Note or Sound Dropouts

HRmusic90

21st Century Digital Boy
Hello, I'm new to MIDI. Right now the only MIDI device I have is my Alesis SR-16 drum machine. It's the original one I bought back in 95! I have it hooked up to my PreSonus FireStudio Mobile and I track in Acid.
I've been re-recording my old beats and saving them as MIDI files. When I piece them together and play along to make sure I got everything right, sometimes one of my drum pads won't sound. It's random - sometimes a kick, sometimes a snare, and the actual occurrences are random as well. The first play-through might be missing some elements, the next time it will play through with no problems.
Is it a PreSonus, Acid or SR-16 thing? Or something else?
 
I've experienced a similar MIDI problem from time to time.

Usually it's because of a midi note extending over the start of a following note so that the following note doesn't sound.
 
So, I was hoping I would have nothing to add to this thread, but apparently I was wrong. This note dropout thing is getting annoying now that I'm finally trying to lay down some tracks. I try to convert my MIDI output to wavs but it's useless as a track with the occasional missing kick or hi-hat.
Could the MIDI-note-extending thing apply here? Seeing as it's a drum machine, I figured there would be no note lengths to speak of.
Is there a definite cause of this?
 
Could latency have anything to do with it? I increased the buffer size and it seemed to help, but I thought the result of latency problems was distortion, clicks, or gapping - not note-ignoring.
 
Would you outline the exact process you are using? That way it may be possible to figure out where things are goping bad.
 
Sure thing! So for whichever song I'm working on, I have the appropriate MIDI patterns (verse/chorus/fills/etc.) saved and drawn across the track timeline. Acid gets its ins and outs from my PreSonus FireStudio Mobile, which also handles MIDI in/out. I'm using the FireStudio MIDI to connect to my Alesis SR-16. If I hit play in Acid, it's a crap-shoot as to whether it will play flawlessly or not. To convert to wavs, I've been directing the Acid output to Sound Forge, but even if I just simply listen to the drums play back, it usually happens.

So I suppose in short:
SR-16 <=> FireStudio Mobile <=> Acid
 
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So the midi file with drum patterns sits within Acid, and you send midi via interface to the drum machine, from where you get your drum audio. Is that right?

Latency should not be an issue. It's mainly a problem when recording audio, and, in some cases, when playing virtual instruments. Midi of itself is not a big hog of computer resources.

I would be inclined to do some tests. For example, create a series of midi drum loops, each of increasing complexity (maybe just hats, then hats and kick, then hats and kick and snare and so on) and play these until you strike the problem. Don't have any other audio loops going.

If you can't recreate the problem this way, start adding in the audio loops in acid.
 
So the midi file with drum patterns sits within Acid, and you send midi via interface to the drum machine, from where you get your drum audio. Is that right?

Yes it is.

Latency should not be an issue. It's mainly a problem when recording audio, and, in some cases, when playing virtual instruments. Midi of itself is not a big hog of computer resources.

I would be inclined to do some tests. For example, create a series of midi drum loops, each of increasing complexity (maybe just hats, then hats and kick, then hats and kick and snare and so on) and play these until you strike the problem. Don't have any other audio loops going.

If you can't recreate the problem this way, start adding in the audio loops in acid.

Okay I'll give that a shot when I have time. (I have a couple more busy days at work yet.) Although, when I did notice these problems, the MIDI track was was the only track in the project :confused:
 
You may also like to take the audio output of the drum machine and feed it to some external speakers, rather than bringing it back via the interface. That's just to eliminate that as a potential cause.
 
So I haven't had time to troubleshoot yet, but, it's really slow at work right now, so I did a bit of online research.
I did a Google search for "MIDI note drop" and apparently this is a problem across many different platforms. People posted having these problems with Reaper, Cakewalk, and Ableton. And not just drum machines; they mentioned it happening with their synths as well.
 
Update: I just tried outputting my drum machine directly to a pair of speakers. It still skips the occasional note.
 
Arg. This is getting ridiculous. Nothing's been solved yet. I tried selecting all of my snare events and shifting them over a few ticks. No difference. I listened to the project (which is just a single drum track) at half-tempo. No difference.
 
So, it would seem that the thing I suspected the least was the problem. I made a significant upgrade from my PreSonus FireStudio Mobile to an RME Fireface UCX. I'm really loving the Fireface so far. And more importantly, I've gone through several of my drum tracks several times and it literally hasn't missed a beat.
So I don't know it if was a latency issue, a driver issue, a clock-jitter issue or what, but as far as I know, I had my FireStudio optimized.
 
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