Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[sonicsmurf]

Hi. I think Jamstix is a groundbreaking concept, I am basically ready to buy and am already recommending it to other musicians (some of them commercial artists). I started making my own music 20 years ago. I play 5 instruments and used to give percussion lessons (mainly congas) and drumming lessons.
My story is that a few years ago I started working with Cubase and other complex tools, but due to their "endless possibilities" (which I find *bad* for a musician) I spent more time with the software than with making music. The result is that today, I am looking for simple solutions. So I am in the process of setting up a compact and easy to use setup with an easy to use DAW (Tracktion was my choice) and only a few realistic sounding virtual instruments. Like a one man band.
For the past weeks I tried to find a solution for having a realistic drumkit in my music. I tested *all* the soundfonts that claimed to sound realistic but deleted most of them, I tested sample banks like the Blue Jay series and was still unhappy with them, and finally found myself assembling my own drumkit soundfonts. The result was okay but not good enough: Most of these kits sound okay when played solo but they suck when used in a dense mix.
Then I tested Jamstix, liked its interactive features, was extremely impressed with Ziokiller's demo tunes, and was surprised that the standard drumkit sounds quite realistic.
In the last two days I tested Jamstix - but I also want to use it as a normal drum sample module that plays the MIDI I have recorded, not only for jams.
So I take a mix with some tracks and insert Jamstix, then I adjust the ambience (for my taste the standard setting is way too much!), I increase the kick volume (way too low in the standard setting), and I adjust the snare so it sounds tighter (less sustain). After some tweaking the built-in kit sounds more or less okay. But:
- It seems that the snare drum sound is always a little "after the beat". I actually must time-adjust the drum track to make it hit on the beat. Why is that? I tried adjusting it with the "pocket" settings but still the snare (or even the whole drumkit) always plays a little behind the beat and I have to adjust the track a bit.
- Sometimes the cymbals get "cut off". Why is that? I tried to increase polyphony but it doesn't seem to help.
- I would like to test it with another snare (but keeping the other instruments). Can I load a different snare sample into the standard kit?
- What about percussion, especially: Congas (at least 4 different sounds for them if possible)? If I buy it, will those be in the kit?
- It seems the MIDI mapping of the kit does not follow the GM standard? When I play Jamstix in a normal MIDI track (yeah those MIDI song files you can find on the web) the kick drum does not play and the second snare drum also seems unusally mapped?
- When I load Jamstix in Tracktion, the whole interface becomes slow, my mouse cursor moves slowly (I guess choppy is the word) and the whole interface cannot be operated smoothly anymore - but strange enough my CPU load indicator is not even in the red zone. I might mention I have the newest Dell workstation with 3,6Ghz Xeon, 1GB RAM, 15k rpm harddisk, so my machine is powerful. Can I do something about this so the mouse movement is not choppy anymore? I only observe this effect with Jamstix, not with other VSTi's.
- When I try an audio jam with my real guitar, Jamstix does all kindsa crazy fills that do not seem logical. How to set it so it only makes very little variations (e.g. only on the hi-hats)? - I tried reducing all the sliders but still, sometimes the velocitiy slider goes up all the way to the right! Even though I am not playing hard at that moment. I have an Audiophile 2496 soundcard so it should not be a latency problem. Why does the velocity slider jump all the way up all of a sudden?

Phew. Lots of questions, hope you can answer some of them.

btw, if you would sell Jamstix with *two different* drumkits integrated, so one can choose between two kits that both sound realistic, it would be even much better. Increased size and download time, yes, but I would love that. If there were 2 kits in Jamstix I could completely forget about buying BFD and DFHS (which I don't really need).

Greetings from Switzerland (and sorry, English is not my language

[Ralph [RZ]]

[sonicsmurf]

[Ralph [RZ]]

[sonicsmurf]

Oops, I completely forgot the soundfont player (and the MIDI possibilities)!
Thanks, this will be the solution

Oh, the "slow mouse" problem is solved:
In Tracktion, the function "use realtime priority mode" (which is actually quite useful) was enabled. I disabled this Tracktion function and the mouse cursor reacts normal now.

[Ralph [RZ]]

[sonicsmurf]

[Ralph [RZ]]