Problem with dual piezo management and hihat controller

[elrules]

News on my investigation about my piezo/piezo pads problem.

I have now got a Roland TD-12. I have been playing around with its trigger configuration. I got THE SAME problem with my pads. With strong hits on the head, some random hits triggered the rim sound. I read the manual and I found the right parameter to tweak for snare and tom inputs:
"Rim Shot Adjust"

When a PD-125/120/105/85/80R or RT-5S (trigger) is
connected, you can adjust the sensitivity of the rim response.
RimShot Adjust:
0–8.0
There are some cases that you have a rim sound unexpectedly
when you hit the head strongly. You can improve this
situation with decreasing the value of “RimShot Adjust.”
* When you set the value too small, it might be difficult to play
the rim sound.

I think this parameter controls the threshold between head and rim signals received in order to trigger one or another. As it seems, hard hits make both piezos (head and rim) to have similar values. Increasing Rimshot adjust seems to be like decreasing threshold between head and rim.
So I have thought it could be interesting to let the user set in megadrum his optimal value for that threshold, as Roland does, and then maybe I can solve my problem that way. If I encountered the same problem with a roland td-12 and I solved it with only one parameter, it would be great to include that parameter and its behavior to megadrum.

Could you make some kind of testing firmware for it?

[dmitri]

There are some cases that you have a rim sound unexpectedly
when you hit the head strongly. You can improve this
situation with decreasing the value of “RimShot Adjust.”
* When you set the value too small, it might be difficult to play
the rim sound.

Judging by this description, it is done the same way as in MegaDrum. Only in MegaDrum you increase Threshold to get rid of having "a rim sound unexpectedly when you hit the head strongly". But when setting it too high "it might be difficult to play the rim sound."

[elrules]

There are some cases that you have a rim sound unexpectedly
when you hit the head strongly. You can improve this
situation with decreasing the value of “RimShot Adjust.”
* When you set the value too small, it might be difficult to play
the rim sound.

Judging by this description, it is done the same way as in MegaDrum. Only in MegaDrum you increase Threshold to get rid of having "a rim sound unexpectedly when you hit the head strongly". But when setting it too high "it might be difficult to play the rim sound."

I thought Threshold was a setting for signals lower than threshold don't trigger (at least it is the way it works for the head input... But as I understand from that description, the "Rimshot adjust" is a measured as a difference between head and rim velocities.

If for example you hit the head hardly and get 800 in head and 850 in rim at the same time (due to high vibrations) you get a 50 unit difference, and if megadrum only considers "rim is higher than head, i'll trigger rimshot" then it will make a mistake. If we could decide: "no, don't trigger rimshots thatn differs only 100 units from head signal, then only rimshots 100 units above head will trigger. That difference is the parameter to consider when deciding which sound to trigger, and that should be editable, so in my case I could set it higher (maybe 200 for example) and I will still be able to get decent rimshots and won't get false rimshots when hitting hard the head. Setting it to 1 would be the minimum (that means, if rim is 1 unit higher than head, trigger rimshot)

Does it make sense?

[dmitri]

It does. I will think about it.

[dmitri]

elrules, please test this version:

megadrum32_20081009.zip

[elrules]

I will give you my results on Monday, tomorrow I am going on a trip. Thanks for the firmware. Looking forward to testing it ;);)

[Beamtreetaker]

I don't want to disturb this conversation to much (I really like to see new cool features coming up so fast and regular), but I have one specific question that has some relation to the topic here:
Dual-Zone Cymbals with piezo-switch construction - It's really hard for me to understand how the parameters of the edge channel relate to the triggering. To my naive mind all that should be able to be set are midi note and -channel. I don't understand what all the other paramters affect when there is a simple switch as input. If the switch is closed and piezo is hit -> play edge sound, if the switch is open and piezo is hit -> play bow sound, if only switch is pressed -> choke.
So, my question: How do all the other paramets like gain, highlevel, threshold & co affect a switch channel? What should I adjust if, let's say, the edge channel is triggered often, even if I play the bow area on my cymbal (given a non-faulty construction)? thx!

[dmitri]

I don't want to disturb this conversation to much (I really like to see new cool features coming up so fast and regular), but I have one specific question that has some relation to the topic here:
Dual-Zone Cymbals with piezo-switch construction - It's really hard for me to understand how the parameters of the edge channel relate to the triggering. To my naive mind all that should be able to be set are midi note and -channel. I don't understand what all the other paramters affect when there is a simple switch as input. If the switch is closed and piezo is hit -> play edge sound, if the switch is open and piezo is hit -> play bow sound, if only switch is pressed -> choke.
So, my question: How do all the other paramets like gain, highlevel, threshold & co affect a switch channel? What should I adjust if, let's say, the edge channel is triggered often, even if I play the bow area on my cymbal (given a non-faulty construction)? thx!

Threshold on a switch channel determines at which input level the switch is considered shorted.
Gain for a switch only allows to widen the range of Threshold. If there were no Gain setting then by only changing Threshold between 0 and 127 you could set at which voltage level the switch is considered shorted only between say 0.05V and 0.2V. Adjusting Gain you can widen it to between 0.05V and 0.5V. In reality you leave Gain at 4 and only adjust Threshold for setting a voltage level of the switch break/make.
Since the maximum level received from the bow piezo differs depending on if you hit the bow or the edge( because of different distance to the piezo), highlevel is set separately for the bow and the edge.
You normally should set MinScan and Retrigger identically on both the bow and the edge but you may want to play around with them to see if it makes difference.

On my cymbals I have to set Threshold on the cymbal bow channels much higher (around 80) compared to mesh head pads (around 20).
Of course you should first correctly set Threshold on the edge channel. You should adjust it until you reliably get Aftertouch On (Control Change MIDI message) when you press the switch and Aftertouch Off when you release the switch.

[elrules]

elrules, please test this version:

megadrum32_20081009.zip

The firmware doesnt work My module gets a blank screen after updating

[dmitri]

Did you do this: viewtopic.php?p=4044#p4044 ?