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aquawicket
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« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2009, 09:57:24 AM » |
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To understand the explanation of these settings, you must first understand midi signals. A midi signals consists of the Channel #, the Note #, and the velocity. Most devices have 16 channels they can send midi through on a single device. eTrigger, by default, listens to all 16 channels on the selected input devices and sends on channel 10 on the selected output devices. A device can send up to 256 midi notes. eTrigger triggers and Midi CC's can learn any incoming midi note from a devices and send on any note of your choice. The velocity represents the volume of a note, or the position of a midi CC. Velocity can be a number from 1 to 127. 1 being the quietest or bottom of a MidiCC, and 127 being the loudest or the top of a midi CC.
Example. 10 , 26, 72 = midi channel 10, note 26, velocity of 72
What exactly does the compressor do for my trigger? A Trigger has a dynamics section. The dynamics section controls the velocity or volume of the signal. In the compressor's case, there is a high end and a low end. The velocity will be restricted within the bounds of the high and low compressors. For example, if we set the low compressor to 30 and the high compressor to 94, any signals below 30 or above 94 will be pushed into the bounds of the compressor. I.E. a signal of 13 becomes 30. And a signal of 127 becomes 94. The true purpose of the compressor is to help drum sounds and that sometimes play too quiet or too loud. The compressor can help keep their volume in range.
What do the Low% and High% do? The low and high percents tell the low and high compressor what percent of compression to apply to the signal. For example, if the low compressor is set to 30 and the low percent is set to 100%, any signals below 30 will be pushed up to 30 (100%). However, if we set the low percent to 50%, any signals below 30 will be pushed up 50% to way to 30. For example. the signal comes in at 15. 15 pushed 50% of the way to 30 is 26. The true purpose of compressor percents is to help smooth out the compression edges. This leads to a more natural compression.
What do the Cut-Off Sliders do? The cut-off slider work much like the compressor sliders do except, when a signal is in the red zone, it's cut off and does not get played. The true purpose of cut-off is to eliminate false triggers and crosstalk. Setting the low cut-off to about 5 will stop any signal below a velocity of 5 from triggering.
How does the AntiMachine-gun work Anti-Machine Gun is a setting to add humanization to your drums. Sometimes when playing a trigger, it will signal the same velocity a few times in a row making your sample sound like a "machine-gun". To eliminate this, the Anti-machine gun setting will ensure the same velocity does not play over in over within a period of time. The Setting is recognized in milliseconds. So setting Anti-machine gun to 100 will insure that the same velocity cannot sound again within 100 milliseconds. Instead the velocity will be changed up or down until the 100 milliseconds is up and the same velocity is allowed to play again. To see how this setting takes effect, assign a keyboard key to one of the triggers and set the anti-machine gun to 500. Then play the key very fast and watch how the velocity is changed.
What do Note off Signals do Some devices send Note-Off signals. Keyboards for example send a note off signal when the piano key is released. This tells the software or device receiving the signal, "Hey the note has stopped, so stop playing it". This does not however really effect drum sample players. Note off signals are more so ignored in programs like BFD, and Addictive drums. This is because drums are single hit instruments and do not require sustain like pianos and stringed instruments do. Assigning a keyboard key or joystick button with note off signals will play the sample until the key or button is released. This also depends on the sample player you are linking eTrigger to. Cymbal chokes are another matter and are triggered by a different kind of signal in most drum sample players, not note-off signals. Cymbal chokes are triggered by what's called an "After-touch" signal, and has not been coded into eTrigger yet. However, some drum modules send there own after touch signals and by enabling "Midi thru" in eTriggers options, you can let these kind of signals bleed through to the software you are linking to.
What's Multi Zone Wait Time? When playing a drum with multiple zones or "piezos", eTrigger can make calculations on where the stick hit the drum. In order to do this, eTrigger must recieve a signal from all of the zones. Since the signal comes from different piezo's in the drum, it may take a short amount of time for all of the piezo's to send a signal. The Multi-Zone Wait time setting tells the trigger how long to wait ,in milliseconds, for all of the signals in the drum before processing the output. A setting to low will cut off signals that didn't make it in time and hinder the multi-zone performance. So it is recommended to leave enough time for eTrigger to wait for all of the signals. Multi-Zone wait time is auto detectable and will be learnable just like the retrigger setting.
What happens when selecting Last zone is a rim? eTrigger needs to treat drums a cymbals differently when it comes to multiple zones. Select "Last zone is a rim" if it's a drum, and deselect the options if it's a cymbal or hi-hat. This is bacause of how eTriger determines the stick position. For example, you can hit a cymbal toward the edge and still get a little bit of the center piezo for position sencing purposes. But on a drum, when you hit the rim, you don't want the center piezo to do anything, because it should sound a rim shot. This selection also effects the position sensing of where the stick hit the trigger. The position will be off if the wrong method is chosen. On a drum, the rim shot should always send a position of 127, where a cymbal can very more on a scale of 64 to 127 depending on how hard and where exactly on the edge the cymbal was hit. So "last zone is a rim" tells eTrigger what type of position sencing to apply and how to deal with the rim or edge.
What's Zone Position Gravity? Position sensing works by telling eTrigger where your stick hit the drum or cymbal. It then reports that position on a scale from 1 to 127, 1 being the center of the drum and 127 being the edge of the drum. The position gravity will default at 0 for each zone. If you increase the "Gravity" for a particular zone, eTrigger will "Gravitate" the sticks position more toward that zone.
MORE TO COME SOON . . .
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