Help please with cheap soundcard and drum kit

ginger_pat · 10 Dec 2008 at 15:12

Hi guys,
I bought a roland HD-1 drum kit which should be arriving tomorrow, and i want to be able to hook it up to my computer.

At the moment i don't have a soundcard and i don't have a clue how to put the drum kit into my computer so a little help please.
I have speakers and cubase 4 as well but i need a cheap soundcard that i can plug my drum kit into and record or use with other drum software to change sounds if possible. Or do i plug the drum kit in via usb?
So any cheap soundcards i can use or will they all work with cubase?

Thanks GP

dave-lew99 · 10 Dec 2008 at 15:50

From a quick look about the HD-1 doesn't seem to have USB on it, so you're going to need a sound card with MIDI input as well as ASIO drivers for use with Cubase (I'm assuming PC/Windows here)

You're also either going to need a card with a HW MIDI synth or invest in some VSTi's to actually make it usable.

ginger_pat · 10 Dec 2008 at 20:32

hmm that sounds expensive.
Could i but a small mixer to use as the midi input then buy a normal soundcard?

Or would this just not work?

Maccy · 10 Dec 2008 at 20:39

I presume there's onboard sound on your motherboard? You could just use a jack to mini jack cable and line in to the port on the motherboard surely?

dave-lew99 · 11 Dec 2008 at 00:43

He'll need an ASIO soundcard for use with Cubase and that solution won't deal with MIDI either. You could use any soundcard and ASIO4ALL but results are mixed with that and of course, still no MIDI i/o

Pro soundcards can be had for starting at around £70 which would do the job you require.

Dr.EM · 11 Dec 2008 at 00:53

If you have an old fashioned joystick port (similar but smaller than parallel) that can be adapted to MIDI with a straight cable. Otherwise a USB to MIDI convertor can be bought for around £20, latency shouldn't be an issue with a reasonable spec PC. My USB - MIDI convertor is about 1 cycle of a mid note waveform latency, so no issue