Slightly disappointed, but hopeful

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thepablo
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2014 9:36 am

Slightly disappointed, but hopeful

Post by thepablo » Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:38 pm

Hi all,

Testing Aerodrums It's been a slightly disappointing experience, but I'm happy anyway. This is all I got:

1) Latency

It's really small, almost nothing. But it's enough to slow me down when I'm playing. I think I've tried all the settings, and I can't get rid of it. I own an iMac, not the latest, but I think it should be enough: 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5, 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM. Latency is a deal breaker, I hope I can fix it somehow.

2) Drums positioning

I've tried your kits, and I'm not comfortable playing any of them. I've tried moving everything around, but in the end things get worse. There's a lot in play here: camera angle, camera height, camera distance… and also the chair height, and the position your facing. And then, the drums position. You make a tiny change in any of that and it all goes to hell.

That's why I've been some hours trying to get the perfect setup, and no luck yet, but I still got hope, this looks doable.

Also, as I've read, I'm not the only one asking for some kind of drag and drop interface, but I've read your explanation about that, and I understand that this is not so easy.

3) Unintended notes

Although as I've said I didn't find the perfect setup yet, when things have been close to that, I've tried playing and there are always a lot of unintended notes. I mean, you can hear shots that you are not intending to play, or the other way around, you reach for a tom and you miss and there's no sound.

I've read this forum and I found some things I can relate to, like the guy that says the upwards stroke in the hi hat makes a tom sound.

4) The graphics are interfering with drumming

I get that a lot. Let's say I'm playing, and then I decide to do anything else in my computer, like playing a no drums mp3 song in quicktime player. That message shows up always if I try to do that. I know I can use fast graphics mode, but I don't get what's wrong here.

Sometimes my drums stop working after that, sometimes not.

5) Dettached lens

First day, and the lens is already broken. Not a big deal though, it's just dettached, I'll use glue to put it all together again.

6) The light

It's really annoying. Like really. Without glasses this is useless to me. I guess some people will not find this so annoying, it depends on how everyone's eyes work or something. But to me, this is imposible to use without glasses.

I know you guys are working on alternatives, good idea.

7) Technique

I'm a lousy drummer. I've tried your hand technique with bad results. My fault here, I can't really complain :)

So,

What I'm saying with all of this is I think there's a huge learning curve since you open the box and actually play drums, and I'm not there yet.

That's everything I can recall now about my not so good experience. There are also good things of course, there were some wow moments playing along a song, or just hearing the amazing sounds.

What gives me hope is your videos. As soon as I saw Richard playing I was sold, and I still think I can get there.

Any tips appreciated, and thank you very much for this amazing and fun drumset.

Pablo.

Richard
Posts: 1014
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:45 am

Re: Slightly disappointed, but hopeful

Post by Richard » Wed Jun 11, 2014 12:16 am

Hi, to address some of your points...

1) Do you have the buffer size set to the smallest value in the Latency screen? This is the main factor that determines the latency.

2) The best advice I can give is to follow the instructions carefully, in particular about positioning the camera relative to the seat. I completely agree that the preset kits won't be to everyone's taste - they are quite compact and tweaked for drummers that don't hit hard. We plan to release more presets in the future that will cater to a wider range of drummers.

3) I hope you will find that those unintended notes will become less and less frequent the more you play with Aerodrums and the more precise you become. One thing that should help for now is changing the "Drum hit sensitivity" setting on the Latency screen to "Beginner". This setting determines how aggressively Aerodrums will filter out subtle hits. At "Beginner" you have to hit reasonably hard for a hit to be registered.

4) Aerodrums requires a high update rate to work properly and we recommend that you close any unnecessary applications to help ensure this. If the frame rate indicator in the top left corner of the drumming screen appears red (instead of green) then Aerodrums isn't working as intended. If playing along to mp3s is the main reason you have to run other software then I strongly recommend you use the built-in playlist editor which will allow you to easily navigate through songs without getting up from your drumming seat.

5) Yann commented on this in the Light/Lens Glue thread.

6) Yes, we are considering using infrared instead of visible light. The only advice I can give for now is to place your computer screen far away from the light so that, if you need to look at the screen, you won't be dazzled by the light. You may also find the light less disturbing if you play in a well lit environment (within what Aerodrums allows of course).

Thanks for this feedback and I understand why you might have expected a better experience after seeing the videos. All I can say is that I've had more time to play Aerodrums than everyone else and I certainly couldn't play nearly as cleanly as I do now when I first started. I'm hopeful that you'll see big improvements in your playing if you give it more time.

thepablo
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2014 9:36 am

Re: Slightly disappointed, but hopeful

Post by thepablo » Wed Jun 11, 2014 8:55 am

Very nice customer support!

Thank you very much for the tips, I'll try every one of them.

I will definitely give it more time, of course! I'm eager to spend more time playing Aerodrums.

Headcase Dublin
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Jun 25, 2016 8:32 pm

Re: Slightly disappointed, but hopeful

Post by Headcase Dublin » Sat Jun 25, 2016 9:32 pm

Really helpful thread, from both parties ;)
Andrew

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