HF,
I totally agree with you on all points. I just posted a review of the DM10 over on my acoustic drumming forum (I am one of a few e-drummers over there, and I do get a lot of questions regarding electronics -
http://www.onlinedrummer.com/forum/index.php?topic=30257.0).
And I give it a glowing review - price per performance is awesome, and I love the module.
And I have posted on the SSD forums asking why they hard-code the note mappings, and got boilerplate answer saying that thats how they guarantee compatibility and QA yada yada yada. This was mostly meant to be a FYI post, that turned rant! I was caught off-guard that I couldn't edit those MIDI notes.
I've not used any Roland modules (well, the PM-16, but that was a TMI) and I don't know if any notes are hard-coded or not - except I know the HD-1 is. Whether the DM10 uses MIDI to trigger internal sounds or not is unknown, but seems a bit silly to tie an external interface to an internal call - that's just the programmer in me. And really, this is more of an Alesis 'weird one-off' thing.
With the Trigger IO, it was input 4, you can't edit the input to piezo-piezo, it is hard coded piezo-switch. The DM10 now has a few of these 'one-off' bits - input 7 is dual, but the only one that chokes - but the screen shows it as a single input - that's weird. The hi-hat isn't dual - the only mono input - that's weird. And now, the 2 MIDI notes that can't be updated.
I guess I expect to be able to edit everything and move along my merry way doing what I want to do - I suppose in a way, the PM-16 was so generic, that I got spoiled with it's simplicity and therefore flexibility, and I only expect more from products produced 15 years later..
So, I guess, I need to pop over to the 'DM20' thread, and put in some suggestions..
As a programmer, I think it is odd to limit an input to a type, rather than allowing the user to pick a configuration type for an input. I should be able to duplicate the input 7 settings to other inputs, for example. I think Roland handles this by allowing the user to 'configure' the pad type they are using for the input, and therefore, the module knows, piezo/switch and choke like settings based on pad type. If you know the pad type, you can fake the module into different config settings.