What about the Alesis DM5 to trigger Toontracks BFH???

You're not getting good drum sounds due to operator error. In 1978 I was in on a Robert Palmer tracking session at Regent sound studios in New York City. The room was so small and cramped that Robert had his back up against the control room window and everybody was playing together. Everything sounded fabulous including the drums in this teeny tiny room, through the Studer console with Shure SM57 microphones on the drums. So you should be able to get similar results even through a Mackie console. Lower your microphone gain trims and push the faders higher. This will buy you more headroom and less overload. DON'T play with the equalizers, except on the bass drum. Remember to give your recording a KISS approach.

I like to KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
Ms. Remy Ann David

Thanks.

Anyone else care to answer my question?

Remy rocks. I think it also has to do with what kind of sound your going for. Obvously your not going to get a natural huge zeppelin sound without some effects, but if your going for the new school super tight, every drum miced 5 times sound you could pull it off in a small room. The most important thing with drums is the player. This will effect your tone more than anything. This is true with most instruments but extremely so with the drums. Spend a day tuning those bitches. That is #2. You can't make an awesome drum recording with poor sounding drums. You should let us know what kind of sound your going for. If you do decide to trigger Ive found the best results are to close mic the kit and use drumagog and have it output to midi. Then the possibilities are endless. I don't really find triggers on an acoustic kit to be very accurate.

As long as that Roland trigger-to-MIDI device will work with the DDrum triggers (I don't see why it wouldn't) then yes, that solution will work. Yes, if you have access to the DM5 that can be used instead of the Roland device, PLUS it has internal sounds that you could use without needing to buy DFH.

Drumagog is a nice solution if you don't want to spend money for the trigger-to-MIDI converter or the triggers. It works using the recorded audio as a trigger. It does require that you have recorded each drum to it's own track, which is sort of standard anyway. It also comes with it's own sounds and you could create or load in external sounds if you wanted to. AND if you get the pro version you can use it to create MIDI data to trigger external (other VSTi) drum sounds.

When I was back into using Alesis MMT8 and D$ sound modules. I use to make my own acoustic drum triggers for my kit. It is an awesome design! and it utilizes your own kit. I wired up piezio (sp) transducers (you can get them at any electronic shop) dirt cheap. I placed 4 around and 2 in the center. of a fiberglass cloth. Wired them all paralell and placed the cloth with the electronics in an older drum head and poured in a thin resin layer making sure it locked around the inside of the drum head hoop. After it dried, I would pry it out and place a thin piece of foam between the underside of the head and place the trigger disc back into the head and snap it into the hoop. I took the lead coming out and wired TRS outputs to the ends of each trigger to plug into the D4 module. You should sand the disc smooth and put a nice coat of paint on them to make them look pretty. You use the custom trigger heads for electronic recording and change to live heads for recording acoustically. Sounds like a lot of work, but for me back in the early 90's it was a labor of love. They worked better than anything on the market adn still do.
Tommy
I never record with midi anymore. This was back when.

ABozung! That is the kind of ingenious creative ingenuity I like to hear! Necessity is a mother! Beautiful! That took a lot of thought and as you said, "a labor of love". Very impressive.

Good examples like this go a long way in making good recordings!
Ms. Remy Ann David

geeknik wrote: Are there better options out there?

usefull infos at

http://www.vdrums.com/forum/index.php

just dig it deeper

regards

Intersting enough, I was invited to the 1994 NAMM show by DW to present the triggers to them. They paid my way etc... and I tried like hell to find the guy I was suppose to meet with. We both missed each other and that was that. I flew home the next day. I had a DW "B" endorsement at the time, so I really knew the guy from that, so I know he didn't dis me there. Later, I had a representative that was suppose to go to California to meet with the guy again because he did business in LA all the time. I called set up the appoint. and my Rep guy never made. I was so embarrased from the entire thing that I tabled the idea and never pursued it again. The fact is that you are the first to know of this design . It is copyrighted of course. Interesting, maybe?
Tommy