New to E-Drums

[Glyn Costello]

Firstly, I can’t believe how amazing all this kit sounds! It’s fantastic.

I’ve been doing some research and I have a few questions before I splash out on some e-drums.

I was initially looking for something like a Yamaha DTXpress or Roland TD9, but having found the Toontrack software I’m thinking I may be able to find a better value solution. I am assuming that if I use Toontrack software, e.g. Superior Drummer 2.0 I don’t need a ‘brain’ on the E-drums? All I need is a MIDI interface, like the Alesis Trigger IO?

So, what I’m asking is, I have a MacBook Pro, 2.4GHz C2D, 2GB DDR3 1067MHz with Garageband, and I’m looking to spend no more than £1000 on e-drums kit (is probably what I’ll get for my acoustic kit).

– What’s a good starting point for a trigger IO?
– Assuming that software and trigger IO would come to £300, what’s a good choice of pads/cymbals for £700?

I appreciate that I would have take my Mac everywhere my kit went, but I haven’t done any live work for over a year and I’m itching to get into recording so it’ll mostly be used at home.

Many thanks,

Topic

[Glyn Costello]

Hi,

I think, after doing some further research that the following set-up may be good:

Alesis USB Pro + Alesis Trigger IO – £700
Superior Drummer 2.0 – £190
ASIO 4 All
Garageband.

Has anyone used these Alesis pads? What’s their sensitivity like? Ambient noise?

Am I likely to get any latency issues with the ASIO4ALL driver and the Alesis plugged into USB?

Thanks,

[Damian Blunt]

I’m not a mac user, but I would advise investing in a decent audio interface with well written low latency drivers if you are going to be triggering with edrums.

I would also look at this great thread written by Joe_K

http://www.vdrums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46310

This should hgive you all you need to know. 

Damian Blunt - Toontrack
Quality Assurance
Betatesting

[Rogue]

Note that ASIO4All is PC only. You will definitely want to budget for a half decent sound card as the built-in sound hardware of your MacBook is definitely not going to ‘cut it’.

Rogue Marechal - Toontrack
Configuration Manager

[Glyn Costello]

Hi Rogue,

Thanks for that clarification, I figured that might be the case after searching for a Mac version and not being able to find one.

So in terms of a suitable Mac device, are these external audio interfaces essentially external sound cards? Does ALL the audio processing go through this device?

I have an ExpressCard/34 slot, 2x USB2.0 slots and a Firewire 800 slot on my MacBook Pro… I can only find one ExpressCard audio device and doesn’t look like it supports Mac OSX. The rest are either USB or Firewire. There appears to be a few devices on the market, at drastically varying costs.

Does the device need to handle the MIDI or can I just get an external sound card, plus a separate MIDI-to-USB cable?

Looking at the devices that have MIDI built-in, what’s the difference between, say, an E-MU 0404 at £85 and a Presonus FireBox at £250? On paper they look the same, if anything the E-MU looks better with ‘proper’ MIDI connectors (as opposed to the un-jack-posted d-sub connector on the Presonus). Is it really worth the extra to get a Firewire over USB2.0 device?

Are there any devices available that are bus-powered?

Many thanks,

[Glyn Costello]

Also, are there alternatives to the Alesis trigger IO?

[Rogue]

Disclaimer: ultimately, what follows is my take on it, and is in no way an endorsement for any particular gear by Toontrack.

I am very much in favour of Firewire vs USB2 (well PCI would be my preferred choice but not applicable to a laptop). I also indeed would recommend a separate USB MIDI interface. Keeping the Audio and MIDI bus separate will give the best guarantee of minimal MIDI jitter and audio glitches at low latency. That is just my obsession to keep the 2 separate and others may disagree.

I can’t really recommend a brand over another but I would research first and foremost the manufacturers with a historically strong Mac support, such as MOTU and Presonus. That’s not to say EMU or RME (or any other well established card manufacturers) are not worth the consideration. M-Audio does good and reliable MIDI only interfaces and their audio interfaces are very popular (I use several myself, next to many others brands).

In term of what price bracket you should look into it really depends on how many outputs you require, among other key features. I personally think that 4 out or more is useful in term of edrumming, to give you the optional facility to submix and perhaps throw a couple of hardware effects (which by definition will not use up your limited computer resources).

This of course only becomes useful if you invest in a host that supports multi out (Toontrack solo does but offers no recording facility ; GarageBand, while a good sketch pad to record in, lacks multi out support). Logic Express might be a good compromise between cost and feature in your case although many others are available and again I would not want to sway you one way or another, they all have their pros and cons – and unique workflow.

The obvious alternative to the Trigger I/O is the TMC-6 from Roland. It is perhaps less bang for the bucks but will of course take the headache of choosing your triggers, for the most part, out of the equation. Again, that’s not an endorsement for Roland but let’s face it the components are widely available.

Here goes, I hope that helps you to the extend you required. I’m sure others will have useful purchase advise to share too.

Rogue Marechal - Toontrack
Configuration Manager

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