On the BeastMaster, I noticed that…
…when I use it to mash beats (bash meats) and place it exactly on the grid, on a kick, repeating that beat doesn’t give the same thump to the kick as it would if I played the song? It’s as if there’s a small attack envelope around the beatmasher…
You need to make sure you’re hitting it right on, or else it’ll sound softer.
Also, Make sure your D/W is at 100%, I set my ROT at 0, and my gate around 1 o’clock. That usually gives me a good thump/
You dont have to hit it on time- its tempo synced.
You do have to make sure that your beatgrids are setup perfectly though !!! Traktor has this bad habbit of putting the grids right on the top of the kick so you lose the attack of the kick. First thing i do with any autogrid is move it backwards a tad because it always is placed just after the attack of the kick
True that. I adjust my grid nearly every time.
Are you sure the beat masher grabs from the grid? I thought it might only grab from the grid when you play with snap mode on.
yeh, i agree with the grid moving jive… it can really sound naff if you don’t do that!
also, are you using it in advanced or chained mode? because in chained mode it does what it says on the tin, but advanced mode if you’re not totally cracked with what the diff parameters do, then you might find you have problems such as you report…
The effect isn’t quantized, though. So if you’re using a length less than 1/4 it could throw off the kick drum. If you “grab” the sample off the beat, by, say, a 1/16th beat, and you shrink the effect to 1/8 or 1/16 it won’t sound as powerful, and might completely miss the kick drum.
yeah.. now i think about it, when i started using it i couldn’t get it on the beat properly. Practice makes perfect 
but hey, it’s not as hard as feedback looping on an EFX 1000 - now that does sound crap if you can’t get it perfectly on the beat!
do you guys set your gridmarkers to the snare or bass drum?
Line the grid up with the very start or the bass kick.
ahh. ya i was watching a tutorial on beatgridding by Ean and he was setting his to snare? so I’m a little confused. I just started beatgridding my tracks recently so kinda new to doing it properly.
Set it to the bass kick because the point of beat matching to to have the kicks overlapping perfectly. This gives you a solid thump and then all you have to do is adjust the bass levels and you will make a seamless transition.
Snares aren’t always used and are often in different positions of the song. Matching to snares doesn’t make sense.
It depends on your music. I always set to the bass drum because it’s the first beat of the bar. But, if setting it to the snare works better for you than rock out.
You don’t set your grid markers for beatmatching. You set them to find and line up your beats IN Traktor. The act of mixing shouldn’t be done based entirely where you set your beatmarkers but however you feel comfortable.
if your playing house music and you want good beat matching in traktor, you set your grids up for beat matching. The sync function is suppose to save you the time of jogging tracks so you can concentrate on other stuff.
yeah, that’s right. It doesn’t matter, though, whether you set it on the kick or snare as long as it’s on the downbeat.
Trust me, I know what sync is for, and it works for more than just house music 
My point was simply that it doesn’t matter which beat you put the grid on, as long as it works for you.
but I use the kick drum.
If you are putting it on a kick then make the sure the kick that you are putting it on doesnt have any swing(slightly off timing to sound like a real drummer). With drum and bass i like to put my grid on the drop because thats allways nice smack bang on time then setup a loop before the drop to see if i can hear the attack of the kick on the drop - if i can hear the attack then the grid is too far forward.
Bento .. what do you mean by the attack exactly ?
Cheers
Gav
Attack
Decay
Sustain
Release
Its the very first part of the thump. the th… if you will 
Hmmmmm … confused more now.
I think its better to be able to hear the attack as if you couldn’t then when you looped you would cut the start (or attack) of the kick wouldnt you ?
Maybe i’m in a totally different neck of the woods here ?
Set a grid point on the first beat after a break.
Set a 16 bar loop right before the break, so the loop ends where the grid marker is.
When you play the loop you should not hear the first beat where the break ends and the drum beat kicks back in. If you do than your grid is pushed too far forward and isn’t correct. If the loop repeats without the drum beat being heard then you shoul be okay, just check that it isn’t pulled too far back.
The attack he’s talking about is the beginning of the kick.
Thanks for all the replies guys!
I played around with it and it doesn’t appear the meat basher is syncing up automatically using neither quant nor snap so I guess it’s a matter of practicing manually hitting the spot - I have a pretty good sense of timing and tempo but I still only manage to hit the spot maybe 1 in 100 times… I’m talking keeping the big thump of a kick when mashing down to 1/4 or even 1/8 giving a seizure-inducting rally of kicks but I just… can’t… seem to keep… the attack… guhhhhh…