Audio Drums

[mate]

I look forward to when Korg will bring the market Audio Drums on their keyboard.

Audio Drums:
http://www.synthzone.com/forum/ubbthrea ... udio_Drums

[karmathanever]

Just my opinion but...
...definitely not for me - it seems to have been a waste of development time so far.

Ketron's attempt was OK, Yamaha's was terrible.

You lose all control over the audio presentation of the kit and are locked into the "recording".

Pete

[ckobu]

...
Yamaha's was terrible.
...

Yamaha (Genos) has a great solution, it can play as Korg (rex, rx2) or as Ketron (aus). At the same time in the same Style.


https://youtu.be/NDvZDPfCmPU

[karmathanever]

Again - this is all very subjective, but that just does not do it for me at all.

Maybe because I have played drums for many years (and still do) and spent many 100's of hours tuning and researching woods and skins.
It'll be a long time before any keyboard can do acoustic drums any justice. Not only are you locked into the sound and tuning, you are locked into the player Those are too many limitations.

I own and play one of the best acoustic kits ever made plus a TOTL digital Yamaha kit which has amazing acoustic drum samples and superb triggering technology BUT I don't want to be locked into a player and specific kit components on my keyboards. At least with the MIDI kits and samples I have room to breathe.

Keyboard-Wise, IMHO, Yamaha have had the better acoustic drum samples but Korg are hitting the mark now - Roland still a way to go yet.

CHeers

Pete

[ckobu]

Hi Pete,

I agree with you and understand that one drummer cannot be satisfied with the “artificial” sound from some device.
But my post was not focused on the sound itself and whether it is good or not. I wanted to emphasize that Yamaha’s technology outperforms both brands, both Ketron and Korg.

regard, ckobu

[mate]

What do you like Yamaha Genos Revo Drums?

"Revo drums use wave-cycling to to help remove the mechanical, robotic sound of MIDI drum and percussion parts."

[korg1]

Ketron has done pretty well on that,i don't know about Yamaha, but both are still far away.

Better approach so far was Drumcore,and still is in my opinion,Toontrack superior comes second even if has better kits.

What your audio loop in drumcore plays ,it exists on midi too,allowing you to change the loop according to your needs.
Haven't seen that in Ketron or Yamaha yet.
So better option is to try to sample a nice drumkit,in my opinion two,one for basic drum and one for percussions.

[karmathanever]

I agree with you and understand that one drummer cannot be satisfied with the “artificial” sound from some device.
But my post was not focused on the sound itself and whether it is good or not. I wanted to emphasize that Yamaha’s technology outperforms both brands, both Ketron and Korg.

Aha!! Understood

[karmathanever]

"Revo drums use wave-cycling to to help remove the mechanical, robotic sound of MIDI drum and percussion parts."

I found the "robotic sound of MIDI drum and percussion parts" on my Yamaha arrangers - Korg's loops and drum/perc ACCs are as authentic as audio in very many cases (styles/pads) - of course that excludes the genres that "need" mechanical percussion.

The early promotions of audio drum loops from Yamaha (Tyros) sounded extremely "mechanical" - much of the "realism" nowadays comes from the "player" (creator) of the drum loops - this is (IMHO) where Korg excels.

.....still liked Audya....

[ckobu]

The factory audio drum that comes with the Tyros5 is very bad, synthetic. However, if you have the conditions to record or if you want to buy “third party” stuff, this can sound a lot better than the Yamaha Audio Style.
https://youtu.be/_uJxJ2JHHg4?t=50

A good option is that the Yamaha Audio drum in aus format can be used directly from a USB stick, it does not have to take up memory space. On the other hand, the rex / rx2 format is written to memory, but is stored in a separate 1 GB partition and does not take up 3 GB of Flash memory.

Again, I’m only talking about technical possibilities because I don’t want to go into subjective assessments of which sound is good or bad.

For me (I play Genos) the Revo drum is a much better solution than the Audio Drum. Editing every single element of the drum is a thing I don’t want to lose. There are a couple more reasons why I love Revo. The factory rhythms use an algorithm similar to the Round Robin in the Contact. It uses 27 layers of drums. For example, there are 13 different hit hats in every Revo battery ...

[Keymn]

I have a drum pedal called Beat Buddy and drums created by real drummers. Here is a sample style I created with Beat Buddy Loops. I am able to import them in Korg pa1000 but have to convert to midi format 0...the bass and lead was not done on the Korg in these first 2 files...used a gt-1 Boss pedal effects forming this guitar sound from my Roland digital v-accordion...(I came from old school recording industry)...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1po1e4a11xz0i ... y.mp3?dl=0

With Beat Buddy manager program, I was able to create this loop for wipe out:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6k817islzgtcy ... 1.wav?dl=0


This is a style I created on the Korg pa1000 using Beat Buddy midi loops.
Waylon country beat:

https://youtu.be/Xx80jqF4OVI

[mate]

I have heard that Ketron's OS and screen are too messy and illogical, but styles and sounds are very good. So i won't buy it.

