STRANGE hihat again ... phase, stereo, mono stuff

[spoenk]

hi all,

it's been much of a topic that the hihat behaves strangely, that there is some weired triggering. this has annoyed me too, but considering it for a while and listening, i came to think that this felt like a phase problem with the samples.

so this weird behaviour only happens when you play open/closed, when you just play open or just play closed, the hihat 'behaves' fine.

so i recorded an open/closed pattern on the hihat (in center position as a stereo file) to analyse it and the thing that is so annoying to me and some of you too is an issue of phase/stereo image...those different sounds that seem to trigger randomly do have totally different phase and stereo image than most other sounds/samples, so this is not a bug with the triggering but a bug with the samples. in fact those that stick out are not real stereo but you get exactly the same waveform on the left and right channel...this results in the open hihat sounding so weird when your velocity triggers this or one of these samples...

i just tried this with the first to kits and the hihat samples used by these...

please please 2box get those hihat samples fixed and provide us with a download!
it is annoying and should not be that hard to fix...?

[UC]

Nice detective work Spoenk, I'll bung Bengt an email and point him to your findings...

[spoenk]

it's most obvious on the groove hihat - which i happen to like best - then also the evolution hihat...others like the DnB hihat seem fine ...

[micke]

thanks
it feels nice not to be the only one experiencing these problems, great that you have found the "source" of it... most people said that the hihat works just fine.

[nonoduweb]

Yes, I've got the same problem...

[Tooltip]

Has any of you guys experienced any double triggering?

[spoenk]

i had strange double triggers only the time when -as i found out later- one of the cables on the trigger module got loose, resoldered it and now it's gone ...

[Alex]

i'm interested in how this dodgy sampling sounds as I know it'd annoy the hell out of me, could you post an mp3?

[spoenk]

i'll post this tomorrow, or rather ask someone to post it cause i don't have webspace ...

and i'll record the midi too, to see which velocity triggers the mono samples  --- which of course have no stereo image like the 'normal' samples which makes the sounds of the different samples kind of 'jump around in your head' especially when using headphones ...

[UC]

Hi Spoenk, I've PM'd you, I can stick it up.

[spoenk]

so i've recorded again with midi to check this out in more detail and the link to mp3s and midi should be posted later.

i've recorded the same midi with the groove hihat, the evolution hihat and the swiss hihat and only the groove hihat samples have this phase correlation issue.

when you listen to the mp3 of the groove hihat, the 2 and the 7 open hihat trigger samples which have phase correlation +1 which means they are mono.
open hihat 13 in this 'pattern' has a phase correlation between 0 and -1 which means there will be a lot of phase cancellation if you play it back mono.
at the end of the file you'll hear open hihat only, these samples also have phase correlation between 0 and -1 which is not a good thing...

because the samples with these different phase correlations are triggered by certain velocity and controller values only, they seem to trigger randomly and they stick out annoyingly, because these phase issues mean that the stereo image changes drastically when they are triggered.

the other mp3s use different hihats and there the phase correlation is always between 1 and 0 which should be the case.

to me that means that a little something went wrong when preparing those samples which should be quite easy to fix by going back to the original recordings...meanwhile i'll just use another hihat.

[spoenk]

...and if you don't have good speakers set up properly you should use headphones or else it might not be that obvious...
you can use a goniometer/stereo vector audio scope plug in to see the differences in correlation

[spoenk]

Hi Spoenk, I've PM'd you, I can stick it up.

http://universalconstructors.com/hihat/EVOLUTION%20HIHAT.mp3

http://universalconstructors.com/hihat/GROOVE%20HIHAT.mp3

http://universalconstructors.com/hihat/HIHAT.mid

http://universalconstructors.com/hihat/SWISS%20HIHAT.mp3

thanks UC.

with the evolution hihat you can hear that some (half)open samples have a wider stereo image than others but it is not that obvious as with the groove hihat samples. with the swiss hihat, all samples have a quite similar stereo image...the midi file is just there so you can maybe try this with the other hihats as well or try this again after changing velocity and controller values...

[westerlu77]

Nice to hear! It seems respons quiet much more as it should now. As I mentioned before I have just played in a store but this sounds much better. I don't know but the first one with evolution hihat have still some problem with halfopen sound. If you listen 0.11 and 0.12 it sounds a little muted or something, or is just a miss with the pedal or am I totally wrong?

[roel]

Nice to hear! It seems respons quiet much more as it should now. As I mentioned before I have just played in a store but this sounds much better. I don't know but the first one with evolution hihat have still some problem with halfopen sound. If you listen 0.11 and 0.12 it sounds a little muted or something, or is just a miss with the pedal or am I totally wrong?

I don't think its a hardware problem, I think its just a sample problem they need to record the hihat samples better from open to half way open and close ect.