Do we really need more than 100 velocity layers?

[telebunke]

FXpansion has released the BFD Deluxe Collection, the third expansion pack for their BFD premium acoustic drum module. The Deluxe Collection was tracked at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio studio facility in Chicago and contains some of the most sought-after drums and cymbals of all time, recorded at up to 127 velocity layers in pristine detail.

Seems like a "normal" limousine that has more than 1000 horse power to me. Nothing one really needs, but it might be good to impress somebody. ?

Edit:
After having read some comments here and elsewhere, I changed my opinion.
My comparison is wrong and there are applications where it's really great to have this.
It merely indicates that I had not much of an idea how to use this horsepower.
Also, the survey nicely reflects that there is quite a high percentage of people who want to have that many layers

tele

[telebunke]

Well, on the other hand, with this it's almost certain that you're never gonna have the same hit directly following each other, but that can be achived with 10 velocity layers with alternate hits that are played with a rotation, e.g. 20 samples would do the job sufficient.

tele

[Equilibrium]

Oh I think you do. Your brain is a lot more sensitive than you think. It might be really hard to notice the difference but at some level I recon we do.

[oddbods finger]

I noticed the latest BDF expansion says it has some cymbals with 127 velocity layers.....

Got me wondering how they actually go about recording something like that.

[snooky]

yeah..."ok billy, hit the cymbal 127 times with increasing velocity"

[snooky]

kinda hard to do eh?

[ericj23]

i kinda wondered that too - what actually happens is they look at lots of hits and someone decides which one is slightly harder hit

so far from being really natural it kinda means it all depends on the sample engineers ear

which in mr albinis case is probably damaged by all those years of wall of noise feedback

still it's yet another reason to buy bfd

[Jafo]

*shrug* Just set up a mechanical arm of some sort which can be adjusted with 127 degrees of force -- perhaps a coil with 127 windings, or by using differing amounts of counterbalancing weight. Any mechanical or industrial engineer could do it.

And yes, we probably do need 127 -- or more! -- layers.

Plus, it's be nice to work in different types of stroke -- a solid hit in which the stick remains on the head, a flicking sort of hit in which the stick touches for just an instant, side-to-side vs up-down motions...

Yeah, that's a lot of variables. But to paraphrase Larry Wall, if it were simple, you wouldn't need something as complex as a human being to do it.

[BFDrummer]

OK here's why...

I play BFD with a V-drums set. When I play in the same style as I would with my regular drums I generate vast amounts of midi data. All those flams, drags, rolls etc in just a few seconds I might get through hundreds of hits just playing something a bit jazzy or funky. For the snare having 10 velocity layers with alternate sample (20 in total) just would not cut it.

It's true you could get away with low number of layers with certain kinds of drum programming/styles of music but BFD's aim seems to be to recreate as far as possible the situation of a real drum kit in your studio all wonderfully miked up and being played by a real drummer. That is the starting point of the sound. Realism. After that you can fck with it all you like to make it sound like a drum machine (and that's cool of course) but to get close to the sound of a real drum kit you need as many velocity layers as possible.

It's not just about having 127 exactly stepped levels of a hit (it's not going to matter if velocity 67 and 68 sound about the same level) but more about having a big pool of samples to choose from so samples get repeated less often. So in a snare roll it sounds more like a snare roll and not Paul Hardcastle!

I would guess the way they record it is to get a good drummer to play the single hits from quiet to loud and then sort the order of hits in the PT editor to make the steps more even, discarding any bad hits and shuffling the rest around etc

Hitting a drum repeatedly with slight increased velocity each time to get 127 samples is a skill, yes, but not *that* difficult for a drummer!

[TrekStar]

....not to mix up "velocity layers" with the midi sensibility of 127 steps. that's not the same. and yes, more than 127 midi steps would be good but not urgent necessary...nevertheless in real life the piano sensitivity is stepless!

although 127 sampled velo layers I personally consider as nonsense

[Bonteburg]

how many different timbres does a snare drum in a typical rock/pop production have?
loud -> pretty loud

My vote is for less than 15 and careful programming.

I mean 15 is amazing

In the way of truly lifelike drums , ten years from now it's all gonna be physicall modelled and we'll be laughing at the internet archives

Marco

[Jafo]

how many different timbres does a snare drum in a typical rock/pop production have?
loud -> pretty loud

Point taken.

Reminds me of my days playing brass in high school band. We only knew three dynamics: soft, blastissimo, and kickassimo...

[BFDrummer]

how many different timbres does a snare drum in a typical rock/pop production have?
loud -> pretty loud

See para two in my post above

My vote is for less than 15 and careful programming.

I mean 15 is amazing

BFD is aiming higher than that - there's plenty of less sophisticated alternatives. Horses for courses etc

In the way of truly lifelike drums , ten years from now it's all gonna be physicall modelled and we'll be laughing at the internet archives

Marco

I predict it will all come full circle one day and we'll all get back to playing our instruments again

[Radek]

how many different timbres does a snare drum in a typical rock/pop production have?
loud -> pretty loud

My vote is for less than 15 and careful programming.

Plus a velocity crossfading between samples and creative uses of a filter.

I mean 15 is amazing

For me it's insane. Using more different samples for variations is valid though.

In the way of truly lifelike drums , ten years from now it's all gonna be physicall modelled and we'll be laughing at the internet archives

Marco

[Funkybot]

You definately need more than 15 on a snare drum, same for a hihat IMO. Where would you put them, put most in the middle velocity range and scale the rest down? What about fills, or detailed hihat parts? What if you're playing in a jazzy feel where you hitting the snare rather lightly but still doing fills on it? Hell, even in rock music, a 16th note snare roll at a fast tempo will start to sound mechanical very quickly. I'm in for Deluxe as soon as I can clear up room for it on my card, and wish I had a system capable of running all 127 hits. But yeah, 65 or so would probably be plenty. Look at how much more realism we're getting out of modern libraries campared to even 5 years ago; a big part of this is the extra velocity layers. This will only increase with time as RAM, and Hard Drives get larger/cheaper and CPU power increases. Also look at like this, 127 velocity layers may be overkill now, but it won't feel obsolete a few years from now.