DW's "groundbreaking new tech"

toddmc

Gold Member
So there's plenty of talk going on over at the "DW sold to Roland"? thread but I had a specific question for the e-drummers here.

Many of you have probably watched the vid below where Justin posits that DW has been quietly toiling away in the shadows on a new electronic project which impressed/ frightened Roland so much that they bought the whole damn company in order to eliminate yet another competitor in the e-drum space.

Assuming this is true, I'd be interested to speculate on what this "groundbreaking technology" could possibly be?
A new type of triggering system and /or improvements on FSR? Wireless pads with zero latency? Black magic??

 
I posted two patents DW has applied for that describe it. The links are over in the other Roland/DW thread.
I'll save everyone the agony of scrolling through page after page of posts to find it:
https://www.drummerworld.com/forums/index.php?threads/dw-sold-to-roland.181695/post-1932868

At a quick glance, it appears that DW beat Roland to the punch on acquiring patents on anything and everything an acoustic/electronic hybrid drum could possibly be, right down to being wireless. Well played DW, well played. The hypocrite and snake-oil salesman are clever, I'll give them that.
 
I'll save everyone the agony of scrolling through page after page of posts to find it:
https://www.drummerworld.com/forums/index.php?threads/dw-sold-to-roland.181695/post-1932868

At a quick glance, it appears that DW beat Roland to the punch on acquiring patents on anything and everything an acoustic/electronic hybrid drum could possibly be, right down to being wireless. Well played DW, well played. The hypocrite and snake-oil salesman are clever, I'll give them that.
Cheers for that (and to @dboomer for the info).

So yeah, judging by the abstract it looks like DW somehow cracked the latency issue when it comes to wireless pads?? That IS actually pretty damn groundbreaking if they've manged to pull it off....

ELECTRONIC MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND SYSTEMS

Abstract

This disclosure relates generally to electronic musical instruments, systems, and methods. More particularly, this disclosure relates to electronic percussion instruments such as tom toms, snare drums, bass drums, cymbals, and hi-hats, and assemblies of instruments (e.g., percussion instruments), such as drum sets. Even more particularly, this disclosure relates to wireless electronic percussion instruments, and percussion instruments with interchangeable and/or removable components to change the instrument between a traditional percussion instrument (that relies on resonance and/or vibration to produce sound) and an electronic percussion instrument. The present disclosure also relates to electronic cymbal instruments, such as cymbal assemblies and hi-hat assemblies, that can be used in conjunction with a traditional acoustic metal cymbal.
 
Wireless is not that big a deal IMO.
The next improvement in trigger from acoustic drums might need to be positional sensing.
At the moment you can't play a cross stick, and a rimshot because the trigger just sees it as one or the other.
 
Wireless is not that big a deal IMO.
The next improvement in trigger from acoustic drums might need to be positional sensing.
At the moment you can't play a cross stick, and a rimshot because the trigger just sees it as one or the other.
Sounds like a lot of potential for bleed but I’m interested in seeing how they work it out.
 
Wireless is not that big a deal IMO.
The next improvement in trigger from acoustic drums might need to be positional sensing.
At the moment you can't play a cross stick, and a rimshot because the trigger just sees it as one or the other.
Clearly you've never seen kits like this.

EgdeDtmXgAEB4EK.jpg

While it may not improve triggering/ functionality as such, going wireless will certainly stop the pain of cable management which is more important now than ever since Roland is moving away from racks and using stands for it's VAD line.
 
Analog wireless essentially has no latency (speed of sound). Digital coding otoh will add some latency. So if they keep it with an analog modulation scheme there’s no problem. Removing extra latency from a digital scheme would either require extremely expensive components or a breakthrough codec (or both). But yes, not having to string cable all over the place when setting up would be appreciated by everyone.

btw … all radio electro-magnetic waves are analog. When they talk about “digital“ wireless they mean the modulation scheme. We have AM, FM and now Digital modulations.
 
So drums are joining the Internet of Things not unlike the doorbell, kitchen appliances or anything else that is networked.

Seems more evolutionary then revolutionary. It’s just the direction many things are going that years ago you would have never thought of like a printer of a fax machine. Now doorbells, refrigerators and bbqs are wireless and online no different then your printer or fax was back in the day.

Evolution of the instrument with a mix of anolog old world and the digital of today


Drums are about as old as Man cooking over fire; which has also joined the IoT a while back.

 
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So drums are joining the Internet of Things not unlike the doorbell, kitchen appliances or anything else that is networked.

Seems more evolutionary then revolutionary. It’s just the direction many things are going that years ago you would have never thought of like a printer of a fax machine. Now doorbells, refrigerators and bbqs are wireless and online no different then your printer or fax was back in the day.

Evolution of the instrument with a mix of anolog old world and the digital of today


Drums are about as old as Man cooking over fire; which has also joined the IoT a while back.

If there’s lag time with wireless doorbells, I don’t think anyone cares as much as they would with drums ;)
 
Now doorbells, refrigerators and bbqs are wireless and online no different then your printer or fax was back in the day.
And there will be people who won't know how to use the device without it. Grill loses signal, guess we better order pizza.

The same people dont go to the 2nd floor when the escalator stops working.

I do not want a smart house. Keys and such work just fine.
 
