roland td 20 lcd display free sample

TD-20 even lets drummers add realistic snare drum “buzz” (the resonance created on the tom and bass drum) that matches the type of snare drum selected. It’s the subtle nuances like these that really make the difference during performance and recording.

Whether used live or in the studio, the TD-20 offers a host of powerful features designed to make life easy. Eight group faders are provided for adjusting the relative levels of each part (snare, kick, hi-hat, etc.), while 15 individual compressors and EQs let you sculpt each sound to perfection. The TD-20 also includes a

New to the TD-20 is a CompactFlash slot, which can be used for storing custom drum kits and sequencer patterns with optional memory cards. An expansion bay located on the underside means

there’s room for upgrades down the road. The TD-20 also features Roland’s V-LINK technology. Using an optional video editor from Edirol, drummers can trigger images or change cameras from the pads or kick.

But as a drummer with focus on technology – do we use the computers in the drum area? Maybe in some cases but in most cases I would say no, especially on the area when playing live. Roland still rules the market with their boxes TD-9, TD-20 and now TD-30 etc…some real old and stable designs, good triggering and feeling, good sound to extreme prices!

Here is a nice try – My dedication to e-drums and a complete project diary how to build a poor man’s Roland TD-20 or the next generation of e-drums or hopefully even better.

XLN-Audio went out with a February offer…buy 2 ADPaks for the price of one…about €50(Instead of €100)…which was impossible to not buy. I bought the IndiePak and the MetallPac….and loaded it at the latest rehearsal with the band. The AD MetalPak stuff was GREAT!!! If you hit the 18″ Tom…it will probably sound for 4-5 seconds…talk about sampling! Cymbals…like the Ride…is a sampled Zildijan…It is so bloody great! Compared to my Roland TD-6 module…I am guessing I need to reinvent myself as a drummer. During the time spent on Addicted Drums a couple of more ADPaks have been bought….I am a luckey owner to the Indie, Funk and the marverlous Retro ADPak(where Bonhams old Premier drums shows up!!!!)

I have of course during this project experienced some problems when dealing with settings in the associated software for MD called MegaDRUM Manager(MDM) – problems like saving the setting over USB/MIDI to the device and be sure about that they actually are entered in a proper way. This has been finally been corrected in the MegaDRUM Manager version 20121123.

When all the configuring was done in MDM/MDC and sentinto MD, I could do the last fine tuning directly on the MegaDRUM box and midi mappings against Addictive Drums. This works very fine using the buttons and the LED display on the unit. (Easy to forget that the MDM software is a great feature…but you can do everything on the MD device also!!!). There is a nice function in the MD called Quick Access…where you hit hihat pedal and the hit the drum you want to adjust…MD will then jump to that drum on the LED display! There is also a nice function called send triggerIn…which actually jumps to the right drum settings in MDM when hiting the actual drum! A very time saving function. Another great function is the highlevel meassurement. (You could actually let MD to define the levels on the triggers.) I must also mention the nice BIG VU meter function – Great when configuring the trigger to midi levels of the drums!!

I am working on a fine tuned solution for the hithat Roland VH-11. Which actually needs a installed resistor 10k/15K ohms on the Hihat Control input. See the following link about this. See the picture when the resistor is installed: We think we also have found the magic key to make the VH-11 to perform so smooth and dynamically as you ever can dream of! Stay tuned!

I have been asking my fellow music friends in the band about what they think about the drums…And they are convinced that the setup is 100% and the sound generated is very much better than my old set up with a TD-6 box.

Beta of ConfigPack #5.5 is now available! (2012-10-17)I have been tweaking the hihat VH-11 to be able to perform even better against Addictive Drums. The result are now more dynamics and feeling.

One function which have been added in the firmware during my project is the MegaDRUM positional sensing (PS). This is a very interesting function offered on the most expensive drum kits from Yamaha and Roland for one drum e.g. the snare. The idea with PS is to produce different sounds (with different samples) dependent where you hit on the drum head. If you hit near the edge/rim one sound will sound…and if you hit in the middle of your drum another more “open” sound will sound. The function will produce a midi value seamlessly from edge to center prior to the midi not. The piezo sensor will with this technique both tell you how hard you have hit your drum (midi 0-127) and now also where on the head you have hit. (0-127) Quite Nice!!

The MegaDRUM Device will with the latest firmware’s (I am running on 2012-11-08) support PS for up to 8 drums at the same time (If using Atmega 1284 Chip) or even cymbals with PS sensing, like the Roland CY-15R.(But currently the PS algorithm does not handle e-cymabls)

The challenges for me was that only pads/meshheads with centrally placed piezo´s would produce the right positional signal. (I was using the Roland RT-10S which are mounted on the edge.)

Besides the drum you also need a new PS add-on board installed in your MegaDRUM device. The added function on the add-on board (easy installation) is the following: The first half wave of a signal from a pad should be positive. Most of other mesh pads out there, like Roland, Drumtec and etc., produce a negative first half wave. So a precision rectifier is required for such pads – the board don’t care if the signal is right or wrong…it corrects the signal to be right! The board rectifies 5 channels.

2013-02-17. Just upgraded a couple of drums with the Quartz Percussion 35 mm triggers on harness. I have now tried the Quartz 35 mm dual triggers on harness http://www.quartzpercussions.com and MegaDRUM (ARM based). First I must say that the Quartz triggers was extremely easy to dial in. It became good directly…it did not matter so much how the settings of the dynamic parameters was set etc..It was actually good from the beginning. No dead spots and very sensitive on the edges on my Sonor 14″ snare with Drum-Tec Pro meshheads.

