Aerodrums and Aered forums

Aerodrums looks potentially very useful to me, but I have some questions before making the jump:

• How many milliseconds latency is involved on the Aerodrums side for sending MIDI to a daw? I would want to use Aerodrums for triggering drum vsti's in Reaper.
• Realistically, am I going to need to do much cleaning up MIDI due to false triggering and unintended velocities, assuming that I play well?
• How expressive is Aerodrums for hi hat triggering? Can it send out separate notes for tip, edge, pedal, etc.?
• How far off is user configurable MIDI mapping?
• How durable are the reflectors? Are these something that users can knock up at home in case something breaks?
• Will there be charges for future software updates?

A quick thought: A configurable layout for virtual expression pedals and footswitches (think guitars and keyboards) would be awful sweet, and it probably wouldn't be too difficult of an addition after MIDI mapping is in place. *hint hint* Also, I would love to see this software become more general. I bet an api would rope in lots of interest in the daw community (especially Reaper users).

Another thought. How about a general version for outputting MIDI, without the drum samples?

Hello there, thank you for your interest, let me answer your questions in order.

- How many milliseconds latency is involved on the Aerodrums side for sending MIDI to a daw?

The sending of MIDI events (up to when your DAW can process them) assuming you use a virtual MIDI cable (e.g. IAC on Mac) is 1ms using Aerodrums' event scheduler and less if using the option to send events straight away. It is harder to measure the latency between your intended hits and when Aerodrums detects them. 8ms is the worst case scenario here, but we think in practice it is closer to 4ms.

- Realistically, am I going to need to do much cleaning up MIDI due to false triggering and unintended velocities, assuming that I play well?

Aerodrums does detect false positives in some circumstances, we offer two settings to mitigate this. One is a general sensitivity mode tied to your proficiency at making clean air-drumming strokes, the other is MIDI specific and is a hit speed threshold under which notes won't be sent. (The samples we use are configured so that false positives are inaudible).

- How expressive is Aerodrums for hi hat triggering? Can it send out separate notes for tip, edge, pedal, etc.?

It is very expressive, in terms of openness, you could make use of the full MIDI Continuous Controller range (127 states). It sends different notes for tip, edge an pedal. At the moment though, tip and edge strokes are discriminated using a hit speed threshold (adjustable). We are working on positional variations (at least for the hi hat and snare) that we hope to release before NAMM (January 22) . Aerodrums in its current hardware incarnation cannot detect stick orientation.

- How far off is user configurable MIDI mapping?

We are working on streamlining the MIDI interface to decouple MIDI notes from drum/cymbal samples in our drum kit creation interface. We are also aiming to release this before NAMM.

- How durable are the reflectors? Are these something that users can knock up at home in case something breaks?

The reflectors are fragile. They can withstand occasional drops and tip collisions but frequent accidents will break them. We now provide a replacement kit in the box, and we sell extras for $9. The balls are painstaking to make at home and the materials are expensive for an individual to buy.

- Will there be charges for future software updates?

Our policy is to not charge for quality of life updates, or any updates that make the experience of playing with Aerodrums closer to that of playing on an acoustic kit. We will only charge extra for ground breaking things that you couldn't do with a normal kit.

On your last point, at the moment you can have 4 pedals that send MIDI events, two with continuous controller for openness (those beyond 4 won't send MIDI, just trigger samples). So if you want to use Aerodrums for MIDI controlled guitar or keyboard effects, you can just make a drum kit with only pedals:) You can place them anywhere. When we streamline MIDI in the drum kit creation interface, you'll be able to have as many as you want. We're open to offer integration features like an API if there is demand, it'll be further down the road.

About a MIDI only version, in MIDI only mode we don't load the samples, so they don't affect you. The only thing gained would be a smaller software download.
We really like our samples, they care about your sticking (left/right hand) which is very rare with samplers because current edrums can't detect it (Aerodrums can) and it is very painstaking to input by hand in a sequencer.

(We currently don't send a different MIDI note for right and left hand strokes, but it will become possible with the improved MIDI drum kit creation interface)

Thanks for the quick and thorough replies, Sipaliwini.