Recording with Superior Drummer and V-Drum

[JazzyJ]

Hi all,

I'm going to be recording 'live' drums with a drummer playing Roland V-Drum electronic kit and using Superior Drummer for the sounds.

Can anyone give me any tips regarding latency, monitoring etc?

I was thinking to bounce my song down to a stereo track and set the buffer to 128 samples to optimize the power in my mac, although that would mean I'd be stuffed if the drummer wants to dabble with the mix - 'a litte more bass please'!! Which would mean I'd have to re-bounce.

Also, will the V-Drums pads automatically map to the SP drummer sounds?
I could use the GM setting I think.

So if anyone's got any experience, please give me some tips.

Thanks

[albee1952]

I do this all the time with excellent results. I record at a 64 buffer setting and have not heard any complaints about latency. Just insert SD on a stereo instrument track for starters. Once you have the performance recorded as midi, you can go thru it and move anything you need(so the drummer can make a little flub here and there and not need to retrack the entire thing). Once you(and the drummer) are happy with the performance, you can split out the drums to separate tracks. Here's what I do: create several stereo Aux tracks and set their inputs to SD 2, SD 3 , SD 4, etc. Then in the SD mixer, I leave the kicks on track 1 and then assign snares to 2, Hat to 3, toms to 4, etc. (BTW, I saved this SD setup as a preset for the future). Now when you play the track, your drums are spread out for individual processing.

As good as this works(and it does), try using real cymbals and hat with 3-4 mics. That puts it over the top for me(since there's a dozen ways to hit a cymbal or hat, you retain all the nuance). You can still make minor corrections on the mic'd tracks by grouping them and using Elastic Audio.

[TheBaron]

I record drums like this as well. What works well for me, and bypasses latency, is recording with the drum channel muted in protools so you're hearing everything in the song but the drums. Then use the sounds of your Vdrum module for the drummer to hear/monitor his playing. It won't sound as great (close if you have a TD20) but you'll have zero latency while playing. Since you're only capturing midi notes you'll be fine. I'd still keep it at a low latency setting but, worst case, is you have to nudge the entire drum take collectively forward once you're done. (I've never had to do that).

I play the vdrums through powered pa speakers and crank my mix in the room through the studio monitors. I'm sure you could mix it all into a headphone mix but I found it simpler this way as opposed to getting the Vdrum sounds and protools song to mix into one source.

[zv yoda]

Sorry to resurrect an old (ish) thread, but I've just switched from an acoustic drum set up to a TD12 with Superior Drummer 2.0. Got all it hooked up & working through my 003r. Very impressed I have to say... I wish I'd done it sooner rather than battle for nearly 2 years to get a great acoustic drum sound in a 12x12 home studio... but anyway!

...I am experiencing some latency when I'm tracking via SD2. I'm using cans. I have SD set up as an insert on the instrument track & it's coming through loud & clear with no glitches... but there's a tiny bit of latency that's throwing me. I'm not keen on putting the kit though the pa (I prefer tracking via click on cans anyway) so can anybody advise how best to deal with this? I'm guessing the answer is one of 2 things:
· I have heard of folks using the actual TD sounds in their cans (so no latency) while also having the music mixed in the cans via the 003... how would this work
· Alternatively, I need to minimise the latency of the SD2 sounds going through the 003 mix. I’m not sure how best to do this.

Any advice greatly appreciated - thanks

[zv yoda]

Sorted it... playback engine settings. Doh!

[groovebrother]

Hi all

i have a serious issue here with pro tools hd 10 (tdm) and superior drummer 2

i can record midi and midi works fine after rec BUT i have no audio when hitting the v drums pads in live situation.

The strange thing is that in standalone mode i have audio when playing the v drum pads but not in pro tools.

So till now i was used to open standalone mode and route the mac audio output into pro tools but this is really anoying as the mac audio out is generating lots of hum.

anyone that could help me out to configure SD2 in pro tools in order to have real monitoring when playing ?

please ?

[Stig Eliassen]

Granted that MIDI and the audio path is routed correctly, I can only think of the cache option. I've upgraded to SD3 and can't remember exactly how I had SD2 set up, but I used it with V-Drums too.

[groovebrother]

thank you for answering

what would be that cache option ?

could you please give me your precise settings ? (even if its SD3)

[Stig Eliassen]

It's under memory & status in the construct page.

[groovebrother]

regarding setting i have fllowed that wersion (i m on mac)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb32fJL6ND4

i have uno usb interface for the v drum but i haven't set in the audio & midi mac app any device connected on it cuz it's working so far

my only problem is that i cannot have direct monitoring in pro tools.

i have tried evrypossible youtube tutorial to set SD2 + Pro tools including videos on toontrack channel nothing works

i feel desperate