Ace K wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:35 pm I got the captor and it's great, I'm having a bit of trouble getting used to the wall of sound software though. If anyone has any good advice on that it would rock.

What's the issue?

I've tried a lot of different solutions over the years

Amp sims
Valve pre-amps going into cab sims (WoS and some others)

I was never happy with the results so I bought an amp, cab and a Boss Waza TAE. The Boss Waza TAE is one of the best bits of kit I have bought.

When I bought it I thought i would be using the cabsim, nope the attenuation on it is amazing and I'm micing up my Rockerverb mk3 and achieving the sounds I have been after. The beauty of the attenuation is its not stepped and you can also change the resolution of the dial. I have it set from 0 - 10 (it can go to 120) I hope that makes sense.

Never mind the other great features it has, I'm surprised it's not used by more people!

I can post some examples if you want?

Batou wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 9:16 am I've tried a lot of different solutions over the years

Amp sims
Valve pre-amps going into cab sims (WoS and some others)

I was never happy with the results so I bought an amp, cab and a Boss Waza TAE. The Boss Waza TAE is one of the best bits of kit I have bought.

When I bought it I thought i would be using the cabsim, nope the attenuation on it is amazing and I'm micing up my Rockerverb mk3 and achieving the sounds I have been after. The beauty of the attenuation is its not stepped and you can also change the resolution of the dial. I have it set from 0 - 10 (it can go to 120) I hope that makes sense.

Never mind the other great features it has, I'm surprised it's not used by more people!

I can post some examples if you want?

Sure, why not?

cakes wrote: Wed Aug 18, 2021 11:09 am Sure, why not?

Boss Waza Tube amp expander demo all guitar parts are recorded with the following chain

Guitar > pedals > orange rockerverb mk3 > Boss WAZA TAE > 1x12 cab > sm57 and a Lewitt LTC 440.

The TAE attenuated my amp to a volume of 75dBA which my preamp (Phoenix Audio DRSQ4 MKII) recorded without any issues. This is recorded in my untreated 3mx3m little studio room/office. I think the only processing on this track is a bit of compression on the bass, everything else is recorded apart from the drums (SD3), all effects on bass and guitar are pedals.

Apologizes in advance for the sloppy playing!

cakes wrote: Sat Aug 14, 2021 10:30 am

Ace K wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:35 pm I got the captor and it's great, I'm having a bit of trouble getting used to the wall of sound software though. If anyone has any good advice on that it would rock.

What's the issue?

basically that my IQ is inversely proportionate to the number of options i have in front of me so that by the time i get to that point i'm a fucking idiot

I wanted to follow up on this a bit with something related, but not really impulse responses. More or less, the idea of micing in computers in a home studio setup.

I've been using IRs with cabinets and mic positions using those Two Note Cabs, which I have to say are amazing, especially for the price. A cheaper way to go about this is to use the two reverbs that come with Reaper, both of which use IR samples (you'd just have to hunt some files down).

But, the other thing that I am really excited about in regards to "in the box" micing is drum modules. I've gone in and out of the rabbit hole on drum modules, and I eventually settled on a Roland TD-27. It's the little brother version of the TD-50. It can do multi-track recording on it's own as an audio interface, which is amazing in it's own right. It has 28 channels out, which includes stereo overheads, stereo room, and stereo/mono for each drum pad. Even more amazing is the fact that you can control overhead mic placements, add up to 3 effects (ranging from tape, delay, phase, etc), and build a room sound with a pretty solid reverb. Beyond that, you have complete control to customize your own samples and there are a ton of great drum kits out there, some of which are free. Even some of the basic Roland kits sound pretty good, if you tweak them a little (and turn the room off). There's a lot more in the module itself for routing, mixing and compression. You could, if you wanted, get a great sounding drum kit with processing multi-tracked strait into a DAW (or, just a simple stereo of the whole thing, if you had it mixed perfectly out of the box). Couple that with the ability to also record the midi to use with VSTs... the versatility is almost limitless.

Does it sound as good as acoustic drums? I think it's all in what you want to get out of it. It sounds damn near close enough, the versatility and price factor, if you want to account for the purchase of mics just for drums, is incomparable. After all the processing and mixing, I'm not sure if being 90-95% close to realistic makes that much difference.

Anyway, I hope to share some recordings when they are done. I've been working on getting familiar with the DAW and the setup I have. So far, I think it's coming along well. I don't have any drums recorded yet. That part is a little tricky: we don't have a drummer and I'm learning drums and don't feel that I'm ready to hit the record button on myself behind the kit. The limitation right now is only human!

bishopdante wrote:

cakes wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 11:31 amDoes it sound as good as acoustic drums?