[Korghelper]

The thing about audio drum loops is, it depends on who plays them!

Although some of the Korg styles are very well done, you can’t compare the drums on them to audio loop collections by world famous drummers that are available. Korg’s programmers are good, but they ain’t no Peter Erskine, or Sly Dunbar, or Vinnie Colaiuta!

The same also applies to ethnic percussion loops. There is some thing about those that simply cannot be equaled by a drum kit and a midi loop. Not to mention, a percussion ensemble as a loop takes up one voice, but may take up a ton of voices as a midi style loop. And is actually played by an ensemble of percussionists, all with their own feel and dynamics. Most percussion style loops are programmed by the same person.

The real trick is the consistency of ambience... Ketron did a great job recording their audio drums with a consistency of ambience that works well in styles. Yamaha did poorly here, with wildly different spaces around different styles. It’s not that the technique itself is a bad idea, it just needs careful adoption when intended for general arranger use.

[karmathanever]

The thing about audio drum loops is, it depends on who plays them!

Indeed and also as important, the actual kit used (sounds)

This leaves the whole "audio" drums issue more subjective than piano sounds.
Yamaha's efforts were not only poor in terms of actual playing but also the audio drum sounds (to me) were far worse than their regular internal digital drum samples which are, in fact, very nice.

Korg’s programmers are good, but they ain’t no Peter Erskine, or Sly Dunbar, or Vinnie Colaiuta!

absolutely but neither would you want them to be unless you are wanting 64 bar jazz loops.

Arranger drum tracks were very poor for too long but nowadays, things are excellent particularly in Korg and Ketron.
Yamaha drum tracks are very basic and repetitive but that is the way they produce their styles - the only exciting thing in Yamaha's styles is usually the long INTROs and ENDINGs.

Strangely, Yamaha's digital drums are outstanding and incredibly authentic (particularly acoustic kits samples)
This is of course all very personal and subjective but interesting to talk about....

I think it was Buddy Rich who once said "A band is only as good as its drummer"

[Musicwithharry]

I rather like the idea of audio instruments being played in the arranger format. The audio loops on the Ketron Audya were awesome when I first heard them. I thought that was a cool concept because you could really have 'real' drums in place of the boring and repetitive drums that normally came from the arrangers.

I would say the same, and maybe even more so, about the guitar loops. Guitars have ALWAYS been hard on the synths, especially when it comes to distortion and dynamics. Yamaha made great strides with the Mega Voice samples and their advanced articulation (as has Korg with their Guitar Mode and DNC controls), but the distorted guitars still sound very synth-like on every brand out there.

That is where, I believe, that audio loops of different instruments can come in handy. Sure, we are left with the drummers (and guitarists) who are actually playing for any given loop, but the tech involved is what could be expanded upon.

I have an M50 in my studio, and I will say that the drum patterns it has are pretty good. There is a life to them and if memory serves, they were played by real drummers, playing via MIDI into the loops. Maybe that is the reason they sound good.

The Acoustic or Unplugged drum loops on the PA series are quite good and I find them to be useful in my PA700. I imagine that they would sound even better on the PA4X because you could assign the drums to the other outputs and mix/EQ them differently. I do not have this luxury on the PA700 and so I use an Alesis SR-16 to supplement my Korg PA drums.

If you are programming drums patterns from scratch in a style or in the sequencer, the key is to think like a drummer. There are certain things that drummers cannot do without overdubbing, so keep that in mind when programming a pattern. You cannot hit a snare, tom, or crash at the same time. Drummers can't ether unless they overdub their parts. A drummer also never hits any drum or cymbal with the same velocity twice in a row (or ever, really).

I have not owned any Ketron units because the price of admission was/is too high. The same also applies to the PA4X (and the fact I would need an external sound system). I needed more portability, and that is why I chose the PA700 (and the fact the PA1000 availability was not the same as the PA700).

I think that the audio loops would be neat, but again, we would be stuck with whatever nuances the player had for those audio loops. Maybe this is where the companies could work with many different artists and release different 'sound/loop packs' featuring different drummers/guitar players in these different packs. Having a drum pack from Steve Smith (Journey) or Mike Portnoy (ex-Dream Theater), Rolf Pilve (Stratovarius) or ANY drummer, willing to lend their style to a pack that could be loaded into the machine could be neat. With memory being at such a low price, the keyboards could certainly be beefed up with storage for this type of thing.

Additionally, in this pandemic landscape affecting EVERY musician out there, it could be an additional way to get more income.

Grace,
Harry