Best Possible Snare?

[amidatong]

Hey everyone! Has anyone had some awesome success with an accurate snare responsivity? Nice, even doubles, present ghost notes, subtle buzz rolls, not over-triggering the highest velocity? I am using Battery 4, and I just can't seem to iron out the kinks. With all the data points available, seems like we should be able to find the perfect recipe.

Here's all the things I'm considering:

• Of course, the surface threshold and surface dampening in the v3 app.

• Stacked velocity samples. you can see the selected sample, which is a very quiet hit, is set to play for velocities 1-12.

  

  Screenshot 2025-04-12 at 9.59.52 AM.png (162.49 KiB) Viewed 8783 times

• Velocity curve, which can bend the other way too.

  

  Screenshot 2025-04-12 at 10.00.29 AM.png (47.79 KiB) Viewed 8783 times

• Min/Max velocity adjusting, this would remove velocites triggering below or above the range.

  

  Screenshot 2025-04-12 at 10.00.58 AM.png (48.77 KiB) Viewed 8783 times

Would love to hear what you've attempted!

[admin]

The response and parameters are there in the V3 for triggering emulations of acoustic drums if you keep in mind the audio science of what you're setting out to do. One major thing to focus on is your sample set. Everyone's recipe will be unique based on the sample set they are triggering. Think about the amplitudes of the sample waveforms as you record them from soft to hard hits in comparison to how you trigger them with MIDI data from low to high velocities in order to make things sound natural. If your sample waveforms grow in amplitude from soft to hard hits then you won't want to trigger them louder and louder as you play from soft to hard because that amplitude increase is already in the samples themselves. On the other hand, if your soft to hard hit sample waveforms have equal amplitudes then you will want to trigger them louder and louder as you play from soft to hard. Also remember position-based samples and round robins at many positions and strike intensities are very important for a natural sounding response.

You can see examples on YouTube of acoustic drum emulations with older and newer Mandalas using the approach you are describing. The drums being triggered in the videos below contain sample sets of up to 1200 samples per drum (eg. 10 positions x 20 velocities x 6 round robins).

Here's one when the velocity technology in Mandalas was a piezo sensor:
https://youtu.be/hxxJ321nLdE?si=UdKMwI9oGbc9I_FX

And here are a bunch of a full acoustic kit being emulated when Mandala 3's were first being developed using pressure sensitive ink for their velocity:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... skmZaExDlx

[amidatong]

Ah, thank you! I totally forgot about Round Robin. What you said about applying midi velocity to samples that gradually increase in amplitude makes total sense.

I had some success turning down the "velocity to volume" knob to about 50%, in addition to setting up a round robin. Thank you!