Newbie Help –

[Rich Johnson]

Hi all,

I just purchased EZ Drummer and love the sounds.
I have been writing most of my songs on a Boss DR-5 Drum machine.
Is there some way I can have the DR-5 drive EZ Drummer so I can take advantage of those great drum sounds?
I have a M-Audio Midisport Uno and I ran the Midi out from the DR-5 to the M-Audio, which then connects to the USB in on my laptop.
I have EZ Drummer & Toontrack Solo open and I then hit play on the DR-5 but I don’t get any sound from the DR-5.
The DR-5 drum track is set for Midi channel 10, with SysEx set to 10.
Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Topic

[Rogue]

you need to enable the correct MIDI interface/port from within solo, via the Options>MIDI Devices menu entry.

Rogue Marechal - Toontrack
Configuration Manager

[Rich Johnson]

Hi Rogue, and thanks for the reply.
I had already done as you suggested, and in Solo, Options/Midi Devices shows “USB Uno MIDI Interface”.
My intent here is to write the drum tracks for a song on my Boss DR-5, then have the DR-5 play and kick off EZ Drummer on my laptop. Audio out from my laptop will then go to my Roland VS-2480 so I can record the stereo drum tracks.
I hope that makes sense.
Thanks for your help and I look forward to your reply.
Boots

[Rogue]

as it happens I have a Uno and I will make a comment that you should not take as patronizing as I often do the mistake myself and that is that the connector marked ‘OUT’ does actually go in the ‘OUT’ port of your MIDI hardware. To me it sounds backwards but like I said, every time I use the Uno (which is no more than half a dozen time a year) it takes me a couple of tries to get it working. Hopefully that helps?

Rogue Marechal - Toontrack
Configuration Manager

[Rich Johnson]

Hi again Rogue!
Thanks again for the reply.
Don’t worry about being patronizing…ya never know when you can just plain forget something!
In this case though, I did have the OUT connector of the Uno connected to the OUT port of my DR-5, so that was OK.
Here’s where my ignorance does come into play though…
I opened EZ Drummer and thought I could get my DR-5’s midi signal to kick off EZ Drummer on it’s own.
I guess that it doesn’t work that way and you need to have some kind of DAW program open on the laptop.
I downloaded Reaper, and got it all to connect and it works!
The only problem I have now is latency! Ya see, I have a synch tone recorded on my Roland VS-2480, along with my recorded guitar and vocal tracks. On playback, the tone goes to a JL Cooper PPS2 then to my DR-5, which kicks off the drums. Now, to get the better sounds of EZ Drummer, I have EZ open in Reaper, and the DR-5 now kicks off EZ….but it’s just about a 1/2 beat behind!!! Damn!
Is there any way around that?
Thanks again!

[Rogue]

you should be able to trigger EZdrummer in Toontrack solo. You mentioned that Options/Midi Devices shows “USB Uno MIDI Interface”, but keeping with the obvious advices, it also needs to be checked to the left, otherwise it is not active. That said, if you are happy with Reaper, there is nothing wrong with that.

In respect to latency it will depend on a number of factor, but the most important is to have an ‘audio application graded’ audio card, with up-to-date ASIO drivers (optimized for your OS), and the on-board hardware on many laptops are not suitable. You may be able to get the latency as low as your hardware will be able to using something like ASIO4ALL, but a generic driver will never replace a dedicated audio card whose sole purpose is to make sure things run smoothly.

… once you have an ASIO driver available (and maybe you have, but maybe not set up properly), you should be able to experiment with the ‘buffer size’ and see which one works for you (the smaller the buffer size, the lower the latency, but also the higher the CPU cost, which may introduce stutter in playback).

Rogue Marechal - Toontrack
Configuration Manager

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