OcUK Musicians

Dirk Diggler · Thursday at 18:40

Just putting the feelers out, we must have a few musicians on here? I've just bought myself a new set of E-drums and could do with some info on DAW setups etc.. The last time I picked up a drum stick, electronic drums were the stuff of Tomorrow's World

Any drummers out there..?

Dirk Diggler · Thursday at 21:16

[FnG]magnolia said:
Our drummer used to use Yamaha e-drums. We use Reaper as our DAW. What's your emergency, caller?

How very dare you! One out of two isn't bad though.

e: this is what they sound like although not track 4.

I'm using Reaper and it feels good to use, but the bain of my life so far is input lag. Basically, how do I set up the input and output properly.

Maccy said:
I could write for hours on this but won’t as I’m lying in the Caribbean sun.
What I will say though, is are you on Mac or PC? I’ve always used Logic but it’s down to personal preference, if you want to really play around with sounds then EZ Drummer is well worth looking into and works with most DAWs with relative ease.

I'm on PC, and tried EZ Drummer but didn't get far enough as my free trial ended before I could properly assess it.

Dirk Diggler · Thursday at 21:21

[FnG]magnolia said:
^ Superior Drummer 3 is even better and what we use now. It's not cheap but is probably best in class right now, whether you're running e-drums or using the midi data in the package.

I think DAWs can be quite personal -you either gel with one or not. We did try Logic and Pro-Tools and both have their strengths - not least of which Pro-Tools being basically industry standard - but I prefer Reaper's flexibility. But regardless - whatever works for you is the best choice.

e: I think we cross-posted. The lag is to do with your ASIO settings, how you've calibrated you e-drums and how Reaper is set up. For live recording you want the buffer to be as low as you can without glitching. The Reaper forums have great technical walkthroughs on how to set this up, let me find a link or two.

Cheers mate, really appreciated. I'm nearly there with it, but the lag is killing it.

Dirk Diggler · Thursday at 21:45

[FnG]magnolia said:
Kenny is basically the dude who knows everything about everything. Be aware - rabbit holes ahead but once you have your basic settings sorted you're good to go.

What equipment are you using?

Cheers, I'll get into this tomorrow. I'm using a Roland TD-07KV.

Dirk Diggler · Friday at 07:07

Maccy said:
Equally, a better TD module will help too

Yes, that's inevitable. I wasn't sure if I'd get back into playing so I didn't want to spend any more than £1k, but I can tell it's like buying a mid tier GPU; the upgrade itch is strong.

I take it I could swap out the module itself and use with the existing kit? I know I'll eventually change out the lot but doing it incrementally would be ideal.

SexyGreyFox said:
I use Sonar Production Studio and Superior Drums.
I will be buying a Behringer X32 soon and linking that to a laptop I will be able to record all our gigs to separate instrument channels to load into my DAW.
The band bought a very cheap from Gear4Music eDrums for £80 and when I plugged it into my DAW via USB all the drum channels lined up in it, that was impressive.

The band bought a cheap what for £80, mate? Also, is Superior Drums from Toontrack?

Dirk Diggler · Friday at 08:27

SexyGreyFox said:
Gear4Music eDrum kit about £200 new but got it second hand for £80. During 2020 when we could play open air gigs with us seated, our drummer used them live. I thought he would break them apart.

Pretty sure Superior Drums are Toontrack and a step up from EZ Drummer which I used to have.

Ah, ok. I did the EZ Drummer trial but didn't get long enough as I had to go to work and it expired by the time I got back - it's quite expensive for what I'm doing at the moment.

bloodiedathame said:
TD 8 with Addictive Drums here. Uses the modules midi to trigger samples in a laptop. Pretty good but the delay gets too high at anything other than lowest sample rate.

This is what I'm trying to do, use the midi to trigger the samples but as you say it's the delay that kills it. I'm wondering, are these programs with samples really meant for post processing rather than live play?

Dirk Diggler · Friday at 13:44

Maccy said:
Yeh connections should be the same, just double check before ordering anything.

I have the TD27 and considering getting the 50 unit.

Cool, I'll have a browse - and if you do decide to upgrade then feel free to give me a shout as I could be interested in the TD-27 if I haven't upgraded by then.

Dirk Diggler · 2025-03-11T10:56:04+0000

Feedback:

After a wee bit of fiddling around, I've found a happy medium.

Reaper input > TD-07 Midi
Reaper output > TD-07 Midi

I've got a song loaded as a track, and then a second track that is the drums input, setup as a Midi input with FX enabled, and the effects are coming from BFD which is a free VST.

The "trick" I was missing, is that I need to record with the drum track muted and I hear only the drums through the Roland unit. When I play the piece back or create a render, I can unmute the Midi track and apply any effect I like.

Thanks for the assistance with this.