Questions for Alesis D4 Users

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ckent

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I'm trying to assemble a trigger set to supplement my mics during recording of an acoustic drum kit. I'm getting a good kick sound and good overheads with my mics but I'd like to get better isolation among the (3) toms and the snare.

I have bought an Alesis D4 and a bag o' Drumdial triggers. Initially I want to use four triggers. Is that OK with the Alesis? Their manual says you have to plug in all of your triggers before setting the levels. Suppose I don't want to use all 12 trigger inputs?

An answer from anybody who has used the D4 would be appreciated; and I'll gladly listen to any other related advice you might have.

My plan is to use the D4 just to capture the stick hits and output MIDI notes. No problem with the dated D4 sounds. I will use NI Battery for the actual drum sounds once I have a MIDI track containing the toms and snare.

Thanks...

Alan

NOTE: I just saw the admonition to Search first and as a result found a lot of useful information. But if anyone has specific comments on the D4, that would still be helpful.
 
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It has been several years since I've triggered a D4 but I am positive that I have triggered a D4 useing less than 12 pads.

I would have to pull out my manaul (I still have my D4 - but have not ysed it for a while) - but I think the refence to plussging in all triggers before adjusting settings simply means all triggers you plan to use.

So if you are only using say 5 triggers - make sure all 5 are plugged in before you adjust settings.

I don't have any specific tricks or comments (although I can try to answer specific questions) - I keep my D4 because I thought it tracked well when using the triggers and candidly, I don't think the sounds are that dated. It has sound very usable sounds.
 
Thanks a lot for your prompt response. I'd really like to see this trigger thing work out, since it will allow me to make the best of a pretty limited drum recording environment (my living room).



Alan
 
MikeH, if you're there, maybe you could answer a couple more questions about using the D4 with triggers.

1. You said you haven't used the D4 for a couple of years. Weren't you able to get the results you wanted?

2. What kind of triggers were you using? I've bought some entry-level Drumdial triggers to test the concept but I see other products that look a lot more sophisticated.

3. Did you mix in the D4 samples with recorded tracks, or replace the recorded drums completely with samples? So far it looks like a mix works better for me.

TIA for any comments you might have.

Alan
 
I have a D4 and I'll chime in on a few of your ??s.

You can run as few as one trigger if you want.

The D4 itself, sound-wide, has great sounds BUT....

Although the sounds aren't dated, I've never been able to get a decent sound out of them to fit perfectly with anything I'm recording...at least back when I was recording in 16bit. The unit itself outputs 18bit sounds and I think that because of the inherent, yet ever-so slight differences between the 18 bits it puts out and the 16 that's picked up, it dulls the sound when recorded strictly at 16/44.1 but maybe I should try again now that I'm at 24bits. Still, because of these minor quirks, I'd could never rely on it on a recording.

I've tried to use them live with the cheap hotspot triggers and in my experience, no matter how much I fiddled with the velocity settings and xtalk values, it would either double trigger or not trigger at all about 10% of the time which was too much for me. I was endlessly manipulating the various settings but I've yet to have used a trigger on it that I felt was 100% accurate but then again, all my experience is based on the "hotspot" triggers and some DIY jobs. Yet again, because of the quirks, I couldn't rely on it live.

Where this unit excels is as a MIDI voice instrument. I used to program rhythms through an old-school Boss drum machine and had it trigger the D4's voice banks which I outputted from the main outs of the D4 straight into the PC soundcard. This worked great but since I have little patience with programming all the "humanization" nuances of MIDI beats to keep them from sounding too sterile as opposed to just playing them on a mic'd kit, I ultimately came around full circle to the realization that it was just more productive to spend the time to mic my real kit properly and just record acoustic drums. My cerebrum is much easier programmed, far quicker and advanced than the D4 in getting the sounds out of drums that I want. So that's about all the experience I have with this unit. If you want it just to jam along with some music farting off or for a quiet practice alternative because of envoronmental factors, this is a good unit. Perhaps someone else up here has had a more glowing experience with it and they'll chime in.
 
Do they still make the D4? Back in the 90's, I used one for gigging. I used an acoustic bass drum with a trigger ,Roland tri zone pads for the toms, a Space Muffin snare pad, and a pad shaped like a "T" for my side stick sounds (Roland I think.) Using it as you described will be easy. It can be used with only one trigger.

The downside for me was that the "sound" only came from one direction (monitor) and being able to play with limited dynamics.
 
Thanks for the input.

While I haven't yet recorded drum-mounted triggers, I have driven the D4 with existing recorded acoustic kick and tom tracks with satisfactory results. I sent the tracks to the trigger inputs and the D4 issued the equivalent MIDI notes. These I used to drive NI Battery drums, which I like more than the samples in D4.

It takes some tweaking after the MIDI notes are recorded to line them up with the original drum hits. But it can be done. I was gonna buy Drumagog but now I can put that off and use the D4 for the time being.

You guys are right, the D4 has some usable samples (and others I'll never touch) but I prefer the layered samples of Gigastudio, Battery, or Purrfect Drums. These sound more realistic to me. It's not a matter of 16 bits, 18, 20, or 24. As far as I can tell, a soft hit on the D4 activates the same sample as a hard hit, only quieter. To me that's not the same as a soft hit on a real kit.

It will be interesting to see how the D4 responds to my cheapo triggers. If your posts are any indication, it could be kinda dicey. Oh well, no matter; I'll always capture acoustic tracks at the same time.

Thanks again for the advice.

Alan
 
Couple more thoughts:

I'm thinking the kick might be the ONLY thing I use the D4 for. That is the one drum that benefits most from samples. Probably because it's the one you can most effectively isolate from the rest of the kit. All the other tom and snare mics have so much cymbal or hat mingled in.

Like the tracks I'm working on right now, the snare and hat have become one. If I were to add snare samples, they would swamp out the hat. So I try to trigger on the hat as well. No go--too similar in volume and tone to the snare. What it boils down to is the need to capture every instrument in the drum kit separately and develop MIDI tracks from them--not a practical solution for me.

Alan
 
What i'm doing -
Alesis D4 > MIDI to USB converter
In my DAW software I use Drumagog > Use the sound I want for kick drum
And I got what I want...

For me this works the best...
This way I have
8 channels on mic (2 overheads, 1 room, 1 hi-hat, 4 toms)
Alesis D4 (2 bass drum triggered, 1 snare triggered, for security all toms also triggered)

Wat I actually did in advance (and still working on it) is making a libary of my snare sounds & bass drum sounds..

My bass drum database:
Drumagog Official Kick drums
Andy Sneap Kick Drum
Rip off several CD's... :)...
My own libary..
 
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