Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Hi all,
Been away on business (viva Las Vegas!) and expected to get back
see a post or two on your gig, Andy. Giles, I know you went, so 
how about a review? You only mentioned it briefly in the middle
a post.

How was the sound? Did everything run smooth? Easy to sound-check, etc?
Any comments from friends or other drummers? Your bandmates?

Oh, geography-wise, writing from Oregon, USA. 

Later,
Rick

Hey, I never even noticed the referrence!!

Giles may say otherwise :) but I felt the gig went well.
Sound checking was hell, it took two days.
The DTXpress seems to give out different levels from the stereo outputs to the headphone jacks.
When I first kicked out a rythm I sunk the rest of the band in bass drum haze.
We had real problems getting the vocals up in the mix and I had to drop my bass drums down to half their volume!
I figure it was a mixture of the DTXpress and the house PA.

Worst problem for me was getting good mix back through my monitor.  I use real cymbals, so couldn't realy where headphones, although I had to have one ear in the cans to get the click from the external drum machine.

We didn't use the DTXpress as much as we had hoped, the gig hit us in a rush, two tracks had to be written in about four days when we found we'd lost the sample disk for two others! Organisation, someone should offer it mail order.

I was pretty dissapointed with our sound engineer overall, he had everything turned up to 10 to get that gut wrenching bass, but it just left no headroom.  I recon it should all have been pulled down a few decibells, but I realy should have mentioned it at the time, so my fault as much as anyones.

Overall though the biggest change was in what came out of the PA compared to what we had recorded previously.  We had thought of ourselves as progressive industrial thrash techno fusion, but on stage the extra power drowned out the subtle samples and backing tracks and left us with just industrial thrash, which we are not against at all, it rocked, in the old shool, loud and proud fashion.

Overall, the DTXpress has a few major shortcommings which you have to be aware of if using it live, first the output from the headphone socket isn't necesserily what you are going to get out of the stereo pair, the mix is all messed up.  Also be prepared to play with your settings to suit the house PA and venue.  Second, be very aware that the samples in the DTXpress have a wide range of volumes, some samples being significantly louder than others at the same midi volume.  When using multiple kits this can realy throw a sound engineer.  Best to pull down the loud samples to the level of the quietest allowing only a little variation in volume for emphasis from song to song.  I guess a compressor would have been useful here.

Basically, I figure we're all new to this high-tech aproach to live work ( the rest of the band are stage virgins and I'm an aging acoustic nut ) so we learnt the pitfalls of sample based stuff the hard way, well now we know, sort the levels before hitting the stage, simple, obvious, but unforgivable.

Hell, whatever anyone else says, we loved it, and a couple of guys from my other band gave us 6/10 "could do better" which I thought was bad, until I found out that they only rated our other band at 7/10 on the same scale ( my acoustic covers band rocks on stage, our regular crowd realy love us ) so I figure that wasn't bad at all for a first gig with all the crap flying.

And as for Geography, well, I'm based in the UK, Birmingham area.

If anyones interested though my other band "The Love Commandos" are doing a free gig at the Church Inn in Birmingham on the 29th Jan.  80's and 90's chart rock covers.  It's all just good fn, and free in, so if your local I expect to see you there.

Catch you guys later, good to see others building their own stuff onto the DTX base unit.

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From: 	vcrmac@...
Sent: 	20 January 2000 05:21
To: 	DTXpress@onelist.com
Subject: 	[DTXpress] Andy's Gig

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Thought I'd add a little bit to Andy's post since I
was at the gig.

First of all, Andy's right about the sound. I stood at
the back of the hall next to the mixing desk - the
faders were all up at maximum. Consequently the sound
was just a wall of noise. All I could hear was guitar
and drums. The lead singer was completely inaudible
and the keyboards and keyboard bass/samples were
invisible in the mix as well.
Andy, you say it took 2 days to soundcheck. Either
this is an example of Birmingham humour or, if you're
serious, I'd consider getting another sound engineer.
Your music is very good - it's a shame to waste it
through a bad mix. The room itself was excellent - low
ceiling, asymmetrical shape (no reflections, standing
waves etc.) There should have been no reason not to
get a cracking good sound. 
On the good side was, despite the overall mush, the
drums actually came through strongly. At one point the
kick was shaking the walls. It felt good. The acoustic
cymbals made a difference, I reckon. It would have
been nice to have heard the DTXpress cymbals for
comparison. In all honesty, with the level of sound as
it was, the drums probably sounded the best. If you
closed your eyes, it was impossible to tell if it was
a real or electronic kit. Let me know if you're
playing again - I'd love to come over and listen.

It's good that Andy noticed the same problem I did -
that the sound from the L/R output jacks at the back
is significantly different than from the headphone at
the front.The back jacks send out a signal that seems
much more bass-heavy and with less stereo separation.
Even with the bass turned down, there is a weird
sensation of "weight" in the signal. The headphone
output seems lighter, fresher and cleaner. Anyone else
found this?

Finally - the point about compression. This is a great
idea. When you think about it, it's so obvious. I will
go out and buy one straight away.
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2 days to sound check.....

OK, an overstatement, but we had the use of the room for two days prior to the gig, with the engineer, so the whole thing should have been perfect.  I think we all are going to have a serious talk about how to interact with an engineer this weekend.  I figure the engineer wanted so much volume we lost clarity, it didn't help that another engineer turned up on the night and tried to take over things.

Next gig will be much improved, no date fixed yet.

Thanks for the support Giles, interesting to hear you say the kit sounded acoustic, like you I layer two sounds too get the effects I ant, and I aim to replicate acoustic bass at least.  Snare and toms tend to be a little less realistic depending in the music.
Two voices per trigger is deffinately the way to go though. 

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From: 	Giles Hearn
Sent: 	21 January 2000 10:32
To: 	DTXpress@onelist.com
Subject: 	RE: [DTXpress] Andy's Gig

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