Snare triggering on full velocity

[drummer7793]

Hi!
I’m using a Roland TD20 with SD3 through a Windows laptop for live use. I’m having a problem with the snare as it’s triggering on full velocity even if I hit it gently. I’ve lowered the sensitivity on the drum brain down to 1 but it still triggers on full velocity . If I plug the snare drum into a tom input then the volume is as it should be but if I plug a tom into the snare input then it’s at full velocity, so I know it’s not the drum itself.
I’ve tried the learn function for the midi but the snare still triggers on full velocity.

Topic

[Paul Ashe]

Hi, I had the same problem. I would leave the sensitivity settings as they were on your TD20 and use the ‘soft hit’ slider on the right-hand panel in SD3 to tune in your soft snare hits.
Hope this helps ?

[Olof Westman]

You guys should try to record some of your snare hits in the song track
and then bring that MIDI up in the Grid Editor. There you can inspect
the velocity of those hits. It is likely that your softest hits have a
comparatively large MIDI velocity.

If so, i.e. that the velocity range is overly narrow, you would venture to
the E-drums tab, in the settings, to adjust for the ‘flaw’ in your e-kit.
Do this by selecting the note in question, probably 38, and then
turning your attention to the “Edit MIDI Mapping and Response”
part of the window. Choose the Velocity tab. In your case you would
grab the three dots on the left side and drag them a bit to the right
until the displayed number matches the lowest velocity your module
produces. If, instead, you had the problem that your hardest hits
weren’t triggering the the loudest samples in SD3 then you would
grab the right hand side and slide it to the left. It is quite possible to
suffer from both problems at the same time.

Paul, congratulations on finding the Soft Hit feature! 😉
It can be used in this case but its primary usage is for when you
find the softest hits available for the drum in SD3 to be too loud.
It is used when you think that we failed to record soft enough
hits for a drum while the Velocity control in the E-drum tab
would be used to adapt a less than optimal E-kit to SD3.

Olof Westman - Toontrack
Coder

[Paul Ashe]

Hi Olle, surely if it was a velocity issue with the midi being sent from the drum module then we would have had the same problem with SD2, but everything was working fine before.

[Olof Westman]

Sure, but why stop at a theoretical discussion when it is so easy to test.
Just record some soft and hard hits in SD3 and check out what velocity
range they span. The thing is that nobody else has complained about
the SD3 samples not being soft enough. I am going to claim that the
odds are in favour of a velocity issue even though you have arguments
against it.

Olof Westman - Toontrack
Coder

[Henrik Ekblom]

Another way to inspect incoming MIDI is to use the MIDI Monitor property box in the Drums View. There’s also a monitor in the E-drums settings page, if you are in that area and setting up your e-drums.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[Paul Ashe]

@Olle said:
Sure, but why stop at a theoretical discussion when it is so easy to test.
Just record some soft and hard hits in SD3 and check out what velocity
range they span. The thing is that nobody else has complained about
the SD3 samples not being soft enough. I am going to claim that the
odds are in favour of a velocity issue even though you have arguments
against it.  

Hi Olle, I wasn’t complaining about the samples at all , actually I think SD3 is fantastic !!. I’ve had more time to mess around with it today. I did a velocity test and was recording hits between 5 and 127 so no problem there. What I did realize was that the kit I was originally testing (Bob Rock) was very hot, probably due to all the compression .
When I tried a few clean kits I found it to be a completely different story and everything was perfect again.
One thing I did find while trying things was that it would be great to be able create VCA faders in the mixer. Great for easily balancing overall kit volume ?

[Olof Westman]

Ah yes, the old compression trick or, rather, the trick compression pulls on you.
It is a very common reason when people question the velocity response.
I should have remembered that.

>..it would be great to be able create VCA faders in the mixer.

Yes, you can MIDI-learn them directly by right clicking a slider or you can
go via a Macro knob. The Macro knobs can be automated directly by most
hosts.

Olof Westman - Toontrack
Coder

[Author]

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