My Alesis I/O powered kit!

[BioBiro]

Hey all, nice to be here - there's been a distinct lack of Trigger I/O information on the net, so hopefully this lovely forum will attract plenty of attention and help the electronic drummer community to grow and prosper .

Anyhoo, this is my kit:



It's just a cheap Stagg drum kit, consisting of a 22x16" kick, 14x5.5" snare, 8", 10", 12", 13" and 14" rack toms, and 14" and 16" floor toms. The high hats are Roland VH-12 hats, the ride is a Roland CY-15R (need to do the bell fix sometime), and the rest of the cymbals are Smartriggers (2x 16" Crash's, a 13" Crash, 14" China, 10" Splash, and a homemade (not by me) 8" Splash). There's also a spare Yamaha PCY-135 on the left.

All the drums use Hart Magnum single ply mesh heads, and Roland RT-10 triggers. None of the drums have bottom heads on them, and I took the lugs off most of them to use as spares, so they look like concert toms now. The kick is full of towels a few inches away from the head, and the snare has 3/8" clear plastic rim trim which keeps coming loose.

From the rear:



As you can see, the attic is rather cramped with all my stuff, so I have to climb across my bed to move around the room. When I wake up in the morning, i'm staring my kit straight in the face, so i'm always in a good mood .



The brains behind the whole thing:



These 2 trigger I/O's share the work, and they run into my laptop which runs MIDI-OX to merge dual USB MIDI devices into a single channel (due to problems with Vista). This MIDI input is then selected in VSTHost which is running three instancies of ToonTrack's EZDrummer (Pop/Rock, Drumkit From Hell, and Twisted Kit - which is rather inefficiently used for only one cymbal). The soundcard is an M-Audio Firewire Solo, which is good enough to get the job done.

I haven't yet dared to run all the VSTs of EZDrummer in a host like Cubase to record the output - regardless, my drumming skills are about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

[Hellfire]

Welcome aboard BioBiro!

Your kit looks great. I love the double Trigger I/O's. I know more and more people have been asking if it is possible to use two Trigger I/O's, and you are proof positive it works.

I too am hoping more of you Trigger I/O guys out there will sign up and be active members of DMdrummer.com

[audiopat]

That is a great looking kit! Wow! Really good work. How do you find the RT-10 triggers with the IO? Any tweaks or anything unusual your had to do to get them working nicely? 

[BioBiro]

That is a great looking kit! Wow! Really good work. How do you find the RT-10 triggers with the IO? Any tweaks or anything unusual your had to do to get them working nicely?

Thanks for the kind words. There's actually a ton of stuff i've been planning to add, but finances don't always permit .

The RT-10s work really nicely with the Trigger I/O. I haven't changed the settings on them too much yet, as they work nicely by default, although I had to find a much stronger(?) velocity curve for the kick, as it was very quiet at first.

[audiopat]

I'm curious about you having to bump up the curve on your kick trigger. I'm running BFD 1.5, and I have not got the response right... I like a linear response, but if I choose LIN as my curve I have to either boost the gain of the IO or the output of BFD, which reduces the dynamic range... i'm still trying to find the perfect solution... Tried running a compressor on the channel output in Live 7... Not bad. Anyway, got superior 2 on order to arrive next week sometime:) I'll be interested to see the response.   

[BioBiro]

I'm curious about you having to bump up the curve on your kick trigger. I'm running BFD 1.5, and I have not got the response right... I like a linear response, but if I choose LIN as my curve I have to either boost the gain of the IO or the output of BFD, which reduces the dynamic range... i'm still trying to find the perfect solution... Tried running a compressor on the channel output in Live 7... Not bad. Anyway, got superior 2 on order to arrive next week sometime:) I'll be interested to see the response.

I think you'll enjoy Superior Drummer 2 alot more than BFD. I tried BFD Lite that came with the I/O and found it terrible and hard to customize. I keep the gain at the default '15', but have the curve set to 'Logarithmic 4' to increase the volume (i'm not the most delicate of drummers).

[Marc Bergmueller]

BioBiro, could you tell me if you use the midi yoke to join the units because the midi out to midi in of the two I/O's didn't work well?  I didn't look maybe there is no midi in.

[Marc Bergmueller]

never mind, no midi in.

[BioBiro]

never mind, no midi in.

Yep. Gotta use the MIDI Yoke addon for MIDI-OX to merge the ins.