Specifications

Chapter 12: SoundReplacer 113
In general:
◆ Turn on Peak Align if you are replacing drum
or percussion sounds whose peak level occurs at
the initial attack.
◆ Turn off Peak Align if you are replacing
sounds whose peak level occurs somewhere after
the initial attack. Peak Align should also be
turned off if the sounds you are replacing are not
drum or percussion sounds.
To illustrate why Peak Align makes a difference,
look at the following illustrations:
Figure 1 shows a kick drum whose peak level oc-
curs at its initial attack.
Figure 2 shows a kick drum whose peak level oc-
curs after its initial attack.
If you turn on Peak Align and attempt to replace
the fast-peaking kick with the slow-peaking kick
(or vice-versa), SoundReplacer will align their
peaks—which occur at different points in the
sound. The audible result would be that the re-
placement audio file (slow-peaking kick) would
trigger too early.
Mapping The Same Sample Into
Multiple Amplitude Zones
If you are performing drum replacement and in-
tend to use just a single replacement sample,
mapping it into multiple amplitude zones will
ensure more accurate triggering. Here is why:
Imagine that you are replacing a kick drum part.
If you look at the waveform of a kick drum, you
will often see a “pre-hit” portion of the sound
that occurs as soon as the ball of the kick pedal
hits the drum. This is rapidly followed by the
denser attack portion of the sound, where most
of sound’s weight is.
With a sound like this, using a single amplitude
threshold presents a problem because typically,
in pop music, kick drum parts consist of loud ac-
cent hits and softer off-beat hits that are often
6 dB or more lower in level.
Figure 1. A fast-peaking kick drum
Figure 2. A slower-peaking kick drum
A kick drum with a pre-hit preceding a denser attack