New User - Help with Dual Zone Trigger Workflow

[Mass Ev]

Hey all,

I just received my Megadrum in the mail from Dmitri and am super impressed with the quality. I was previously using a Roland TD4 but wanted something more robust and configurable.

I have an acoustic kit with Remo Silent Stroke heads and trigger BFD3. I would love to get some guidance on configuring my snare.

I am using a Roland RT30HR dual zone trigger and have managed to get a workable but not great configuration. I was trying to follow the workflow here:

viewtopic.php?p=20543#p20543

But I noticed that it was in response to someone with a very specific problem and I am not sure if this workflow applies generally. I have also noticed that with gain set to 4, my auto high level is coming in under 200 which I thought was strange since the previous generation RT10 triggers are supposed to run hot, I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the newer RT30 series would also be hot.

I have read through all of the configuration settings in the manual but it would be helpful to have a step by step workflow for configuring a Dualzone Snare trigger as there are a few things that aren't explained, or easy to find answers for.

If my high level is low, should I be boosting the gain and then trying again? If so, what should my target be for the most dynamic range?

Is it best to set retigger mask to something low, like 2 and then increase dynlevel and dyntime until I am no longer getting false triggers?

Any help is greatly appreciated, I feel like I could tinker with it for a few hours and get something close to what my TD4 provided, but without really knowing what I am doing, I will always have a feeling like it should be better.

I should also note that my setup is a little bit less complicated than most. I record my hi hat and ride cymbals through my overheads instead of using pads.

[ignotus]

Here's a short guide I started writing up. It's more or less how I set up my pads, though there have been some firmware changes with added parameters that I might include, but this should get you going:

I'll assume you've already set the appropriate MIDI notes to each zone.

SINGLE-ZONE PIEZO PADS:

1.- Set HighLevel Auto to 'yes' and whack the pad hard 10 times. Look at the number you get in 'HighLevel'. If it's between 500 and 1000 move to step 2. If it's below 500, raise gain and repeat the process. If it's above 1000, reduce gain and repeat the process. Ideally it should be around 800-900 but if it's at around 500 it's still fine. When that's done, set HighLevel Auto to 'No'.

2.- Reduce Threshold until the pad starts auto-triggering. Raise it by 2.

3.- Set Retrigger to 1 and Dyntime and Dynlevel to 0. You'll probably get loads of double triggers. Raise Dyntime to 24 and then raise Dynlevel one number at a time until double triggers go away. Don't go higher than 4 or 5 (I find it starts missing hits if higher than 5, YMMV). If you still get double triggering start raising Retrigger until they go away.

The pad should now be triggering fairly decently. Fine-tuning involves tweaking the above parameters, there's not much else to it apart from choosing a curve that suits the dynamics you want.

If despite raising ‘Retrigger’ ‘DynTime’ and ‘DynLevel’ you still get unwanted double triggering, tick the ‘ExtraFalseSuppresion’ box and then see how far you can reduce those three settings (to prevent the module filtering out too many hits).

DUAL PIEZO PADS:

1.- Set 'type' in the head/bow zone to 'Dual or 3-way Yamaha' and in the Rim/Edge zone to 'piezo'.

2.- Disable the head zone and for the rim repeat the process I described for single zone piezo pads. Enable the head zone.

3.- Now, down in '3rd Zone', move the 'Midpoint' bar and leave it in a position where you get good separation between the head and rim - it's a matter of trial and error.

4.- If you want to enable rimshots, set the note for that articulation, and tweak 'MidpointWidth' to set how easily rimshots get triggered. Rimshots are achieved the same as with a real snare, by hitting the head and rim simultaneously. If you set it to trigger rimshots too easily (I think that's with a higher number), you'll find that hits on the head near the rim will trigger them, so it's a matter of finding the sweet spot.

[Mass Ev]

Wow, thanks Ignotus, I’ll give this a go when I get home and let you know how far I get. This makes things much more clear.

[dmitri]

If my high level is low, should I be boosting the gain and then trying again? If so, what should my target be for the most dynamic range?

If you get HighLevel around 200 with Gain 4, I would suggest to raise Gain by one at a time until you get HighLevel above ~400 for better dynamic range.

Is it best to set retigger mask to something low, like 2 and then increase dynlevel and dyntime until I am no longer getting false triggers?

This is one way of doing this. You can also start with DynLevel 12 and DynTime 24 which are reasonable default values. You can also try enabling ExtraFalseSupp (available from firmware version 20200331) if your pad/cymbal/trigger has very long inconsistent after hit vibration.

[Mass Ev]

Thank you both for your help! I’m starting to get much closer now. I might have found a bug though. After putting dynlevel to 5 I was still getting false triggers. I slowly raised retrigger mask. At two I was still getting some double triggers. At 3 I suddenly got tons again, at 4 I got less than 2, at 5 I got even more than 3. 6 is almost perfect but 7 produces more than 5. It’s like all the odd numbers give me insane false triggering.

[Mass Ev]

It's getting very playable now. I will just have to keep tweaking I guess. I also had to tighten up the head which seems to have helped quite a bit.

https://soundcloud.com/massev/testingme ... sRL1Wd0mpT

Once I am finally satisfied I'll post my settings in case someone else is running an RT30HR on a 14 inch snare haha

[Mass Ev]

So I noticed I was getting random spikes when playing and the dynamics were not where I wanted them to be. I messed with the settings for hours and was starting to get a bit annoyed so I moved my trigger over to my 13 inch floor Tom just to see what would happen...perfection.

As it turns out the RT30HR does not mount quite right on my 14 inch Supralite snare. You have to really tighten it for it to stay out and when doing so it puts too much pressure on the sensor. If I back it off it starts to trigger perfectly but then after a while it starts to lift which is no good. Luckily I have a second snare which is an 8 lug instead of 10 lug and it works perfectly.

I can’t say for sure what the issue is. Maybe it’s the 10 lug, maybe it’s the hoop used on the supralite but the RT30 does not work correctly with it. I didn’t notice because before I got mega drum I was still using my stock Breakbeats snare with the RT30HR. On the plus side I now have a “live” snare and a practice/production snare haha