Drumboto Channels

The Drumboto is a sample playback device. It can be configured to use up to six channels, each with its own settings. The channel settings include:

Sample
Solo
Mute
Level
Dynamic Range
Pitch
Pitch Range
Pan Left/Right
Fade Front/Back
Reverb

Each channel has their own set of values for these settings, and the only time they change is when you spin the dials or connect an cable to the control port in the back which will override the settings at all times.

Each channel has a channel select button, a sample select/display button, solo, mute and trigger buttons. Additionally, there are 16 pattern step buttons which will be explained more in a bit.

Like everything in Atomic Sound, there is context sensitive help in the corner of the screen when the cursor is over a button. Be sure to see what the different buttons have to offer by looking here.

The channel select button (the 1,2,3,4,5,6 buttons) does two things: Selects the channel, and can be used to trigger the sample at one of the three predefined velocities. Press A, X or Y to trigger them at minimum velocity, medium velocity and maximum velocity, respectively.

The sample select display/button is what you use to bring up the sample library and pick a single sound to be used on this channel.

The menu is hierarchical, with the top level broken down into guitars, drums, synthesizers, and other categories. You can use the dpad left/right to select the category, and dpad up/down to select the item in each category. If using a game pad, you can use the left thumbstick to select the item and right thumbstick to select the category.

Inside each category is a collection of related sounds or related sound groups, and you will usually need to go down to the second level to get to the actual samples to select one. If a channel already has a sample selected, when you press the sample select button it will bring the library back to the current sample's location in the library making it a bit easier to choose slightly different sounds or notes.

The mute button is a quick way to turn off the sound for a channel without messing up its other settings. When the mute button is set by the user, it will turn yellow. When the channel is muted for any other reason, such as another channel having solo turned on, it will turn green.

The solo button will cause all other channels in the current Drumboto to go silent, unless they also have the solo button pressed.

The play button has the same function as the channel select button, except it doesn't have the option to pick the sample here. It's main purpose is to light up when a sample has been triggered.

Finally, there are the dials. These affect the sounds coming out of this particular channel, and the values are not shared with other channels.

Level - Controls the volume. This is really controlling a value from zero to one, which is multiplied by the Master Level's zero to one value, and again by the dynamic value, resulting in a final level for each channel that is fed to the audio playback system. Note that larger values actually cause a signal boost, so it can be possible to get some undesirable distortion if you crank it up too much.
Dynamic - This controls how much of a value -1 to 1 is added to the level value. Note that sequencer steps green, blue and red correspond to values 0, 0.5 and 1.0 respectively (this also applies to the range value, below). This control can be very useful when playing with a drum kit because it allows you to control exactly how a channel volume will respond to drum pad velocity.
Pitch - Varies the playback speed of the sample. Internally, this is a value from -1 to 1, and the middle value of zero causes it to play at the original rate. Changing this from zero will change the playback duration of the sample.
Range - Dynamic adjustment range for the pitch based on velocity. Follows the same rules as Dynamic, above.
Pan and Fade - These control the speaker position of the sounds. It supports surround sound, so you can position the sound however you like across all your speakers.
Reverb - Controls how much reverb is enabled for the channel, making a bit of an echo-type effect.

All the values the dials control can be overridden by connecting cables in the back. It's not necessary to do that though, that is an advanced use of the Drumboto which will be explained further in another tutorial. Most of the time you can get great results just by setting the dials to values that are tuned to work with the other channel values and then with other devices using the Master Level to help each Drumboto be heard in the way you like.