If you don't play drums you may like it. If you do play drums you'll hate it.

The variety of noises you can make with a drum kit is the reason why it's not totally easy to play, and make a good, consistent sound. Lots of drum machines sound better than a mediocre drummer.

However, one $50 pencil microphone and a really good drummer in a real room has got more feel than any drum machine. It all depends on the musician, really. You could give a good musician a biscuit tin and a cardboard box and they'd sound musical.

One of the ways the computer and the internet can help, is that it's actually quite accessible and cheap to have parts recorded, so you can do your scratch tracks with whatever ready-mix artificial ting, and then send it off to a bunch of different musicians and see what they come up with, and it's all very easy with contemporary high-bandwidth internet and Wav files.

It's not a drum machine. It's a vdrum kit. The only programming is sounds and effects. A good drummer will make a vdrum kit sound amazing, just like they would make an acoustic kit sound amazing. You're only as good as you are, but some instruments naturally sound better than others, and that is true whether it's acoustic or electric.

You'd be surprised the sounds a vdrum can produce. Sometimes I accidentally hit the snare rim and I get that hollow rim-shot sound with the snares. It sounds off just like an acoustic drum kit would if you did that. Hitting the side of the pad, depending on the pad, can sound like hitting the side of a snare: a hollow sound with some snares vibrating. (That's what I hear when I drop my stick or fuck up). The hi-hats sound wrong up if you fuck up a clamp, just you would with any acoustic hi-hat. The samples use velocity, so when you hit really soft, they sound soft and when you hit hard, they sound hard. There's no shotgun effect, where soft-to-loud is only volume.

The things that don't sound the same to me as an acoustic drum kit: Crash cymbals don't use piezo for bells by default, but if you wanted a crash bell and had the inputs, you could hook it up. Rides usually have the bell hooked up by default. All cymbals have top and edge hits, and nicer ones have catches for muting. You can hit a cymbal incorrectly and it will sound wrong, just like an acoustic cymbal. But the cymbal catch, the fade off is a bit slow, like a soft catch. There's no hard-catches. There's no velocity on the trigger for it, but it's a minor thing. Though, if you hit the cymbal while holding the catch trigger, it sounds just like your holding an acoustic cymbal while hitting it. Toms don't use rimshots, though if you had decent pads and a module to support it, you could make that happen.

So yeah, it's not exact, but good luck hearing the difference in a mix, especially with the human factor of playing the kit, not programming it.

What your saying is probably true for a cheap or older vdrum kit, where the samples don't have as many layers and the pads are limited. Play on a professional kit, it gets damn close to the real thing. The quality in-between, you might be able to really tell if the kit is played all by itself and maybe if you knew it was an electric kit.

Sure, a drawback might be you can't pick your mics and place your mics in specific spots for your trademark drum mic technique. On the flipside, you can change the samples and get a different drum kit altogether. Where you lose one thing, you gain another.

I recently tried a TD-27 kit at my regional shop. At $3,000, it wouldn't have been a capricious purchase, but in terms of my hearing, and consideration of neighbors, I would have justified it. The positives with these newer rigs is the snare and ride use some kind of digital sensor, using a USB-A connector, possibly transmitting some electrostatic and other positional data that's meaningful to the samples being played. A cross-stick on snare is played quite well. The ride has a nice sensitivity too. Hi hats, however, seem to be the old two 1/4" cable deal they always had, and IMO, if Roland is going to sell a next-generation kit that's 200% pricier than its competitors, the hats should reflect similar technology.

I think I found a kit in the bank that was just "classic rock" or something and it sounded fine.

I ended up just getting neoprene mutes for my RB Gretsch, and some Zildjian L80 cymbals, reviewed elsewhere, and it's acceptable for practice, and when i want to record, I can just switch the kit over in 2 minutes.

cakes wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:33 am Play on a professional kit, it gets damn close to the real thing.

Yeah. All this stuff has improved soooo much in the last decade or whatever. I've been a drummer for 42 years, I have a bunch of nice drums, I'm biased against vdrums/samples, but they can really sound great. I've mastered stuff for clients and complimented them on their drum sound only to hear "thanks! it's actually Superior Drummer!" Thinking of going that route myself, for a variety of reasons I don't need to bore you all with.

Anyway, as far as load boxes, last year I got the Bugera PS-1, which is resistive not reactive. And I'm sure the fancy reactive boxes sound better, but the Bugera sounds great and it's 120 bucks. I don't feel like the tone is lacking in any way and more importantly, it makes it so I can turn my Deluxe up to 7 and get loads of gushy power amp distortion....at a conversational volume.