Need Help Recording Drums w/ADA8000 & Triggers LIVE!

[Downwards]

Hello. I've been doing my own recording for years, and I recently/finally set up a Pro Tools Rig, running PT LE 8, with a Digi 002 interface. I have a question that I'm hoping that maybe you can help me out with since you use some of the same gear.

I'm triggering acoustic drums. I have DDrum pro triggers, going into a Behringer ADA8000, adat out into the Digi 002. Triggering software is Drumagog 4. I'm having trouble with consistency of the trigger signals. Obviously the drummer doesn't hit each drum with exactly the same velocity, so some of the triggered "Signal" is lower than others. When I adjust the sensitivity, to be able to pick up the "quieter" hits form the triggers, it takes the "smack" out of the drums. Particularly the snare. This also happens if I have the gain on the ADA8000 set lower. But if I set it higher, and the trigger signal clips.

Question is, how should I set up the triggers best for recording? How hot should the signal be from the triggers into the ada8000? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanx in advance

 

[denizdurdag]

While recording (with triggers, assuming you will sample replace the the drums 100%), your main concern should be the drummer hearing every hit he made. So you can set the gain on the ADA as you like and set the Drumagog's sensitivity very low. But that can cause false triggering of course.

Last week I recorded drums the same way (Ddrum pro into ADA8000), but we stuffed all the drums with papers, blankets etc. so no false triggerings happened. (Big help for the overheads too). If you want to use the the actual sounds of the drums you can sample them before stuffing, make a gog file and use them as a replacement.

And I wouldn't care if the trigger signal is clipping, nobody will hear them except the drumagog.

 

[arv_foh]

And I wouldn't care if the trigger signal is clipping, nobody will hear them except the drumagog.

This, it doesn't matter if the trigger signals clip, just make sure the trigger signal is hot enough to pick up all the hits

 

[darthjujuu]

stuff them shits fulla blankets. they don't play quite as nice but makes em 99% accurate with proper settings. you could also try drumagog on "simple" mode instead of "live", could probably get some better algorithms out of it before audible latency. set the DAW's hardware buffer low and if you have a reasonable computer, should be able to get the better algo's going live.

edit: didn't realize this was a studio situation, and not live.

i'd really suggest you experiment with converting to MIDI...that way it's super easy to correct mis-triggers, doubles, missed hits, etc. toontrack drumtracker might be a worthy investment for ya.

 

[Downwards]

Yes, we are replacing 100%. Using strictly samples for the snare, toms, and bass drums, so ensure consistency. It's Metal. Problem is, cuz of the nature of the triggers, there is some varience in the velocities. Is the drum head resonating after each hit the reason for the varying degrees of output from the trigger? I'm assuming thats why you stuff them with blankets; to keep the head from vibrating, and cut down on the varying degrees of "triggering"?

I can stuff the bass drums, but stuffing the snares and toms isn't really economical with different bands. If the resonation of head is the problem with inconsistant triggering, does anyone think that those dense foam rubber practice drum head that you just put on your acoustic would help trigger more accuratly?

So it's ok for the triggers to clip, but since you can't see the actual level of the replaced drum sounds, just the trigger signal, how do you monitor the drum samples in PT to make sure those aren't clipping? Do you bus it out to new track, err..?

And I was actually gonna ask about midi, using an Alesis trigger I/O. I know I'd be able to quantize it and such, but when it converts it to midi, does it convert each signal from the trigger to a standard(i.e. no varying velocities like using them with the ADA8000)? Of course I'd have to record the drums as a midi track, and if I wanted to be able to mix them after the fact, I'd have to bus each drum out to its own track..

 

[Trevoire520]

Problem is, cuz of the nature of the triggers, there is some varience in the velocities. Is the drum head resonating after each hit the reason for the varying degrees of output from the trigger? I'm assuming thats why you stuff them with blankets; to keep the head from vibrating, and cut down on the varying degrees of "triggering"?

The variance in velocity is down to the variance in how hard/soft the drummer hits the drums.

So it's ok for the triggers to clip, but since you can't see the actual level of the replaced drum sounds, just the trigger signal, how do you monitor the drum samples in PT to make sure those aren't clipping? Do you bus it out to new track, err..?

