Mics or triggers?!?!?!

my personal, kinda experienced outlook

triggers sound fake
mics are difficult to place and sometimes get in the way
 
Triggers don't have to sound fake, it depends what sample set you're loading.

What kind of music are you playing? What is the function of the trigger? In all honesty, I can't advise you unless you give us a few more clues.
 
Ok. So what do you want the triggers to do? Do you want them to replace the sound of, say, your bass drum?
 
yes that is exactly the drum I want them to replace. The problem is though I hear a lot of things about triggers sounding fake, will that cause some problems when playing live?
 
yes that is exactly the drum I want them to replace. The problem is though I hear a lot of things about triggers sounding fake, will that cause some problems when playing live?

Triggers send an electric signal to a module (a small voltage) that will get converted into a MIDI signal and then trigger a sample. Whether or not it sounds fake is entirely down to the sample used. Many low-end drum modules will use low-quality samples that will not sound realistic; but if combined with something like Superior 2.0 (for instance, using a laptop) then it can sound as 'real' as you want it to.

The problem with triggers is the setup and sensitivity. And the cost. For a decent set and sound, you're talking a couple of hundred dollars at least (remember to look second hand) - and that is at the very least. Cross-talk (i.e. false triggering) can also be a problem and that means that your triggers will need to be set up properly - this can sometimes mean actually having to muffle your bass drum to the point where it no longer sounds good acoustically.

A lot of drummers use a combination of microphones and triggers and then combine the two together. This is even more hassle and only really *worth it* if you're working on larger scale gigs that might call for a specific sound.

Microphones are the more common solution. They will pick up exactly what you play - so there's no way of ensuring that all your bass drum hits are even unless they truly are even (unless you whack them through heavy compression - but not every sound man has a nice compressor on his rack, at least not locally). I'm guessing, seeing as you're playing metal, that the problem is the volume of your bass drum hits at high speed being low. The traditional solution for this is, indeed, triggers. There are few drummers in that field now, working live, that don't use them to some extent, particularly in the more 'extreme' metal field. Dave Lombardo is an example of a drummer who doesn't use them - but he also has legs like a bison.

In terms of ease of use and likelihood of setup and practicality, microphones are easier. For what you want, triggers might be the better solution - but bear in mind the cost is potentially higher and they require fiddle time.
 
yes that is exactly the drum I want them to replace. The problem is though I hear a lot of things about triggers sounding fake, will that cause some problems when playing live?

Triggers don't have any sound at all. They just create a spike that tells the sound source when to play
 
Hmm so can I use a computer as a module? Are triggers only worth using on low end kits? Last question is it worth it to just use a single bass drum if I am just using triggers? Currently I have 2 bass drums.
 
Yes you can use a computer. it better be a damn good one that will never crash on you during a live performance. $$$$$$.
No, they are used on high end kits mostly during live performances, sometimes to trigger a particular snare sound.
It doesn't matter if you use 1 or 2 bass drums.

Triggers will take you down an expensive and long road . Not to mention there is a huge learning curve with this type of gear set up. Lots of troubleshooting and time wasted.

What is the problem?
Is it the sound of your drums you don't like? If that's the case you are better off buying a pro drumkit and micing it rather than using triggers.
What type of music do you play? Maybe that will help to give you better advice.
 
Triggers don't have to be expensive either. They can be simply built for about $5... What you need is somekind of MIDI I/O device. Those can be as expensive as a decent kick mic, plus you need to get the correct software DAW to play it through. It can be simplified though, its not that hard and you can figure it out in a week if you really want to.
 
I prefer mics over triggers any day, simply based on the simplicity of mics. Place them where they sound the way you like, mix them and you're done. No need to worry about, sensitivity, crosstalk, etc. Triggered sounds can be altered to taste, so I wouldn't consider them to be inferior based on sound alone.

However, recently I have been experimenting with my drums mic placement for recording. I don't have a great kick drum mic, nor do I have extra cash available to buy a nice one (I recently bought all new cymbals). As a result, I wasn't getting a great kick drum sound that satisfied me. I almost got a better kick from just the overheads alone than from the kick mic itself. But I do have a full set of acoustic triggers and an electronic drum set with a module already on hand. So last night, I placed a trigger on my kick, through the module, and into the board. I dialed in the sound that I wanted, adjusted the pitch to match, and let 'er rip. This was a great solution for me considering that all I really needed was the fullness and beefiness that a good kick mic would have provided. I mixed in the triggered kick just enough to provide the fullness, along with the nice tone that I got from my kick through the overheads, and the result was very satisfying.