If there’s lag time with wireless doorbells, I don’t think anyone cares as much as they would with drums ;)

Very true, but technology always marches forward. Smaller, lighter, faster; like EVDO to 3G to 4G to 5G the underlying tech will improve as the application and use increases and demands more…. In this case it’s latency; time, distance, speed of wavelength. As the underlying tech improves its applications broaden, so now the tech is catching up to need of acoustic drums. You couldn’t watch a movie over EVDO cause the capacity wasn’t there. Now with 5G Netflix all day in 4K. Tech always marches forward cause its evolutionary
 
Very true, but technology always marches forward. Smaller, lighter, faster; like EVDO to 3G to 4G to 5G the underlying tech will improve as the application and use increases and demands more…. In this case it’s latency; time, distance, speed of wavelength. As the underlying tech improves its applications broaden, so now the tech is catching up to need of acoustic drums. You couldn’t watch a movie over EVDO cause the capacity wasn’t there. Now with 5G Netflix all day in 4K. Tech always marches forward cause its evolutionary
True tech things are always getting faster as you described - but it is unusually improvements in the brute force "doing more demanding things faster" as in moving video data - to/from a network to a device. That aspect gets faster and more capable with each passing year.

But those are all "get to it as soon as possible" type tasks - video playback, more capable video editing, photo editing. But music creation/performance relies heavily on an aspect that nearly all other computer aided tasks don't. And that is the need for near-real-time instantaneous response. In other not "as soon as possible".... but rather.... now.

Right now.

So right now - that while hitting a pad in time with the music - we are able to hear the computer generated sound playback so quickly it sounds simultaneous with the stick hitting the pad. Which is flipping fast. As fast as our computers have become - this is still an issue - an area most often of compromise.

So I agree hopefully tech will catch up (though some of these tolerances are so tight, we start to bump into the laws of physics) - but previous increases in capacity really don't tell us much - as again, capacity has been improving by leaps and bounds for decades.... yet the latency things is still a lingering issue.

I guess we will see.
 
The feel a drummer generates is so dependent on instant timing, I can't see any latency being acceptable.
Yes, I have seen kits covered in cabling, but it's part of every day life for many drummers. There are lots of cables when you mic an acoustic kit.
I haven't seen 'wireless' take off in keyboards, synthesisers and electronic music yet, so I'm sceptical about wireless drumming, but then some people are ALL about convenience.
 
Now with 5G Netflix all day in 4K.
5G is available in small pockets of the major cities (in the UK). There are many 4G blackspots still.
The same thing happened originally with analog synths, people rush to innovate and leave perfectly good tech behind, not properly exploited or developed.
You can buy prosumer video cameras that shoot 6K and 8K, but who actually needs that in every day use?
It's going to be a long time before most people can access/use 5G.
 
Wireless is not that big a deal IMO.
The next improvement in trigger from acoustic drums might need to be positional sensing.
At the moment you can't play a cross stick, and a rimshot because the trigger just sees it as one or the other.
Sunhouse did this years ago with Sensory Percussion and continues to improve upon it with 10 distinct zones per sensor and the ability to blend between zones and control a multitude of other parameters in a very natural way.
 
Zero wireless latency would require breaking the rules of physics first or using some quantum magic. Speed of sound is pretty slow, too, there is 2ms latency from an acoustic snare to the ears... As for interchangeable instrument, there was already a drum that had the internal sensor sort of like those inside dampeners that can be engaged from below, forgot the name.. I hope there is some big innovation, because current edrum technology feels rather old, and computers today could handle a lot more data. It's just by the time it becomes cheap enough, it will be outdated.
 
5G is available in small pockets of the major cities (in the UK). There are many 4G blackspots still.
The same thing happened originally with analog synths, people rush to innovate and leave perfectly good tech behind, not properly exploited or developed.
You can buy prosumer video cameras that shoot 6K and 8K, but who actually needs that in every day use?
It's going to be a long time before most people can access/use 5G.

That’s sounds a lot like people said when Netflix started streaming in 15 years ago. It’s only a matter of time but the infrastructure will catch up if not terrestrial wireless then satellite.

“In 2007, Netflix began streaming. On Jan.6, 2016, Netflix went live in 130 countries simultaneously.”

Still not available world wide but will happen as the required underlying infrastructure is established

Let’s look at the 2018 census data:

  • Among all households in 2018, 92% had at least one type of computer and 85% had a broadband internet subscription. The ACS considers desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones as computers, along with selected computing technologies such as smart home devices and single-board computers.
  • Smartphone ownership surpassed ownership of all other computing devices. Smartphones were present in 84% of households, while 78% of households owned a desktop or laptop. Tablet ownership fell behind at 63%.
  • Urban residents were more likely than rural residents to use computing devices (93% of urban households compared to 89% of rural households) and were more likely to have any sort of internet subscription (86% of urban households compared to 81% of rural households).
The iPhone was released in 2007.

What was the smart phone saturation in 2007? Tiny.

What’s the saturation of technologies mention in the 2018 data in 2022? More then 2018 which was high already.

The trends are clear.

 
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Sunhouse did this years ago with Sensory Percussion and continues to improve upon it with 10 distinct zones per sensor and the ability to blend between zones and control a multitude of other parameters in a very natural way.

Exactly

The terms “game changer” and “revolutionary” is more marketing hype than indeed brand new technology or even concepts. New application as an evolutionary hybrid drum step but not seeing the giant leap.

Will see
 
The terms “game changer” and “revolutionary” is more marketing hype than indeed brand new technology or even concepts.
As both a consumer and someone who has worked in marketing within the industry for over a decade, this sort of hyperbole makes me want to puke. I'm all for getting flowery with the product pitch but this sort of stuff is the cliche that should get someone fired.
 
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