Switch off pre-fade metering in PT and you'll see the level coming out of drumagog/whatever. (RTFM)

And I was actually gonna ask about midi, using an Alesis trigger I/O. I know I'd be able to quantize it and such, but when it converts it to midi, does it convert each signal from the trigger to a standard(i.e. no varying velocities like using them with the ADA8000)? Of course I'd have to record the drums as a midi track, and if I wanted to be able to mix them after the fact, I'd have to bus each drum out to its own track..

A trigger module will still give you dynamics on the MIDI out I think, though I've not done any work with modules before so I'm not 100% sure.

 

[paladin shredder]

here's some more answers to your questions

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/equipment/464320-wtf-behringer-ultragain-pro-ada-8000-a-2.html

 

[nwright]

the issue here is how hard the drummer is hitting and how that is translating to using drumagog, not necessarily how hot to set the pres on the preamp (although you do want the pre loud enough to give you a decent transient even on quiet stuff, but I'd think thats a given with anyone with experience). Seeing how you find the velocities to be too varied (quiet and soft), to me the easy solution is to reduce the dynamics in drumagog or turn off dynamic tracking or dynamic multisamples in the plugin itself.

pretty easy.

Also, just for the sake of clarity, even if the signal is clipping running the triggers hot into your preamp, the resulting output of the track/channel is dependent ultimately upon the fader setting (in terms of what you hear). If the Drumagog is seeing a clipping signal, it doesn't matter, especially for 100% replacement, because the sound coming out of the plugin are samples with a pre-determined maximum volume, and the trigger sensitivity is displayed for each sample as well through Drumagog's user interface.

EDIT
you can also manually set each samples trigger sensitivity in drumagog as well, which can help even out the dynamics.

 

[darthjujuu]

And I was actually gonna ask about midi, using an Alesis trigger I/O. I know I'd be able to quantize it and such, but when it converts it to midi, does it convert each signal from the trigger to a standard(i.e. no varying velocities like using them with the ADA8000)? Of course I'd have to record the drums as a midi track, and if I wanted to be able to mix them after the fact, I'd have to bus each drum out to its own track..

I tried the trigger i/0 with an electronic kit. don't waste your time/money. stick with the ada8000 and just use software to convert. if you could track down massey DTM (quite a chore indeed) you'd be set, or alternatively get toontrack drumtracker.

converting to MIDI instantly absolves any problems of inconsitencies both in velocity and mis-triggers. it does NOT however, mean that you can just quantize on the fly, unless you intend to replace cymbals too, cause your overhead/room mics will get all outta whack. so you'd wanna edit drums the ol' fashioned way (grouped) before converting to MIDI and then just do touch-ups.

OR

in some cases it's easier to convert the shells to midi, quantize super fast, and then just use the OH track as a reference to program in cymbals.

there's tons of options/routes and believe me i've tried them all.

triggers > gog = OK for an exceptional drummer
edit drums > massey DTM = best
edit drums > drumtracker = slower, but just as good
convert > quantize > program = best for fast metal with shitty drummer

MIDI just takes alot of experimentation but i could now not function as an engineer without it. and If you're still using PT 7.4, you may be wise to bust out the Reaper demo for MIDI editing ...


EDIT:
to answer your questions about the trigger i/0:

it has multiple modes for how it does velocity. you can set it to track straight 127's, or a bunch of different velocity curves, but trust me, it does NOT work the way it should. and i was using it with the kit it comes with (alesis DM5 pro kit, sans the DM5) and i just simply could not get good results from it. drumtracker works amazingly.

and as far as recording all the drums to one MIDI track: you assign a "note" to each drum. even if you're recording to one MIDI track, most DAW's (or atleast reaper) has a function that'll automatically separate each note out to its own MIDI track (midi explode) so you can plop a separate instance of aptrigga or whatever on each one. or, if you have a self-contained drum instrument (i.e superior) you can just send one MIDI multi-track to the vstI and itt'l automatically do all the routing for you.

 

[Downwards]

Wow, thats cool. Thanx for all that info. It sounds like converting the audio to midi would be the way to go. I get the concept of converting the triggers from the audio to midi.. Only problem is, I really have no clue how to really work with midi, quantize it, incorporate it into the track...