Old 02-13-2015, 01:19 PM   #1
sebanc
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Default Recording MIDI drums help

Hello,

I also posted this question in the newbie section, but thought maybe this might be more appropriate here, so I'm reposting.

Here's what I'm trying to do:

Hook my Roland HD-1 edrums to my computer and "record" them (MIDI) so I can then futz with that and change the sound, etc.

I'm running Mac OSX Mavericks on a MacBook Air. (1.3 Ghz, 8GB ram).

Reaper 4.77 (evaluation - Waiting to purchase specific software until I know it will work)
Addictive Drums (demo - Ditto about buying it)

I have a midi/usb cable (actually, I have two. I bought a cheapo cable but after having trouble with double hits, I got one that was recommended in a thread somewhere). The current cable I'm using is a Hosa MIDI to USB.

I've been able to hook everything up and get it record and all that. But I'm still having problems with double hits and bad latency to the point where it's basically un-usable.

The reaper preferences section is horribly confusing to me. Are there settings I need to change to get it to work? Are there things I need to adjust with my OSX MIDI settings? Or is my setup just not going to work?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you!
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Old 02-13-2015, 03:42 PM   #2
sebanc
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Followup:

I've been tinkering and tinkering with Reaper's surprisingly confusing buffering settings and I appear to have gotten the latency to a workable place.

However, I'm still plagued by double hits (seems to happen only when two things are hit simultaneously (for example, highhat and bass drum).

Any ideas what causes this? And how to remedy it?

Also, if anyone could explain the Reaper buffering settings, that would be great. I've just been doing things trial and error because the "buffering" section in the preferences makes no sense to me.

Thank you!
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Old 02-13-2015, 03:59 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sebanc View Post
The reaper preferences section is horribly confusing to me. Are there settings I need to change to get it to work? Are there things I need to adjust with my OSX MIDI settings? Or is my setup just not going to work?
Hi, sebanc, heh heh, you're not alone, there are a lot of options and I don't think I know half of them.

Quote:
Also, if anyone could explain the Reaper buffering settings, that would be great. I've just been doing things trial and error because the "buffering" section in the preferences makes no sense to me.
Ideally you want to be able to set the buffer setting as low as you can go before you run into static or breakup of your sound. Also it is highly recommended to use ASIO drivers. Also keep in mind, the bigger your project is (plugins, tracks, etc.) the more apt it is to get the sound breakup.

Concerning your Roland HD-1 edrums and double notes, I wouldn't know. However, there must be some way you can select different velocity curves with the edrums, at least I would think so.

Also you can put ReaControlMIDI>Show log on your input midi track and check out exactly what your edrums are putting out.
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Old 02-13-2015, 04:47 PM   #4
ivansc
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Have you read up on how to set up your pads on the Roland? I too have a Roland E kit and it took me a long time to set everything up tp suit my playing, Used to get a lot of false/double triggers initially.

As always, RTFM. Its a pain but also the bet way I found to get really good results.
There is also some good stuff on the Virtual Drum forum.

http://www.vdrums.com/

or

http://www.drumchat.com/forumdisplay...drums-23.html?


Are my favorites
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Old 02-13-2015, 04:58 PM   #5
sebanc
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tod View Post
Hi, sebanc, heh heh, you're not alone, there are a lot of options and I don't think I know half of them.

Ideally you want to be able to set the buffer setting as low as you can go before you run into static or breakup of your sound. Also it is highly recommended to use ASIO drivers. Also keep in mind, the bigger your project is (plugins, tracks, etc.) the more apt it is to get the sound breakup.

Concerning your Roland HD-1 edrums and double notes, I wouldn't know. However, there must be some way you can select different velocity curves with the edrums, at least I would think so.

Also you can put ReaControlMIDI>Show log on your input midi track and check out exactly what your edrums are putting out.
Thank you for the response. WHen you say "set the buffer setting as low as you can" which setting is this, exactly? It's not very clear in the settings which exactly is THE buffer setting.

Thank you again for the response. I'm gonna look at setting up ASIO on my mac. Hopefully that will help.
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Old 02-13-2015, 05:14 PM   #6
sebanc
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
Have you read up on how to set up your pads on the Roland? I too have a Roland E kit and it took me a long time to set everything up tp suit my playing, Used to get a lot of false/double triggers initially.

