Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

20 Sep 2019, 17:50

Hi
I received my Fantom 6 yesterday.
Triying to trigger drum sounds from pads cause missing notes if i don´t strike the pads hard.
I haven´t found any information about pad sensitivity or calibration.

Any ideas?

TIA

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

20 Sep 2019, 18:54

danx wrote:
Hi
I received my Fantom 6 yesterday.
Triying to trigger drum sounds from pads cause missing notes if i don´t strike the pads hard.
I haven´t found any information about pad sensitivity or calibration.

Any ideas?

TIA

I thought the pads only triggered samples at a pre-fixed velocity at this point. Gonna read up on it again...confirmed- velocity has to be pre-fixed and it affects all pads equally- at least that's how it seems reading about it in the manual, and I hope I'm wrong.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

20 Sep 2019, 20:54

I meant drum sounds from tones,not samples.Playing tones from pads using note pad function.
The tone velocity is fixed to 100.
I don´t get any sound if i play soft,but hard.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

21 Sep 2019, 03:13

In fact the issue seems to be the pads cause this happens with tones,samples,everything.
Playing them softly cause no trigger.
Adjusting pad velocity have no effect on the problem.
I´m thinking about opening the Fantom to check if I can adjust something inside the pad panel.
I recall to have some similar issue with my Tempest and only was about adjust a screw or something simple like that.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

21 Sep 2019, 09:56

Contact Roland customer support. If you change velocity for the pads and it isn't reflected on any pad you tap, then it's most likely a bug. I don't think you have to open up Fantom. It's most likely a software issue.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

21 Sep 2019, 12:07

Changing the velocity changes the velocity response of the pads but again the sound only can be heard if i play them hard.
Playing them slowly give me no sound at all.

I conntacted support but anyway i´m gonna take a pick inside the Fantom.

Thanks

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

21 Sep 2019, 21:47

Didn´t find anything strange.
While waiting for supports answer i´m starting to believe that´s because the pads are so new that need to be trigger to get loose....

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

22 Sep 2019, 18:28

Can probably be fixed with an OS update-make the sensors respond better.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

23 Sep 2019, 15:44

I hope so,
Here´s a video about it
https://gofile.io/?c=9Wpsyu

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

23 Sep 2019, 16:24

danx wrote:
...
Here´s a video about it
https://gofile.io/?c=9Wpsyu

If you set pad velocity to "1" or even to "Off" will they respond any differently?
P. S. There's no "Real" setting for them, right?

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

23 Sep 2019, 17:20

The response is the same e.g.
velocity 20 same response only the sound lower,off no sound at all.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

24 Sep 2019, 11:48

I'm not a Fantom owner - but pad velocity means one of two things:

The velocity you would have to hit to generate a trigger -OR-
The velocity a pad -generates- when you trigger the pad. Often, this is when pads are not velocity sensitive at all - so you have to "tell" the device what to output for the velocity.

I think this is a matter of no velocity sensitivity (different finger strike velocities do not result in different MIDI values for velocity output) and therefore the parameter is likely to tell Fantom what to "fill in" the velocity field when pads are triggered.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

24 Sep 2019, 22:24

It´s simple
There´s something wrong with the pads.
Mute and solo also are not activated on soft pad pressure too.

Last edited by danx on 25 Sep 2019, 13:11, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

25 Sep 2019, 02:28

I'm not sure that the pads support pressure sensitivity. They feel like simple on/off button triggers to me, pretty much completely useless as they don't trigger unless not only you hit them hard but you hit them just right. You can't do rapid on/off triggers either because of this flakiness.

I honestly don't get why they exist on this unit. You can't use them as drum triggers, they're beyond extremely cheap, they actually cheapen the whole unit. Even the cheapest midi controller out there has actual pressure sensitive pads that trigger accurately. This is like someone botched it together in their garage. It's a real mystery as the quality of the rest of the unit is so high.

Re: Fantom 6 pads sensitivity or calibration?

25 Sep 2019, 08:45

Ed Diaz mentioned the pads are not velocity sensitive. He stated that topic has been discussed at Roland but the pads on the Fantom are not velocity.

The pads are useful to me and i dont feel they cheapen the product, but i understand we all have different expectations and tastes....