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[breathe]

I need to get a sample replacement box to assist or replace some shoddy drum recordings.  I found a Forat F16 for $1000, but that's a lot more than I want to spend.  I would greatly prefer that the unit have dynamic tracking, but just to get started, that's not necessary.  Jonathan Little made a custom box for Bob Clearmountain that sends out midi based on signal input level, for connection to a sampler.  Is there anything else out there that isn't a pricey custom job that can do this?  I'm totally unfamiliar with samplers, new or old.  Was it a not too uncommon feature for samplers to have trigger inputs?  16-bit samplers can be had on the super cheap these days.  Any advice on obtaining a workable setup would be greatly appreciated.  I am not using a computer in my studio.

Thanks!
Nicholas

[Bryson]

Alesis D4 has trigger inputs.  I'm not sure, but I'd guess that it sends those midi notes to the midi out.
What do you record to?

[breathe]

Thanks for responding.  I am using a 1" 16-track at present.  Do you know how fast the response time is on the Alesis, and if it can send midi out to a sampler etc. from the triggers?

Thanks,
Nicholas

[theo mack]

Here's the problem:

MIDI is slow as dirt.

anytime you convert audio to midi via a midi kitty, aphex impulse,etc you are getiing somewhere in the area of 10-100 ms of delay.

The way we dealt with this in the old days was to trigger off the sync head of the mulitrack.

It was complicated and a pain.

we'd copy the track to be replaced
set the copy to output off the sync head..feed that to a gate then ddl. out of the ddl into the audio to midi converter.

You pull up the original track off the repro head and the output of the sampler, then play with the ddl to get the stuff to line up, then track in to tape.

Big pain ,

Thats why the forats were so good. They didn't need to convert to midi. they tracked and triggered very fast.

the wendel and wendel jr were also very good. but you had to load samples from eproms.

That was a long time ago, I think thats how we did it.

The easy way is to find a hardware sampler that has trigger inputs. (does anyone make them anymore?)

or use a eventide to "one shot" in your samples with the trigger input.

We used to use a modified roland delay too. I don't remember where we got it or what the mod was called.

You might want to transfer the session to protools and just use soundreplacer and dump it back to your multitrack.

[breathe]

Thanks for the continuing feedback!  Why are the Forat and Eventide boxes faster than midi?  Does anyone happen to know off hand what samplers had trigger inputs?  I'm hesitant to get a Sound Replacer setup (on an MBox even?) cause I sometimes mix off of 8-track tapes that are filled up, no room for a SMPTE track.  Could Sound Replacer work off of a live input, and if so I imagine the latency of that (at least on an MBox) is too slow for this application?

Thanks again!
Nicholas

[Touchwood Studios]

The Audio to MIDI function works very good in Logic Pro.

[trexrox]

First of all... re: MBox... I don't think you can sync one of these with SMPTE.  I've had to jump through hoops to get a 001 to sync to tape.  

If you can afford it, get a 001, a MOTU MidiTimepiece and any converter that has an external wordclock reference and outputs S/PDIF.  With a pair of Lucid Converters, it'll put you at around the $2000 mark, but you'll have a very versatile rig, as you will be able to fly in and out off of tape, (like doing the eventide thing 'cept much, much better) and seriously, I don't think you'd be losing too much to give up two tracks of tape in order to have 32 syncable tracks...  I'm running a 24 track, so maybe I'm not feeling the crunch of track limitations, so I don't mind giving up 23 and 24 for Timecode (and neighboring guide track, as smpte WILL be picked up by track 23 on the head of a 2" 24 track).

[theo mack]

Ok just remembered,

how about an alesis D4? or the newer DM 5?
It's cheap, It has fast trigger inputs, and some of the sounds are decent.
Maybe its really what you need to add into your track in support of the drum sounds you already tracked.

It does have midi outs, but again , midi delay means it won't really work with an external sampler. too much delay, everything will sound like flams.

Another alternative would be any of the drum brains out there for E-kits
by roland, yo'mamha, D drum.  They all have trigger inputs for the pad inputs.

[breathe]

Did I hear you say the Alesis D4 and D5 have fast response on the input triggers?  I might end up getting a Forat, but the price I've seen on one is pretty steep.  If either the D4 or D5 have some usable kick and snare sounds (any thoughts on that?) and it can trigger fast, like usably fast, then it seems like a financially ideal way to supplement original sounds recorded with less than ideal instruments/circumstances.

Thanks again,
Nicholas