E Drums producing unwanted sounds

S

SubYeoman

New member
Hello!

I have a Yamaha DTXplorer kit that I use for recording drum tracks, and have a problem I'm hoping someone could help me solve. Whenever I hit the kick strongly, the kit produces a crash sound. This happens in both midi and regular audio output.

I don't think it is simply vibration triggering a sensitive crash because 1) the crash sound produced by the kick is always loud whenever it triggers, whereas if I lightly tap the crash with a stick it is much quieter, and 2) depending on the kit I have it set to, the crash sound produced by the kick will be different (different type of symbol sound) that the crash setting of the kit I'm using at the time and 3) it is only the kick that produces the crash sound, which is on the floor completely unconnected to the rest of the kit; it's never the toms that are mounted right next to the crash or anything else. I looked in the owner's manual and messed around with some gain and sensitivity settings and also some rejection settings but nothing seemed to make a difference.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
 
I don't know about the Yamies, but my old Roland drum machine has velocity layering (not sure if that's what it's really called), which allows for triggering alternate sounds depending on velocity.
Maybe some similar type of setting is being applied to your kick trigger.
 
I reset to factory settings and it's still doing it... if that's something they did on purpose out of the box that was a stupid idea. I'll look into it though, maybe it was something accidental I could work around. Thanks.
 
How strong is the cymbal hit in terms of velocity (midi).

If it's 50 or less it's most likely cross talk. You can get that via vibration, but you can also get it through sound going out and hitting it through the air (playing the drums loudly out of a PA).

I was never able to get rid of it completely. I have heard that putting all the cymbals on their own stands helps as well as a carpet.

I always just kill anything that was played weaker than 45 on my setup.
 
I don't own a PA, I only use headphones so it wouldn't be that.

I was actually able to produce a crash sound by hitting the tom that was mounted next to it really really hard, but what I got was what I would expect from vibration: a very low volume crash sound that was the same as if I tapped it lightly with a stick. The crash sound I get from hitting the kick is loud, and a completely different sound (for example I'll be playing the "rock kit" and the crash sound produced will be from the "techno kit" crash. Very wierd.
 
It is possible that the pad is producing 2 midi notes at once. I have not used that brain but have used some of the other yammy brains and it had the same thing going on. I don't remember the fix, I think we just switched it over to a gm patch and all was good again.
 
Could that be the problem if I'm getting the extra crash sound in both MIDI and headphones/audio output? I sent an email to Yamaha customer support explaining the problem so hopefully they can provide a solution. If I get it fixed I'll post it so others with the same problem might benefit.
 
Problem solved!!! For anyone else searching these forums for a solution to this problem here it is:

Although this kit comes stock with 8 pads and 8 inputs, it actually supports 9, the 9th being a second crash. The brain only has 8 jacks, but the 8th jack (the kick) is labeled 8/9. On the back of the kick stand, there is the "out" (the kick to the brain) but there is also an "in" (where the extra crash plugs in if you have one; I don't). In my case, whenever I hit the kick especially hard, the signal was so strong that it was triggering both the 8 and the 9 even though I didn't have anything plugged into the 9.

There are a few possible solutions:

1. Try a different cable. I solved this problem by swapping the cheap, thin stock cable that ran from the kick to the brain with a high quality guitar cable. This was all I needed to do to completely fix the problem.
2. Go into the settings and set the sensitivity for the 9th input really high. I haven't tried this because I didn't need to, but I would imagine it would probably work.
3. Use a ring/tip splitter to split the 8 and 9 jacks, then just plug into the 8. This is what was suggested to me by the Yamaha people. Like I said, I didn't need to go that route because the cable swap fixed my problem, but if the above to options don't work it is something else to try.

Thanks to everyone who provided help during this journey!
 
I was going to ask how many cymbals you have.

Try plugging a 1/4" plug into the 'in' jack on the kick pad.
 
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