Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

--- In DTXpress@yahoogroups.com, "moosetication" <moosetication@y...> 
wrote:
> --- Chris wrote:
> > Good grief!  I think you may be on to something here!
> > It's so obvious now I think about it that the DTXpress's
> > cymbals are already EQed...
> 
> Thank &Deity someone else gets it too. I was beginning to think my 
> marbles were rolling away down the drive at a speed too fast to 
> catch...
> 
> I only twigged when I listened to the gig I did again. The guy 
whose 
> kit I sat in on has a Sabian HH ride, with lots of wash and 
overtone 
> that seemed to be drowning out the "ping" - I felt I was having a 
> deal of difficulty controlling it. But when I listened to the gig 
> again, only the subtlest of tones was apparent and the "ping" was 
> clear. A little light went on...
> 
> There's still much room for improvement, of course. Even bearing 
> that in mind, the sounds are very - how can I put this? - "two-
> dimensional" if you see what I mean.
> 
> Ed, you're a ddrum man... how does this theory stack up against the 
> sounds in your module?

Stewart,

I was reading your post this morning about the presentation of the 
DTXpress cymbals, and it rang impressively true. Frankly, the fact 
that full-band situations tend to mask much of the subtlest sound 
that comes from acoustic instruments--particularly in rock and 
amplified jazz--allows e-cymbal sounds to achieve the admirable level 
of credibility that they have at this point. I think that this 
inadvertent "compression" has an effect similar to that of such 
deliberate, lossy audio schemes as Dolby Digital and MP3, which are 
based on suppressing information deemed inessential to the musical 
experience. These codexes are far from foolproof, but they work well 
enough to satisfy many people in many situations. Likewise, what the 
DTXpress cymbal sounds lack in overtones, undertones, decay et al. 
often doesn't hurt them within musical contexts where they are often 
lost,anyway. As you imply, when digital technology improves, and when 
companies become more interested in advancing the game, more and more 
of these subtleties should start appearing.

Case in point: the ddrum cymbal sounds. For the those not familiar 
with ddrum, Clavia recorded all of their sounds as multisamples that 
contain much of the acoustical information of the original cymbals, 
drums, and percussive elements, including effects like reverb et al. 
Some of the richness is evident on initial triggering (analog not 
digital, by the way), and some of it is released by velocity and 
position. The results aren't perfect; the compression scheme that 
Clavia used to save space has some audible distortion and truncation. 
But the fact remains that the ddrum sounds can be staggering in their 
realism. Because these sounds are relatively complete in the sampling 
process, the module is not deep in processing. You come closer to the 
feeling of controlling the sound by touch, rather than programming, 
and more of the first strike capabilities that emanate from a cymbal 
and drum reach your ears. Ddrum's principles do pay dividends in the 
attempt to reproduce the acoustic-drum experience. I like your idea 
of listening to recordings in order to get the sound right--the idea 
behind having monitors in the studio.

Ed