First impressions from new aerodrums 2 player

[dieter_be]

Received my aerodrums 2. My first impressions:

hardware and build quality better than expected. feels sturdy and ready to go on the road. one nitpick maybe is the locking mechanism for the feet of the tripod, it has some play and i'm not sure if it's very strong, but it doesn't seem to affect anything, so i'm happy.
The precision and feel is good. Feels close enough to playing real drums. No noticeable latency. This was my main concern!
I do however struggle to play soft ghost notes on the snare. A tight skin has great rebound, my wrists.. not so much.

Most of my issues are just software, which can hopefully be addressed via updates.

1) the left-hand menu buttons are *tiny* on my phone. hard to tap them.
2) the "strike areas" seem weird. I've been trying various kits, and looking at the visualization to see where my sticks end up. in particular:
- many instruments seem too big. i can hit the stick way off in the empty space and it'll trigger a hihat or the snare. this makes it hard to find the optimal place where i should be striking and also just feels very unrealistic. sometimes i do gestures behind the kit or twirls and it triggers all kinds of samples i didn't intend.
- this exacerbates when instruments cover each other. one some kits i find it very hard to strike a tom or floortom because a ride or splash is covering it, and when i look at the visualization, it seems i should be hitting the tom, but for some reason it's triggering the cymbal instead. i also run into this with the hihat and the snare.
- sometimes the hihat goes back to open, even when my foot is on the floor, and even after having played closed hihat (so it should have learned my foot position while playing). i notice this especially on the rock kit with the double bass pedals, after moving my foot from the bass pedal back to the hihat
- double kick pedals too close to each other: this one is more personal preference, i like to have my bass pedals further apart than most. i notice now while playing i need to bring my left foot to the right, relatively close to my right foot, instead of off to my left. (this is exacerbated because i like to have my right foot off to the right, whereas many drummers have it more in front of them)
- i can't figure out how to play any music through the app / device. the app supports "files", but i use services like spotify (premium), youtube music (premium), and youtube (premium). even if my phone connects obviously to the device (i can see myself playing virtually), the device doesn't play my music through its output, and i don't see the device in my bluetooth list so i can't pair. so i use separate speakers, one for music playback, the other for the device.. clunky.
- haven't found a good way to play fast-ish hits on the kick pedal. on my real kit, i play heal-toe. on aerodrums2 it doesn't seem to work reliably. also often the notes are quiet, even when i'm stomping hard on the floor

thanks for your consideration. I know aerodrums is a tiny company and i'm already plenty impressed with what you've pulled off thus far!
PS: I'm a software developer, perhaps i can help

[Richard]

Hi, and thanks so much for this feedback. I'll go over each of your points:

1) We agree with this. It was unfortunately a case of us cutting corners to avoid needing to design separate UIs for desktop vs mobile. We plan to fix it in a software update soon.

2) This requires a bit of explanation. Each drum piece has a 3D position called a "hotspot". For drums, this is always the point in the center of the drum head. For cymbals, it is offset from the center and corresponds to the natural hitting position of the cymbal. When Aerodrums 2 detects that you intended to hit something, it searches for the closest hotspot to where your drumstick tip was at that moment. Then, if the distance between your drumstick tip and the hotspot is less than a setting called "Hotspot Cutoff" (Settings → General → Hotspot Cutoff), the sound will be triggered for that drum piece. The default value for Hotspot Cutoff is 35cm. That means you need to hit within 35cm of a drum piece to trigger it. This is why it feels like you can hit "empty space" and it will still trigger a drum piece. It also explains why the visuals don't correspond exactly with the sounds you hear - the Hotspot Cutoff is a global value, it's not defined per drum piece which means that the size of a drum/cymbal is not factored in when deciding which piece was hit. If you are sufficiently accurate in hitting drum pieces then you can reduce the Hotspot Cutoff value but generally we believe a bigger value is better because it reduces the likelihood that you will miss your intended hit. Also, for comparison, in Aerodrums 1, there is no concept of a Hotspot Cutoff so you can hit anywhere and a hit will always be triggered. Once you understand and accept this we don't believe it's a big issue.

3) The hi-hat pedal position will be "reset" when it detects a pedal hit from your foot. Possibly this is not sensitive enough. We will have a look at it.

4) Regarding pedals being too close together, there is a setting (Settings → Feet → Pedal Spacing) that you can increase to wider the separation between pedals. A visualization of this would be useful but that is missing at the moment. Let us know if you still can't get the desired behaviour after increasing that setting.

5) There are 3 options for having music mixed with your drums:
a) Copy MP3s files to the Aerodrums 2 device. It sounds like you're not interested in that so I won't go into the details here.
b) Use the line-jack on the Aerodrums 2 device. If you plug a cable between the headphone socket of your phone/computer and the line-in jack of the Aerodrums 2 device then it will automatically mix whatever audio is coming from your phone/computer.
c) Use Bluetooth streaming. This is usually the most convenient option. You first need to pair your phone/tablet/computer to the Aerodrums 2 device. You can do this by going to Configuration → Bluetooth in the app and following the instructions. Once paired and connected you should hear whatever music is playing on your device through the Aerodrums 2 headphone jack.

6) I'm not sure if you're talking about using a physical pedal here. It sounds like you aren't. With practice you should be able to play fast kick hits reliably using heel-down or heel-up technique. Heel-toe without a physical pedal will be tricky. I would recommend getting a reverse beater kick practice pad and using a physical pedal with the kick pedal attachment piece that came with your Aerodrums 2. That will allow you to use heel-toe with the pedal you are used to. Regarding the issue of quiet notes, you should try to increase the value of Settings → Feet → Hit Speed Scale for Dominant Foot. That will make your hits louder.