I have just successfully managed to configure the Roland BT-1 (Trigger bar) with the MegaDRUM trigger device to use the function that eliminates false triggering when playing on surrounding drums/pads. See the video and visit the page for more details. http://bit.ly/1126i3K

I never published a configuration job I performed during the X-mas…a complete configuration of MegaDRUM emulating a Roland TD-6KV module for the Roland Pads, KD-8, FD-8, CY-5, CY-8, PD-8 & PD-8X. You can find the complete configuration at the following page.

Dmitri and the MegaDRUM drummer Ibanman555 went “all in” last week (160 posts on the forum before they were satisfied with the result) and did some tweakings of the MegaDrum firmware (posted 2012-12-08 and later) to better support the VH-12 hihat with pressure sensing. With the deal follows also the younger brother, Roland VH-11 which actually became more smoother and a bit faster on pedal responses. Update your MegaDRUM device with the 2012-12-08 firmware or later and get impressed!

The ARM-based MegaDRUM Board (2012-12-20) First impressions on the nice ARM based MegaDRUM. Got my board yesterday….looks really neat! No problems to install, drilling new pin outs. Just to boot up! I had some small problems with the right AltEncoder…which has been solved in a later firmware. Otherwise…If you are familiar to the AtMega 1284…no surprises here. Midi-speed selector in firmware is gone…The ARM board uses standard MIDI speed 31250 for midi and for USB MIDI it uses Full speed USB (12Mbit). When upgrading the firmware – the selection of CPU speed is gone…it is always 72 MHz. One question appeared, should I use the megadrumSTM32a_56 or the megadrumSTM32b_56 firmware file? But it was only to read on the LCD display which version I had…The A-version board is for the 128 KB version and the B-version board is for 256KB version. When the MD was up and running against MDM, the midi-function operates just a as usual. I have updated the MD settings with a backup from the old board stored in a MDS-file for my drumset – the same configuration file can be used as for the AtMega 1284 board. However, some readjustments is needed for the settings since the values between Atmega and ARM boards don’t match exactly. I just played around with my VH-11 hi-hat and had to do a new EdgeswAll sequence before TIP/Edge and Choke was working as usual again. The Piezo based drumpads was working right out of the box using my old configuration.

XLN-Audio Addictive DrumsThe next step was to involve Addictive Drums(AD) and get all settings right against MegaDRUM(MD). This is a bit tricky, which also starts a debate in your brain where the best place is to do the configuration. (In AD or in MD…?) I have after reading the MegaDRUM manual and the Addictive Drums manual been able to start to create a good ADmap file. (Where all mappings is stored) I did start my mapfile work doing a copy of a existing Roland TD-12 mapfile. (It is using the right Hihat for me VH-11. I have after much work created a ADMAP file for my MegaDrum device. No big changes – as most of the work have been in the MegaDrum device like midi note mappings etc. However some of the hihat settings and functionality have been added in the AD Map file to get the right feeling! Hint: If you want to make it perfect – Save the file as startup.ADmap (This could also be done with the ADpreset file) and place it into the right directory…then it will autoload the file each time when starting AD.

The last step in my project was to prove if MegaDRUM, Addictive Drums and a Notebook PC and a multichannel soundcard would work on stage live. Something that was first tested 2012-09-06 and have then been practised a couple of times after that. Please look on the following YouTube clip from 24/4-2013.

I just recently took a video when just fooling around with my e-drum set consisting of MegaDRUM midi trigger device, Addictive Drums plug-in, Sonor A-E drums with Quartz Percussion triggers, Roland Hi-hat, BT-1 & e-cymbals and the new Triggera e-cymbal D14 China and D11 Splash.

Note:Some things was not perfect when shooting the video (besides the guy who´s playing)…I just changed firmware on my MegaDRUM device and did not have my latest settings available on the MegaDRUM system. This did result in some small hi-hat problems, some Roland BT-1 cowbell false triggering and the kick is not triggering perfect etc. Otherwise…I think it works ok! The Triggera stuff rocks!

We have recently released four corresponding configuration MAP files for MD which now also can be found in firmware from version 20140629 and later versions. The idea we have is to offer a fixed midi map for the all the inputs (1-32) and (1-56) and use the AD2’s corresponding naming conventions for the slots. This will give MD users an easier and faster journey and bring down the configuration complexity. In the ROM KITS we have packed the settings for a complete reference kit…just one button and you are ready! (Using our picked gears!)

2014-09-14 Addicitive Drums 2 and playing live on stage!Just wanted to mention something about my current setup. I am today using AD2 with the included standalone player on stage. I am alternate between two systems, one MacBook Pro and one Microsoft Surface Pro which feeds a 8 channel sound card. (Separate outputs for most sounds). AD2 loads sounds and banks in about 2 seconds e.g. no big issue on stage. All presets include sound, effects and even mixer settings. One fine thing with AD2 is the sync with the xln cloud…both of my systems are Always synchronized with the same settings. So if I do a change on one system…it is copied to my other system. The Microsoft Surface is a touch based system, so you can actually change presets by just your fingers – no need for a computer with a mouse. AD2 do support touch for the windows platform which is nice feature. The surface pro can also be mounted on a cymbal stand, so it fits the drum set just perfectly!

2015-04-14 Good day for updates! Addictive Drums launches version 2.1.0, MegaDRUM has new firmware 2015-04-11 and new version MegaDRUM Manager + 2 Box has launched a new OS version 1.3(I was in the beta program) for their module and you can also find the great software from Luststark’s Drumit Manager 1.3.1 for the new 2 Box OS.

2015-10-11. Finally, after hundreds of hours in research, development and tests, I can just hint you all about, that I am going to manufacture something which I do believe some e-drummers are really missing! Stay tuned!