Digi/A.I.R. Support - Strike issue(s) to report.

[The Dubnicks]

Hey there - I am a long term user of Toontrack's DFHS & BFD and after doing some tweaking, I am digging a lot about Strike. I have, however run into two issues, or at least what appear to be issues. First issue: the delay knob on the Room Channel portrayed in the manual (both in text and in graphic) does not seem to exist, unless I'm missing something (I am using the most recent version). Second issue: when playing Strike from the Pro Tools midi editor, the open to closed hi hats transition don't quite work how they should - depending on the tempo of the song, the closed or pedal hi hats hits take up to two hits before the prior open hi-hat hit is cut off. To your credit, the transition, when it kicks in, is smooth, not unlike DFHS and BFD, but it might be the fact that Strike works in a different way that makes the hi-hat perfomance lag slightly in the timing area (I believe both BFD and DFHS rely on streaming to some degree and employ a sort of on the fly type of crossfades with it comes to open to closed hi hat transitions. Unfortunately, I personally need the open to closed hi-hat hits to transition smoothly now and might have to jump back to BFD or DFHS for my current project if this isn't resolved quickly. If there is an alternate solution to this or if I may have something set up wrong, please let me know. Thanks.

[The Dubnicks]

Couple additional things: first off, sometimes switching inserts while Strike is in use cause and insanely loud volume jump - even when switching to a non-dynamic insert - for instance it happened to me while switching an insert to a chorus. Secondly: I could be wrong on this, and correct me if I am, but it seems like the room channel is either an amazing simulation of a room or that the drums were re-amped into a room for the room sounds. The reason I am wondering about this is that the cymbals in the room channel sound like close overheads re-amped into a room or put through a very convincing reverb - namely, the attack of the cymbals in the room channel does not sound very natural (more pronounced) - and the decay sounds a little unnatural also. It works, but it would be nice to know - maybe I'm totally wrong here.

[The Dubnicks]

when playing Strike from the Pro Tools midi editor, the open to closed hi hats transition don't quite work how they should - depending on the tempo of the song, the closed or pedal hi hats hits take up to two hits before the prior open hi-hat hit is cut off.

Just downloaded the beta of Structure and the Beta Drums and fortunately/unfortunately, the above issue is absent in Structure (I was using an even faster tempo/beat subdivision than when I discovered the issue in Strike). Fortunately for Digi/AIR, because they got it right on the Beta version of Structure. Unfortunately for me, since I paid $300 for Strike and when I'm not using the built in editor/grooves, I have to work around an issue that doesn't exist in DFHS, BFD or even Structure (made by the same group of people?). I hope someone from Digi/Air responds here and, more importantly, fixes this in Strike (it appears to only be an issue when Strike is played by the Pro Tools sequencer). It would appear that closed hi hat hits are set up to trigger a fade on any ringing hi hats, but that the fade itself is a static length, so if the tempo and/or subdivisions get to fast, the ringing hi-hat continues to decay over the first couple closed hits. It might make sense to have Strike detect the tempo and automatically change these fades to be equal to the smallest subdivision of the current tempo (32nd or 64th notes). Just guessing here.

[The Dubnicks]

I would love to hear from Wolfram or someone at Digi/AIR about this stuff - at least the hi-hat issue. Thanks.

[hemloc]

You need to turn on oversampling...

[The Dubnicks]

Already on buddy, but that should have no effect on the hi hat issue - check the manual on that - oversampling is used to help avoid aliasing issues by upping the internal sampling rate.

[DigiTechSupt]

I see what you're saying and can appreciate what you're trying to do with the hi-hat programming. This isn't considered a bug, but I will log it as a feature request so that it can be looked at for possible inclusion in a later version of Strike.

[The Dubnicks]

Um, I'd consider it a bug since not only do none of the directly competing products (BFD, DFHS, EZ Drummer & Addictive Drums) have this issue, but even your own new beta sampler, Structure does not have this issue. So yeah, I'd say it's an issue, unless you consider wanting a product you paid $300 for to function correctly in a very basic use to be a "feature request". If Strike did not account for the need to have open hi hats be faded into closed and pedal hits, than I would say you're right, but this is not the case. For example, Reason Drumkit Refill on Reason's NNXT has no way of dealing with the fact that open hi hats need to be faded on the fly into closed hits, therefore, I can't complain (to bad too - great sounding kits, but programing hats turns into a pain). You clearly have a technology built into Strike to handle the "transmutting" (this is how Toontrack refers to thier own on the fly fading system for hi hats) but it is not working correctly when the drums are controlled by the Pro Tools sequencer. So tell me how you can not consider this an issue but some sort of feature request? The feature exists but does not work correctly - bottom line - I am requesting that it be fixed.

Besides that, I really dig a lot about Strike, but where is the delay for the room mics that is detailed in the manual? Thanks in advance for any response

[The Dubnicks]

Still waiting on a response - it's sort of absurd to claim this as a feature request instead of what it is - a bug report. I am reporting that a feature of Strike is not working correctly - how is that a feature request? Please re-read my initial thread and explain, cause I don't get it.

[Brent1515]

Just a comment that may... or may not solve your hat problem.
I shut down lagging open hats by inserting a closed hat hit after. Then bring the velocity of the closed hat down to 0 so it's not heard. That way, you don't hear the high hat that triggers the closure. Only the next hit that should have closed it. Indeed, takes a sec to get the 0 velocity hit in the right place. Certainly... if playing Strike from a set of trigger pads, the hat problem would be annoying. But you may want to sift thru all of Strikes high hat sets. There's at least one that seems to trigger from open to closed, correctly.
As far as a delay control on the room channel of Strike's mixer, there is none. There's only room width and size. There is a delay control in the overhead channel. There to change the phase relationship between direct and overheads. Equivalent to {example} moving BFD's overhead mics further out from the kit. If you need delay, or pre-delay for the room channel, Strikes delay plugin works dandy.
GL,
Brent