# In Trigger: Great Idea, Poor Execution **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [April 16, 2026, 3:52pm UTC](https://forum.waves.com/t/in-trigger-great-idea-poor-execution/12513 "2026-04-16T15:52:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![menkisertek](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/forum.waves.com/menkisertek/32/2137_2.png) [@menkisertek](https://forum.waves.com/u/menkisertek)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2026, 3:52pm UTC](https://forum.waves.com/t/in-trigger-great-idea-poor-execution/12513/1 "2026-04-16T15:52:47Z")
I’ve used a lot of sample replacement tools, including plugins like Slate Trigger 2 It sounds great, but lacks proper humanization, which becomes a problem when you’re trying to avoid that “machine gun” snare effect. That’s what drew me to In Trigger. The humanized [velocity](https://www.waves.com/plugins/velocity?utm_source=forum) feature looked like exactly what I needed, and to be fair, that part actually delivers. It’s the strongest aspect of the plugin. Unfortunately, everything else falls apart. First, stability and reliability are a mess. In demo mode I thought the dropouts were just limitations, but after buying it, I realized the plugin simply misses hits. It forgets triggers. Opening a new instance can mess up an existing one, forcing you to reanalyze everything. Even relearning sections manually doesn’t fully fix it. Triggering accuracy itself is inconsistent. I tried adjusting sensitivity, retrigger, separation, no setting really locks it in properly. Then there’s the sound quality, which is honestly the biggest disappointment. The internal samples are extremely poor. The snares and toms sound flat and artificial, like random, uncurated samples rather than something properly recorded for a professional tool. Compared to Slate Trigger2, which offers high-quality, mix-ready drums, InTrigger is nowhere close. Another major issue is how the sampler engine behaves. You can clearly hear when a sample is triggered, it cuts off the tail of the previous hit. The room, decay, and natural sustain just disappear unnaturally. What it seems is that what sets other similar products apart is also the sampler section. That’s where a lot of the “magic” happens. In this case, the sampler feels very basic, and that’s exactly what sets it apart in a negative way. It sounds like a standard sampler rather than something purpose-built for drum replacement. The sampler engine here really needs to be worked out. MIDI functionality is also poorly implemented. On paper, there’s MIDI out, which should allow triggering external samplers. In practice, it’s almost unusable. There’s little to no documentation, tutorials don’t explain it, and getting it to work is unnecessarily complicated. I run a very complex MIDI rig in my studio and rarely run into issues, but here I couldn’t even get it working properly in Logic Pro, I just couldn’t figure it out. **Pros:** - Excellent humanization engine **Cons:** - Unreliable triggering / missed hits - Buggy behavior between plugin instances - Weak sampler engine (unnatural cutoffs) - Confusing / unusable MIDI implementation For $29, it’s not a huge loss, but it still feels like wasted money. The idea behind InTrigger is solid, and the humanization is genuinely good, but the execution just isn’t there. I really wanted this to work. I genuinely did. I wanted something that just works out of the box, with minimal effort. You load the plugin, learn the triggers, and then it mostly just does its job, with only a bit of tinkering here and there. Instead, it ended up being the opposite. I spent more time than I normally would, not less. For example, I was trying to fix a snare for about two hours. Then I moved on to the kick, and suddenly the snare hits were gone. I fixed the snare again, and then the kick disappeared. I kept going back and forth like that, and nothing stayed stable. Right now, it feels like it will just get buried in the pile of plugins, with missing basic features already giving that impression. I know this isn’t the place to promote other products, but at this point I’ll be going back to Slate Trigger. It’s not perfect, especially when it comes to humanization, but it’s reliable, sounds great, and actually holds up in a mix. Right now, In Trigger just isn’t cutting it for me. ---
