kick is the easier option.

The thing to remember is that if you cut all the highs on the kick and trigger off off the 'thump', you'll probably have to move the trigger track back a tiny bit, as the transients on the low-end happen slightly later than on the highs.

This.

 

[KKuff]

How? Compressing brings UP the parts you don't want triggered

Compression DOES help, you would just need to set the attack slow enough so that the transients can come through, and it will compress everything after the transients, making the transients pop out more.

 

[LeSedna]

This http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=18 at maximum

 

[nwright]

I'll also second the idea that low passing may be the way to go...That's what I do when I have a problem kick track using aptrigga (although I rarely have to do anything to make aptrigga work with kicks, it just does). Even a low pass set high (1 to 3 kHz) can be enough to alleviate problems for me. If you low pass around 100-200Hz, that can help too...But, you'll have to increase the input gain on aptrigga to compensate, IMO. At least I do.

 

[botus99]

Compression DOES help, you would just need to set the attack slow enough so that the transients can come through, and it will compress everything after the transients, making the transients pop out more.

Interesting

 

[Joematthews]

A low-pass filter passes low-frequency signals but cuts the higher frequencies. It is aka a hi-cut filter.
A high-pass aka low-cut filter does the opposite.
I wouldn't wanna hi-pass the kick.

Edit: As per the question, if you're a victim of bad micing + bad player dynamics, triggering to midi is the way to go. Otherwise, the suggestions in the posts above are great.

I know what they are, its just that I'd rather cut the low because I find the accuracy of the triggering is greater. I can do this though because I never have any problems with bleed.

Joe

 

[FIXXXER]

dude much simpler way is just to overcompress the tracks with a low threshold

i am not really sure how drum triggering works,
but does a hard compression not kill all the dynamics!?
i mean if you have soft hits and you compress them to
be as loud hard hits, doesn't this trigger hard hit samples only then!?

cheers
S.

 

[botus99]

i am not really sure how drum triggering works,
but does a hard compression not kill all the dynamics!?
i mean if you have soft hits and you compress them to
be as loud hard hits, doesn't this trigger hard hit samples only then!?

cheers
S.

That's been my experience. However, if you're mixing metal with a "creatively dynamic" drummer, I bet this can prove useful

 

[John_C]

just listen to the track and go crazy with your eq so you hear less of everything else and lots of what you want. It will sound foul but that doesn't matter, it's a trigger track.

I once made the mistake of boosting the resonant, ringing freq hugely in a snare and using that as a trigger track. I'd got it so all i could hear was snare, good right? No, barely any of the triggers hits ended up in time.

Transients are what matter, any ringing shit without a well defined transient will cause bad triggering