Now that Cymbal Sensors are being released (side note, it would be great to sell the sensors separate from the LV cymbals for those of us who are happy with the ones we already own), it would be great to be able to purchase an expansion interface, since I’m already using 5/7 available inputs and cymbals would exceed the limit. It would be great if it were just an expansion interface to increase inputs, since having another master volume and headphone volume and jacks wouldn’t make sense.
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Yes i thought about both of your points too, im just heavily considering buying a SP bundle my self. So having som form of getting more inputs for more sensors would be great. But i also thought about if they just made a new bigger hub but that would mean people that already bought a bundle would have to buy a new hub. So the best way for consumers would probably to just make some form of extension (if it indeed is possible).
Also to answer your prayers for the selling individual sensors for cymbals without the LV cymbal. They are working towards it but as i understand they have only tuned the sensors such that they work with evans lv cymbals, and to ensure that they work from the start they only sell them with cymbals. But yea im also excited for when they drop individualy.
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Basically the cymbals are free with this starter pack. Once they make them capable to work with any cymbal I imagine the sensor will be sold alone.
Agree 100%. 7 sensor limit is going to be a deal breaker and really limit sales. As is the interface is only good for drums or cymbals but not both!
Is the Roland WT-10 a possibility?
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Just wanted to chime in to answer some of the questions here about our new cymbal sensors.
It’s true that the EVANS Portal currently has 7 sensor inputs, and now that we’ve dipped our toes into the world of cymbals, many Sensory Percussionists would make use of a few more inputs. (Note: The 2 XLR inputs on the EVANS Portal can be used with v1 sensors for a total of 9 sensor inputs).
We hope to release our own solution that would allow users to expand the EVANS Portal and/or connect to other 3rd party interfaces, but we don’t have a definite timeline that we can share publicly quite yet.
For now, if you have other triggers, pads, e-drums, or e-cymbals that you’d like to use in addition to your 7 sensors, you can connect those via USB to send MIDI into Sensory Percussion and control sounds inside of our software.
Or, if your pads/triggers/e-cymbals connect to a drum brain that has its own sounds, you can route those into Sensory Percussion as analog audio inputs.
Both of these input types can be used (alongside your 7 sensor inputs) to control samples, FX, MIDI, and more in Sensory Percussion in a variety of ways. When you use other tiggers/pads, you won’t get the same level of nuanced timbre detection as you will with our sensors, but you can always relegate your basic sounds/controls to these 3rd party pads and save the fancy stuff for your seven sensor inputs! I personally like to use the Bop Pad for arrangement controls like going to the next section or muting/unmuting elements inside of Sensory, as well as some occasional one-shot sample triggering.
To answer your questions about selling the sensors a la carte, as @drewbysnacks mentioned, the EVANS dB One low volume cymbals are included for free during this pre-order period because the software is currently tuned to work specifically with those cymbals (it will later be updated to work with any cymbal). After the pre-order period, the sensors will be sold on their own (without low volume cymbals), but the price will likely be around the same as it is now. So you really are just getting free cymbals with this pre-order deal (a $425 value in the case of the full cymbal pack).
Hope that clears some things up. We’re really excited for everyone to get their hands on the new cymbal stuff!
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Thanks Patrick. Would be great if the single were available with the 16 or 18 as well, is that possible?
To add to this….you can absolutely add e-drums like a Roland brain etc as a “pads” input and you can use the CCs they send to get VERY close to the nuances of SP triggers. I have found that I don’t need every zone on EVERY drum or cymbal, so I use a hybrid of my Roland digital triggers along with SP sensors. If you have a Mac, technically you could run two separate instances of SP2, one as stand alone and one as the plugin, and then route the stand alone as audio into Ableton which would allow use of two full interfaces, but I have yet to find a use case for this outside my own curiosity (I have two interfaces, one for home and one for live I can confirm this DOES work but requires some time and effort). If you have a decent E-kit module and you know how to use Max4Live there are a lot of midi tricks to make this work for now. If you can tell me your exact goals I might be able to give ya some tricks
Can TRS to XLR cables be used to connect V2 sensors to the 2 XLR inputs on the EVANS Portal?
Your comment (and comments from @tenoch ) mention that it is possible to connect V1 sensors to the XLR input but I could find no mention if this is also possible with V2 sensors.
I have a 5 piece kit and 4 cymbals that I wish to use with sensory percussion sensors and I am trying to see how to get all those inputs into the portal. It’s practically impossible to find V1 sensors so I am trying to confirm if/why V2 sensors are not supported over XLR.
my plan is to use 2 SP Modul side by side. this is the simple solution in my opinion. But is it possible to act with 2 Modules in the SP Software?
Hey @digdoug. D’addario handles all the packing/shipping, so I reached out to them with this question. By default, all Cymbal Sensor Expansion Packs are packed with a 20” dB One ride. But they said if you’ve ordered multiple expansion packs and would like a different size for one of them, you can submit a ticket and they might be able to accommodate.
Hi @nathanpovo. Not sure where you’re located, but there’s usually a pretty active secondhand market in the US for v1 sensors on Reverb. Here’s a listing for a single v1 sensor I found.
TRS –> XLR adapters will allow the v2 sensors to physically connect to the XLR inputs on the Portal, but they will not be receiving the correct amount of power from the Portal (around 5x the amount they require). This negatively affects the sensor’s performance and could potentially even damage them. We are working on a fool-proof solution for more inputs, but for now you can always add additional analog or MIDI inputs alongside your sensors. If you give me some more info about your existing setup (acoustic vs. electronic, MIDI vs. audio, etc.), I could give you some suggestions to try.
I’m not located in the US so the options for secondhand gear is limited. I had actually searched through Reverb for secondhand sensors and nothing came up because no one marked my country as a shipping destination.
What about using 1/4 inch jacks? Going through the documentation EVANS Sensory Percussion Portal | Sensory Percussion 2 Help the XLR connection will supply 48v phantom power (which seems to be too much) but 1/4 inch jacks do not supply power in the same way.
Apologies if I am asking basic questions but I wanted to confirm one-way or the other since I couldn’t find it mentioned explicitly anywhere.
My current setup is a basic 5 piece acoustic kit with 4 cymbals. I don’t have any existing triggers. The idea was to use sunhouse sensors to convert the kit to an electronic drum set. While the pre-orders for the cymbal sensors are still open, I am trying to see if I can somehow use V2 sensors for all 9 inputs.
Hey @nathanpovo apologies for the late reply. Connecting via the 1/4” input will not supply power to the sensors. The sensor inputs on the Portal provide the correct amount of power for the v2 sensors, and while some users have had success using a step-down converter from 48v to 12v to connect to the XLR inputs, there is still a risk of damaging your sensor.
If this happens, such damage will not be covered by the Evans warranty. We are looking at official solutions for expanding inputs into Sensory Percussion and hope to have more information about this soon!