Drumatic 4 - OSX VST release & updated to v1.02

[zendorf]

I bought a license of this a week ago and have been having a lot of fun coaxing all sorts of twisted beats from it. The sound quality and flexibility is superb, and the current GUI is a massive improvement over the original.

Just some feedback after my testing:

- the ARL and velocity sliders are quite lagging behind the cursor which makes them feel awkward to use, whereas the vertical envelope dividers (attack/release) hug the cursor better

- not a fan of the faux drop shadows under the knobs as they obscure the text readability somewhat. Since the previous skeumorhpism was removed, they seem somewhat redundant. Not a big deal though

- would love to see a way to solo the individual tone/noise1/noise2, as I tend to be turning down the volumes constantly in the mixer to hear what each is doing in a patch. A "s"olo button next to each in the mixer would work wonders!

- my biggest issue with the workflow in general is the lack of a patch/kit browser. Would be much cooler to be able to browse a patch or kit on the fly as your groove is playing in the daw. I have tried loading a new patch while Reaper is running and get a hard crash every time. Since there is a native format for drum patches, it would be good to have one also for kit presets rather than relying on fxp/fxb awkwardness. If you need inspiration , checkout the browsers in the U-he products, as I tend to think they are nigh on perfect.

- loading in custom wavetables would be great to have at some stage, but is no doubt on your list!

- being able to rename each drumtab would be great, with a mouseover that indicates the midi trigger note or range.

- a choke control between different sounds would be very useful. The current hihat mode is cool, but what if you want to choke between different sounds. This request ties into the one above, ie not hard wiring the kits and having more flexibility for sound design.

- since there is no numeric control in the gui for parameters, can we at least have a mouseover view for each knob/slider to see a numeric readout?

- must say that I a still lost with how the pitch system works. Not really sure what the new note icon actually does? Would be useful to have a readout of the pitch when the pitch knob is turned, either as a mouseover or preferably as part of the display.

- I am also not sure what the "key" and "rest" checkboxes do?

Anyway, I look forward to future developments and using Drumatic4 in some of my upcoming tracks

[Crackbaby]

The "rest" i think means "reset". For instance the hihat waveforms can play continuously so having it on you'll get a transient. With it off it will sound a bit more unstable/analog. Play a 16th pattern and switch it on and off and you'll hear. I LOVE THIS....!!!!!
Key is when/if you have a sound set to a range rather than just one key. The higher the note, the higher the pitch. In hihat mode (trigger), the higher the note means longer decay. Switch the Key off in this mode (if you want!).

Thumbs up for a more integrated patch browser.

I'd like to see a way to turn off sounds fully so they don't use any CPU unless you want to use them.

It's cool that there's automation for the previous/next of waveforms etc so you can use an external control device for it! Nice touch!

If not too much trouble, please add more destinations for velocity like decay, fx drive and maybe pitch, attack and why not mix You can get a lot of happy accidents this way!

[e-phonic]

Hi,

Thanks for all your suggestions... for now there's a feature stop till v1.0 is released.

Not really sure what the new note icon actually does?

The note icon sets the pitch to the nearest midi note. This makes it easy to tune sounds to the exact pitch of other synths in your project.
If it is disabled the pitch is 'free'.

A manual is coming soon!

I'd like to see a way to turn off sounds fully so they don't use any CPU unless you want to use them.

Muting a sound does this!

PJ

[e-phonic]

BETA 14 now up!

- FIXED: Multiple outputs not working correctly in Sonar X2
- FIXED: Audio playback stops when saving individual sounds.
- FIXED: Crash in Reaper when saving individual sounds.
- FIXED: Sound 'solo' settings not saved with patch.
- FIXED: Incorrect results with 'mute' and 'solo' when combined.
- FIXED: Less noise when switching presets.
- NEW: 'user' mode for keyboard range. You can now select 'user' and make a key range that will be locked when switching presets. When user mode is disabled again the original (patch) key range will be set.
- NEW: a very simple manual (just text) is now included to explain some of the basics. Of course a full manual will be available with the final version.

Thanks!
PJ

[Crackbaby]

Wohoo

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

The new features work great!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

- NEW: 'user' mode for keyboard range. You can now select 'user' and make a key range that will be locked when switching presets. When user mode is disabled again the original (patch) key range will be set.

Needs one last feature IMO and then it's perfect: the ability to save a keymap as default.

[zendorf]

- NEW: 'user' mode for keyboard range. You can now select 'user' and make a key range that will be locked when switching presets. When user mode is disabled again the original (patch) key range will be set.

Needs one last feature IMO and then it's perfect: the ability to save a keymap as default.

+11 on that!

@Crackbaby, thanks mate for the headsup. I would never have picked "rest" = "reset", as I was thinking in terms of musical rests! Have noticed that you are also a Mux user....I have just been playing around with some mixtures of the Mux, mudrum and Drumatic. Wowsers, there is a whole world in there to explore just with that crazy combo

[bitcrush01]

The new LOAD and SAVE buttons only work for the first module (Bassdrum).

[e-phonic]

@bitcrush01 I'll check that out!

[e-phonic]

@bitcrush01

Fixed in beta 15... It's now available.

http://www.drumatic.info/

[bungle]

Bought this last week but would like to suggest one thing that i really believe is needed badly

We need an extra pad added for HiHat
One Hihat is not enough because currently to get an open hat you need to have multiple keys to get an extended decay
This is no good if you have the usual 1 key per hit set up

So an extra pad for open hihat and when you use the hihat envelope this would make the amp close if another hit is triggered that also uses the hihat envelope

This seems to be a good solution that would need little extra in terms of UI but would give you way more control and be usable in single key per hit



An extension to this request is the very obvious upgrade of way more pads and user named pads, i see little to no circumstances where i will use tom or cowbell before for instance a second snare or crash, so more flexibility in this area would be a well received v2.

[e-phonic]

@bungle Thanks! But why not just use the multiple key setup for the hihats? It enables you to have everything from closed to open directly available!
There now is a feature stop till v1.0 so new features will not be implemented for a while. I'll think about it for later releases...

PJ

[bungle]

No disrespect mean't here but really it is quite useless how it is set up, you have to add way too many keys to get a closed and open hat, if you want just a closed hat key and an open hat key (As per normal) then you are pretty damned, you need to have close to two octaves of a single sound to get the length difference you need.
Setting up on certain pad controllers is a complete pain because of this.

[e-phonic]

@bungle I understand that for pads it's not very convenient... You could load the same hihat with longer decay on another pad, however you'll mis the choking in that case. An other solution for pads would be to route incoming midi to the right midi keys.

PJ