So to answer your question, yesterday I would have answered mics only. Today I have to answer that a mix of both mics and triggers opens up many possibilities.
 
Well I don't like the sound of my bass drums, they are poplar wood (exports) and they sound like card board when I run them through these mics I have, they aren't quality mics though, so I think I will just invest in some good mics, and if that doesn't fix it I'll just grab an Alesis module and some Ddrum trigger pads, thanks for the responses.
 
Pearl export is a decent drum kit imo. You should be able to get a good bass drum sound.
what heads are you using, and how do you have them tuned?
 
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I didn't say they were bad at all, they just sound like cardboard. I have powersonics on the batter and PS3s as reso and they are wide open no muffling. I get a great sound out of them for a low end kit, probably the best I have ever heard out of low end, but I just can never seem to get my bass drums right, they are tuned just past wrinkle on reso and just a little tighter on batter. I also took the ESDS system off and it made it a tiny bit better. I am also using a flat felt beater, from the eliminator 4 side beater selection.
 
I just made the jump to triggers because I am trying to learn traditional blasts and I can't hear my kick drums through the snare and hi hat. I picked up ddrum pro bass drum triggers and an Alesis D4 unit. I got it set up and running pretty good within 2 hours. I have used them with my band and realized that I need to tweak the gain and other settings a bit to dial them into my playing style. I have the velocity set to 7 and everything else set to 50 and it works ok but sometimes it wasn't triggering every stroke...

I haven't been able to jam on them much yet because I tore apart my basement jam space to build a room within a room semi soundproof space because the wife is getting pissed off now that we have a bassist, she can't hear the TV anymore

Anyway, I didn't find them that hard to get set up initially, it's going to take a bit of tweaking but I'm not fazed. The band loves them, when I play fast they can hear my kick attacks and we play tighter because of it. I paid a total of about 375 cdn for the triggers, D4 and cables.
 
i see alesis d4's and dm5's go on ebay for 100-200 USD. A good bass drum trigger will be 20-50. The learning curve for those is challenging, but if you know what you're doing, you can achieve awesome results. The samples off the D4 don't all sound fake either, some sound downright badass.

Here's one of my old bands from "back in the day" circa '94. All songs recorded from an alesis D4. Tell me if you think the kick sounds fake:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=84173014



Stabmasterson, try setting your v-curve to 4. If you're only using a bass drum trigger, set your xtalk to zero. Adjust your gain so that it clips only when you hit it with the heaviest stroke (you'll see a little dot, like a period, pop up after the LED indicator spikes up). With the lightest stroke, the D4 should register the hit so start with a noise level of 100 and keep backing down until the light stroke gets picked up.

To mic the drum properly to run through your PA, you need a decent large diaphragm cardioid mic like an akg d112, audix d6, sennheiser 421, etc and you also need outboard compression, like a dbx 266 so the micing proposition isn't necessarily always cheaper.
 
What if you use mics and triggers? Someone brought this idea to my attention, what would the benefits be?
 
What if you use mics and triggers? ?

I actually want to jump here. I recentlly post a thread on this very subject.

I am currently in a Rock/hip hop cover band. Playing everything from Rage against the Machine to Bon Jovi to 50 Cent and Kanye West. Needless to say, I try and mimic sounds as much as possible.

At the moment, I basically have my main snare which i use for most applications and a side snare cranked up real tight and slightly muffled for that hip hop crack.

I play samples for songs through a Roland SPD-S sampler. I started to load some of the actual hip hop snare sounds into the sampler and the sounds are great. However, i would love to ditch the side snare and slap a trigger on the main snare for samples. I would also throw one on the kick to possibly sample some hip hop kick drums(not as important)

My question is, Has anyone plugged acoustic triggers into the SPD-S? I know the snare trigger has dual trigger capability allowing for a sample to assign to the rim and the head. Can the SPD-S handle that function?

I just want to make sure that in a live situation that i can just push a button and WHAM my main snare now sounds like a Pro Tools created hip hop snare with some hand claps assigned to the rim for rim shots and such.

I hope this all makes sense. Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
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