**Author:** ![steve.dower](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/forum.waves.com/steve.dower/32/526_2.png) [@steve.dower](https://forum.waves.com/u/steve.dower)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2026, 5:34pm UTC](https://forum.waves.com/t/in-trigger-great-idea-poor-execution/12513/2 "2026-04-16T17:34:07Z")
Yeah, can’t disagree with any of that. I too was excited about InTrigger (especially the [live](https://www.waves.com/bundles/live?utm_source=forum) version), but ultimately gave up and went back to using Slate Trigger for recordings and giving apologies for the thinness of [live](https://www.waves.com/bundles/live?utm_source=forum) snares. Mostly I was excited about the trigger separation, since I often get stuck with electric kits and only a stereo mix. But even with a dedicated channel I also didn’t find the samples any better than the original signals. So yeah, great idea, doesn’t work well enough to be useful. If the trigger separation was better then it would be awesome, but also I’d be happy enough with just the “smart gate” functionality. ---
**Author:** ![menkisertek](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/forum.waves.com/menkisertek/32/2137_2.png) [@menkisertek](https://forum.waves.com/u/menkisertek)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2026, 9:56pm UTC](https://forum.waves.com/t/in-trigger-great-idea-poor-execution/12513/3 "2026-04-16T21:56:33Z")
The way I see it, In Trigger will likely fall behind unless Waves seriously reworks it. The core idea is strong, and there are genuinely impressive ideas here, but it isn’t reliable right now. The triggering engine is inconsistent and buggy, for example, I’m working on a kick drum with some bleed, using a gate before InTrigger’s detection or Triggers gate. It will correctly trigger some kick hits, then in a tom section it slightly triggers toms, which is understandable and can be fixed, but then a clearly stronger kick hit in between the toms doesn’t trigger at all…whaaat? One hit is detected, a louder one isn’t, and there’s no clear consistency in how it responds to threshold or signal strength. At that point you wonder whether you should re-learn the section, ok a learn fixes it but then the next section doesn’t work. Close session re-open and it doesn’t work at all, everything has to be done again and again. I picked this while mixing an album for a more humanized feel, something Slate Trigger struggles with, but it takes too much effort to get consistent results. At this point, I don’t have much confidence in its future without a major overhaul. ---
**Author:** ![Daddy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cab0a1/32.png) [@Daddy](https://forum.waves.com/u/Daddy)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2026, 9:27pm UTC](https://forum.waves.com/t/in-trigger-great-idea-poor-execution/12513/4 "2026-10-18T21:27:12Z")
I just lit $30 on fire with this app. The other poster is spot on. The samples are barely usable. The midi generation/extraction is a joke and I can’t get it to work in a usable way. I should have known better based on the price. I guess I just need to feel lucky I didn’t pay the original $89 price. Either way I’m bummed. ---
**Author:** ![simon.a.billington](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex027/user_avatar/forum.waves.com/simon.a.billington/32/158_2.png) [@simon.a.billington](https://forum.waves.com/u/simon.a.billington)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 6:11am UTC](https://forum.waves.com/t/in-trigger-great-idea-poor-execution/12513/5 "2026-10-19T06:11:35Z")
I don’t know a bout the first 2 issues but the last 2 _might_ just be be more flexible than you realise. - Weak sampler engine (unnatural cutoffs) If you click on the CR8 icon on the bottom right it expands the sampler section and there is alot or sample playback customisation that can be done there, in eluding filters and release tails. - Confusing / unusable MIDI implementation Meanwhile, clicking on the arrow in the bottom left corner will allow you to customise the modi note generation along with any [velocity](https://www.waves.com/plugins/velocity?utm_source=forum) levels and curves. Unless you already know all about this, then this is not really helpful. I 've reported some issues in the past and alot of it ended up getting addressed. So I reckon leave your feedback on their website. Apparently everything gets read and the more voices the more squeaky the wheel, the sooner it’ll get a good oiling. This is the link I’ve used in the past. Just create a form with Tech Support. > **[Waves Contact Us](https://www.waves.com/contact-us)** > > Whether you're already a Waves product owner or simply have a question, select the most convenient way to reach us, and we'll do our best to help you.