Clap timing a bit late in sequencer

[scubapig]

Hi. I'm using the internal sequencer, set to normal 16th quantize mode and the clap is definitely off - it hits slightly late (I mean, I'm talking milliseconds here) and this gets worse the longer the decay. However, if I'm just hitting the pad in time with the beat, it plays fine and sounds right on the beat (like, the attack/delay doesn't seem to be the problem). All the other drums sound spot on.

I haven't nudged it or anything either.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[I grec]

Hi scubapig,

However, if I'm just hitting the pad in time with the beat, it plays fine and sounds right on the beat (like, the attack/delay doesn't seem to be the problem)

To me, it sounds like an attack duration problem... How can you be sure you are not a little bit before the beat when playing manually?

Best,
Y.

[123bpm]

I have the drumbrute since yesterday and noticed this before anything else.

I looked at the waveform. Some initial click type of sound comes first, followed by the noise tale. But this noise tale dominates and the impression is a very late timing of the clap, which destroys the complete groove.

[Vic-tor]

Hey,

From my experience this is not linked to the drumbrute in particular, a sequenced clap rarely sounds right when played exactly on time, as the noise tail always comes in late. The ear is amazingly good to detect this ! When playing by hand you tend to naturally compensate for this "live", playing different for all the decay settings.

Luckily DrumBrute has a super cool and useful feature for this, if you hold a step and move the Swing/Shift encoder, it allows you to shift the timing of one step. So in this case you can make it play a bit early (-5 is usually a good starting point). One cool thing to try is to have a different shift for all your clap hit, so that the pattern feels even more groovy and "human".

[123bpm]

Hallo,

from my experience a clap can sound right when played on time, look at TR909 or TR808.
Now after a couple of days playing around with my new drumbrute I am about to send it back to the dealer.

Pros: amazing sequencer, very straight forward, microtiming is a big plus, partly useful and good sounds. Very nice groove with a Detroit kind of vibe if programmed.

Cons:

Snare. Try to send the snare sound through a reverb unit and it will sound very unnatural. There is something inherently wrong with the snare and the way any reverb unit (I tried a lot) with react on the signal, not so with a freeware plugin like sdx or d16 stuff. The reverb doesn't even melt with the signal.

My unit seems to be old, from early 2017. Not sure, how long the maracas will survive.

Kick1. Kick2 seems to be ok for the amount of knobs. I find the Kick1 Sweep parameter sweet spot to be around 0. Anything above 0 will sound stupid. Therefore, this kick is like a one trick pony with pitch and length, but always the same sound (which is too hard for many cases). LESS sweep would be highly desirable. If sweep started at 0 and had a maximum of somewhat above the current "0" position would yield a much better instrument. Now its kind of one-dimensional. Even a 909 has a sweep of 0 back in 1980ies.

Hihats sound distorted with long decay.
Toms/Congas: very limited tuning range. If there was at least independent tuning for ther shared sounds ...
Pads are a bit difficult to play, but ok.

Its a pitty. With external processing, for example a notch at 220 Hz, you can get the kick to sound soft.
But regarding the snare you cannot do much.

For the future I hope Arturia will bring out a Drumbrute2 for twice the price, more quality, variety and tackle the weak points (not to mention the clap), maybe add parameter locks and I will buy a unit.