Even with a history of excellence going back decades, it appears Yamaha is not content to rest on past successes. This company continues to innovate, its latest product revealing fresh, forward thinking towards acoustic drums. Yamaha’s new EAD10 module ($629 list) introduces the term “Electronic Acoustic Drum”, which certainly sounds like an oxymoron. Turns out it’s not.
The EAD10 combines a stereo mic array and single trigger to capture and enhance the sound of an acoustic drum kit. The sensor module mounts on the rim of the kick drum, allowing the trigger to sense the kick drum and the mics to pick up the rest of the kit. These three signals (left mic, right mic, trigger) flow to a control module for processing.
Once there, the fun begins. Drummers can add effects and processing to the stereo mics to achieve such sounds as a compressed studio recording, a cavernous arena, even a distorted, low-fi mic. Reverb, delay, pitch-based effects--the usual suspects are here. The module offers a range of drums you can assign to the kick input trigger. You can add effects to that triggered sound, as well as tweak many sample parameters in the EAD10’s deep menu system. You can add a footswitch and up to five additional triggers to access the other sounds in the EAD10’s library including snare, toms, cymbals and other percussion. You can import your own samples.
Yamaha claims this gets you to the point of an acoustic drum sound that is balanced, processed and ready to play well with others. Those “others” could be your favorite track, as an auxiliary input lets you plug in a music player to jam along with. Attach a USB thumb drive, and you can use it to record your playing as stereo mix. Drop a 16-bit WAV file on the USB drive, and you can play along with that tune and record your performance on top. Instant overdub.
If those “others” are bandmates, Yamaha appears to have the live music application covered as well. Stereo outputs carry the processed drum mix to the house, triggered sounds and all. The auxiliary input should work as a monitor mix input. You can eliminate the USB audio playback, auxiliary input and metronome from the stereo mix. Metronome settings are recalled with each scene, which gives you a new drum sound and click at the correct tempo.
The built-in metronome offers much flexibility: tap tempo, level controls for beat subdivisions, different metronome sounds, even the ability to stop the metronome after a bar or two for count-ins only. Up to 200 scenes store all aspects of the EAD10’s setup, and you can step through these scenes by footswitch, MIDI, trigger pad or on the module itself.
For practicing, the EAD10 appears to be a powerful tool. The ability to play along with a track is great, but being to record yourself playing along is even better. Yamaha is reportedly at work on an app that allows you to capture and share a video of your playing. One interesting feature is a beat-sensing algorithm that will lay a click on top of a song, and will also allow you to change the song’s tempo. That the practicing drummer can do all this with one device—at a level that won’t damage hearing—is impressive.
We’re eager to see how well the EAD10 functions in a live setting. If Yamaha’s demo videos are any indication, the EAD10’s sound may be a large step up for many small churches with limited gear and/or mixing talent. The EAD10 certainly generates a snappy triggered kick, which is arguably the hardest drum to tune and mic.
The EAD10 combines the worlds of acoustic and electronic drums in an innovative way. Is it an effective way? We look forward to finding out.
