Aerodrums 2 Questions and Suggestions

[JCMpercussion]

First off, thank you to the devs for such an innovative way to play drums in a location where you can't place physical drums. We have recently moved from a large house where I had an actual drum studio into a small apartment where our neighbors won't appreciate listening to me playing the drums.
With Aerodrums 1 (which I own) i'm currently recording drum covers by using Aerodrums 1 as a midi device into Superior Drummer 3. I use the breakout export in order to capture all of the mics that I use and add each track separately into DaVinci Resolve, along with the song track.
The latency isn't too bad but could be better. I'm hoping that Aerodrums 2 improves upon the latency in both playing feedback and into SD3.

I was going to get into the Kickstarted for Aerodrums 2 but I never paid attention to the deadline date and missed it by 3 days! I really wanted to have the kit early so that I could provide feedback to help iron out early bugs.

Anyway, here's my 'hope' list for Aerodrums 2:

1. for those that will use Aerodrums 2 as a midi instrument or with a DAW like me, I'm hoping that the requirement for using a virtual midi convertor (LoopBe) has been removed, and it works as plug and play.
2. An easier way to edit and create your own drum kits. The existing software works decent but it could be a bit temperamental when trying to get the exact positions of each drum with your drumsticks. It would be very helpful to build the drum set the current way but allow the use of your mouse to fine tune the positions from your computer.
3. Have more drum sizes available when creating your own drum set (this is currently limited). This way you can match up the drum set that you have loaded up in Superior Drummer 3 (or any drum app) to the virtual drum set that you are playing with Aerodrums 2.
4. This is just a cool idea to think about. What about using hand instruments (bongos, congas, etc.) by providing gloves with a reflective ball (or other marker)to capture your hand movements positional on the drum?

I have more but i'll leave it at that for now.

Regards

Jeff

[Wolfgang]

1. for those that will use Aerodrums 2 as a midi instrument or with a DAW like me, I'm hoping that the requirement for using a virtual midi convertor (LoopBe) has been removed, and it works as plug and play.

LoopBe isn’t a virtual midi convertor, but a virtual MIDI-cable, and you need it only if your DAW is on the same computer as Aerodrums. No need for LoopBe for sending MIDI data to another device by cable.

2. An easier way to edit and create your own drum kits. The existing software works decent but it could be a bit temperamental when trying to get the exact positions of each drum with your drumsticks. It would be very helpful to build the drum set the current way . .

Me too I’m hoping. I am not very much interested to have a lot of different drum-sets, just one, but one were I can change the sounds like it would be with an electronic drum-set. In time were the Aerodrums stand didn’t exist and it was a lot of hassle to setup the camera each time when going to different places, I found a way how to have always the same exact positions of each drum when changing drum-kits. And it’s now over 5 years I’m using this procedure.
Change your elements without having to replace them

. . but allow the use of your mouse to fine tune the positions from your computer.

First Aerodrums2 works without a computer, so you cannot use a mouse. There will be an App, theoretical you could connect a mouse to your smartphone, but I don’t think this would be very usefully.

3. Have more drum sizes available when creating your own drum set (this is currently limited). This way you can match up the drum set that you have loaded up in Superior Drummer 3 (or any drum app) to the virtual drum set that you are playing with Aerodrums 2.

I don’t think that you can match this up, because you don’t have the same space available in Aerodrums.

4. This is just a cool idea to think about. What about using hand instruments (bongos, congas, etc.) by providing gloves with a reflective ball (or other marker)to capture your hand movements positional on the drum?

The forum-user Ringowig has already made it
Silent Djembe

[JCMpercussion]

I am not very much interested to have a lot of different drum-sets

What I mean by this is that I have different configurations which add in cowbells, tambourine, bongos, etc. depending on the song that i'm playing. I also play my ride on the left side over my hi-hat so I need to 'configure' my kit this way. I also use a hi-hat on the right side of my kit also depending on the song (think Rush, Neil Peart).

I have pretty much the same kit configuration however I like to remove drums/cymbals if I'm not going to use them to clean up the area to avoid mis-hits.

Also, what I like to do is, in Superior Drummer 3 I set up my drums based on the song. For example, playing 'Late In The Evening' by Paul Simon, Steve Gadd uses Yamaha drums, so in SD3 I set that up to capture the closest sound that I can get when playing. Since I record drum covers I capture the kit in SD3 plus myself playing 'in the air' and put it all together. It comes out rather cool.

[InTheWorks]

I found a way how to have always the same exact positions of each drum when changing drum-kits. And it’s now over 5 years I’m using this procedure.
Change your elements without having to replace them

This is pretty cool, I haven't seen it before. Unfortunately, we probably won't have access to the raw files on Aerodrums 2 like we do on Aerodrums 1. Hopefully there will be a way to copy files to and from the device that doesn't involve the app. Ideally Aerodrums 2 looks like a usb mass storage device when connected to a computer. This is not difficult to do, but I don't know if it's on their roadmap.

[InTheWorks]

1. for those that will use Aerodrums 2 as a midi instrument or with a DAW like me, I'm hoping that the requirement for using a virtual midi convertor (LoopBe) has been removed, and it works as plug and play.

Aerorums 2 should show up as a real usb midi device. So no need for a virtual midi cable.

It's been said elsewhere that Aerorums 2 latency is on par with Aerodrums 1. I don't think any numbers were posted. The advantage for Aerodrums 2 is that they don't have to work with different hardware configurations so they can dial the latency down to as little as possible. The limiting factor is the frame rate. Aerodrums 1 is 125 fps (7.8ms) and Aerodrums 2 is 132 fps (7.5ms). For midi you can add at least another 1ms (usb) to that and for audio maybe 1 to 2 ms.

It can't be any better without a faster camera and it's expensive to go faster at the resolution of Aerodrums 2 if such resolution can be purchased. It can be done. For example, omni vision makes a 48MP sensor that can do 720p at 320fps with pixel binning. Aerodrums isn't a big enough company to buy that kind of sensor though so they are limited to the available industrial sensors.

One way around that would be to use 2 cameras and drop the resolution of the second camera to get high speed temporal information at 2x the frame rate (did the stick change direction?) and use the first camera to get spatial information to make an educated guess on where the stick is going to hit. But that will add at least $200 to the unit cost to potentially shave 3ms off the latency. Likely much higher cost given the huge amount of R&D required to do so.

In case anyone was wondering.

[Ringowig]

Hi JCMpercussion… here’s a quick video showing my ‘AeroDjembe’ experiment using hand markers I created. The djembe was recorded by myself and turned into an ‘ele’ instrument..

https://youtube.com/shorts/eMm2aad6y3U? ... pAt58TIfy0

Regards!