As always, RTFM. Its a pain but also the bet way I found to get really good results.
There is also some good stuff on the Virtual Drum forum.

http://www.vdrums.com/

or

http://www.drumchat.com/forumdisplay...drums-23.html?


Are my favorites
Thanks. I've gone over the HD-1 manual and there's precisely one page on MIDI. Here it is. I'm wondering if the "program change" plays a roll. Unfortunately, there's no more info in the manual about what the numbers under "PC" mean.

I'll check out those forums. Thanks!
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Old 02-13-2015, 05:19 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sebanc View Post
Thank you for the response. WHen you say "set the buffer setting as low as you can" which setting is this, exactly? It's not very clear in the settings which exactly is THE buffer setting.
Preferences>Audio>Divice, that's where you select your Interface along with all the settings. That's where you select ASIO, but keep in mind you have to have an interface that supports it. If not you can download ASIO4All or something like that, and that works sometimes.

Quote:
Thank you again for the response. I'm gonna look at setting up ASIO on my mac. Hopefully that will help.
Keep in mind what I mentioned above, you should have an Interface that supports ASIO and will have it's own ASIO dirvers, but it you don't, then there's the option to use ASIO4All.
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Old 02-13-2015, 05:32 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tod View Post
Preferences>Audio>Divice, that's where you select your Interface along with all the settings. That's where you select ASIO, but keep in mind you have to have an interface that supports it. If not you can download ASIO4All or something like that, and that works sometimes.



Keep in mind what I mentioned above, you should have an Interface that supports ASIO and will have it's own ASIO dirvers, but it you don't, then there's the option to use ASIO4All.
As far as I can tell, ASIO4All is only for PC's. I'm on a mac, so that won't work for me.

I believe the buffering settings work differently on a mac than on a PC. Any idea how to do this on a Mac?

Thank you again for your responses.
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Old 02-13-2015, 08:05 PM   #9
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Read your message quickly ...

The double triggering.

You might be getting the double trigger when you hit the pad [1st trigger] and then the sequencer [Reaper] outputs that same trigger [being the 2nd one].

You can verify if this is the case by pulling out the MIDI IN cable to your drum pad [if you have it in].

There is also a special MIDI MODE, and I'll be dang if I can recall the term at this moment, but it has to do with double triggering due to a type of midi loop-back. If I think of it before someone else I'll post.

Anyway ... that's a start to troubleshoot. Hope it helps.
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Old 02-13-2015, 10:16 PM   #10
sebanc
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Thanks.

I've tested it in Cubase, addictive drums demo (standalone) and I get the same double hit problem in all of them.

The HD1 only has one midi port. And there are really no settings to futz with on the dang thing.

I feel like I need to somehow adjust something with my mac's audio settings, but I can't seem to figure out where/how to do that.
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Old 02-13-2015, 10:20 PM   #11
sebanc
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One more thing that may be a crucial clue (or not). The double hits only happen when two drums are hit at the same time. I can play my snare all day without a problem. But if I hit my snare at the same time that I hit the bass drum (or high hat, etc) I get double hits out of at least one of the drums I hit.

So it's only when more than one trigger is triggered at the same time.
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Old 02-27-2015, 10:06 AM   #12
sebanc
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So, in case anyone is interested or was having the same problem, I finally fixed it.

The problem was the midi/usb interfaces I had.

After testing my setup on several different edrumsets, with the same problem, I knew it had to be the interface or my computer.

So, I tried the roland um-one mk2 usb/midi interface. It wasn't plug and play like the others, but when I got it setup it worked like a charm.

Problem solved.

The moral of the story is, don't try and save money on the USB/Midi interface.
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Old 02-27-2015, 01:36 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sebanc View Post
The moral of the story is, don't try and save money on the USB/Midi interface.
That's very good to know sebanc, and thankyou, however it also might help if you mention the USB/Midi interface that didn't work so well.
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Old 02-28-2015, 04:21 PM   #14
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That's very good to know sebanc, and thankyou, however it also might help if you mention the USB/Midi interface that didn't work so well.
Shoot, forgot that part. Thank you.

The first one was a no-name cable (HDE) I found on Amazon for about 6 bucks.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The second one I tried was a Hosa cable. I read in a different forum someone having a similar problem and they recommended Hosa.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

That one didn't work either.
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Old 02-28-2015, 06:59 PM   #15
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I have yet to find anyone (including me) that got a decent result out of those "intelligent wires".
Buy a real interface and yo might find you are golden....

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