Record & Output Simultaneously?

[ssmacc]

Hello All,

Firstly forgive my lack of sound knowledge

I have a PC which I use with my Electric Drum Kit (Roland TD12), until recently I have only used the PC as a glorified MP3 player (play along to drumless tracks). However, I’ve recently bought Superior Drummer 2.0 and trigger this over a Midi-USB converter, this works very well, with Superior Drummer running I can hear high quality drum sounds triggered from the TD12. The problem is I cannot play MP3’s from my PC and have Superior Drummer working at the same time, is this normal?

I’ve got a ASUS DS sound card (although I’m not at home it could be a DG!)

Thanks,

 

[hughythomas]

Hey man

Are you using Superior Drummer stand alone or loaded into a DAW?

Sounds like the former to me from what you have stated in your post - I would therefore recommend grabbing a copy of Cubase 7 DAW and loading an instance of Superior Drummer as a software instrument.

You can then obviously plug your Roland TD12 (via MIDI/USB) into the computer to trigger any samples that you want to hear through Superior Drummer whilst Cubase (or any other DAW for that matter) is open.

Then I would literally just create a new stereo audio track in your DAW of choice and either:

A) Plug an external MP3 player via analogue into the inputs of your Soundcard

or

B) Use this new track to load your favourite MP3s directly into Cubase

There are pros and cons of each approach but I would encourage you to, at the very least, look into getting a half decent audio interface and sacking off the gaming soundcard as it really isn't designed for this kind of audio work.

Hope this helps mate

 

[ssmacc]

Stand alone (at the moment)

Thanks, this is my first dabble into the word of Audio so I’m a little behind the curve to say the least, I’ll do some research, in the meantime what audio card would you suggest?

Any advice appreciated!

 

[hughythomas]

Do you see yourself ever possibly wanting to record a drum kit and/or live band on the audio interface?

Also, what would be your budget?

I personally think external audio interfaces are the way to go nowadays as the latencies are very good but the accessibility of having all of your I/O to hand is worth the investment (IMHO).

I tend to recommend RME gear to people so something like the RME Babyface?

Alternatively, Focusrite released the 'Forte' in similiar vain but I have not heard it so cannot comment on the quality of the mic pres, converters and analogue staging etc.

If you're really serious theres a company called Black Lion Audio that have now modified all of my studio gear and they really know their stuff. You can actually buy pre-modded gear from an american site and get it sent over but obviously we're talking minimum of ~£700.

Saying that this kind of money spent with BLA will knock anything else (in terms of sound quality) approaching the £2,000 mark - I kid you not! But yer probably overkill in your situation.

 

[ssmacc]

It's just for recording me playing the V Drums with a drumless MP3 track (just for fun), your suggestions (while appreciated) are very much overkill for me. I'm actually going to build a new PC for the drums soon and am going to get a new sound card, but the budget will be ~£100 unless you can convince me more would be worth it in my situation, that said most sound cards I see tend to be for gaming, what would you suggest?

Cheers

 

[hughythomas]

Ok cool man in which case I would recommend:

Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 Interface

Yes its £200 (slightly less than) but I've spent the last half hour checking all of the interfaces out at this price range and nothing else really has the features & I/O that will mean you will not ever need another.

Also, I must admit that I am now a massive Native Instruments fan. Their new plugins (since the collaboration with Softube are FANTASTIC) and if I didn't use UAD plugs these would be my go to!

So yer, grab one of those and a copy of Cubase 7 or whatever DAW you like the look of and away you go sir!