Anyone seen this one???

[dachay2tnr]

I have a project that had midi drum tracks. I had earlier converted these to audio and had archived the midi tracks (snare, kick, cymbals, etc.).

Last week I decided I didn't like the kick sound and decided to create a new audio track from the original midi track.

I deleted the current audio kick track and unarchived the midi track. I output the midi track to a Roland V-Drum kit, and returned audio from the V-Drum to a Sonar audio track for recording. IOW, I was simply using the V-Drums for the sample sounds.

So far so good. However, the resulting recorded audio ended up quite out of sync with the rest of the music. It seemed to start out OK, but quicky became delayed relative to the rest of the music. What was even weirder was that occasionally I would get two kick drum hits in the audio when there was only one in the midi.

Any ideas as to what's going on here? I didn't have a lot of time that day to trouble-shoot, so I simply gave up. However, I'm pretty sure everything was hooked up properly.

BTW, when I listened DURING the recording process everything sounded fine. It was only AFTER the audio was recorded that this problem arose.

[minofifa]

Roland Vdrum isn't a softsynth is it? sorry i can't be much help. All i know is that "hardware" midi never seems to work for me..... ever. I'm strictly a vsti / samples kind of guy to save myself the frustration of events just like that.

[dachay2tnr]

Originally Posted by minofifa

Roland Vdrum isn't a softsynth is it?

No, it's a virtual drum kit. It uses rubber pads which are set up and played like real drums, but they trigger sampled sounds. You can also feed it midi data to trigger the samples as well (which is what I'm doing).

The problem I have is that I have used the V-Drums before. In fact, that's what was used to create both the original midi and the initial audio kick drum tracks.

If I play it back in real time using the midi track to trigger the audio, everything sounds fine. But when I record the audio it ends up completely out of sync. Wierd.

[Hornplayer]

dachay2tnr

Here's a guess. Is there another midi machine code (mmc) or another midi time code being generated by either the computer or the v-drums? I'm guessing some kind of default that's not apparent. If so the sync may lose its way, but it thinks it's right.
In my limited experience anytime the sync is off, it's a clock problem no matter midi or audio. Sometimes those rascals (clocks) have a mind of their own.
Just a guess.

John

[Porter]

dachay2tnr,

Have you actually got the V-Drums 'synced' or are you just playing them.. I'm gussing the latter.

Only thing I could think of is if you have the MIDI out's of the V-Drums going back in, try disconnecting that and see how you go..

Porter

[acidrock]

Did you assign the midi track to the VSC and get the same result?

Ther should be no tempo or timecode involved as the transfer is actually just notes played in real time.

BTW, when I listened DURING the recording process everything sounded fine. It was only AFTER the audio was recorded that this problem arose.

Were there any mind altering substances used at either time?

[dachay2tnr]

Originally Posted by acidrock

Did you assign the midi track to the VSC and get the same result?

I didn't try it with the VSC. As I mentioned, I didn't do much trouble-shooting as I was short on time.

Originally Posted by acidrock

Were there any mind altering substances used at either time?

No. You think that might have been the problem?

Originally Posted by Porter

Have you actually got the V-Drums 'synced' or are you just playing them.. I'm gussing the latter.

Only thing I could think of is if you have the MIDI out's of the V-Drums going back in, try disconnecting that and see how you go..

Daniel - They were "played" several months ago and we recorded the midi into Sonar. Now I am sending the already recorded midi back to the V-drums and recording the audio.

There was only one midi cable in use. Out from my sound card, into the v-drums. No midi return cable was connected. The return cables were two guitar jacks for the two audio outs.


I'll try it again this weekend when I have more time to think it through. I could understand this more if the entire track was off by a certain amount. But as I said, it seems to start out OK for a measure or two and then starts to drift, actually more of a lag. And the double hits are really puzzling. I have no clue where they are coming from, and they are simply random. Maybe two or three of them throughout the entire song.

What's worse, the confidence recording waveform looks fine as it's recording. But when it converts to the regular waveform after I stop, the "hits" end up in different places.

[Qwerty]

The fact that it is a lag seems to suggest the MIDI + audio chase mechanism thingy. Have you fiddled with the MIDI and audio syncing options in Sonar to see if these make a difference?

Q.

[dachay2tnr]

Originally Posted by Qwerty

The fact that it is a lag seems to suggest the MIDI + audio chase mechanism thingy. Have you fiddled with the MIDI and audio syncing options in Sonar to see if these make a difference?

Q.

Thanks, Q. No, as mentioned, I really haven't done any trouble-shooting. Just thought I'd post here first on the chance someone else has run into this.

I just found this post on the Sonar site regarding the M-Audio .46 drivers:

So I've been using the 36 drivers for a long time without issue. I record at 24/44.1 and have my buffer at 64 in the M-Audio Control Panel for my Delta 66. I can go down to 1.5ms on my slider in Sonar, but i generally leave it at 5.8ms. I can't even remember there being a 42 driver release, but I was away from this stuff for a little while.

Anyway, I'm not seeing a lot of incentive to go to the 46 drivers right now. I was just at a friend's place tonight who had the 46 drivers installed for his Delta 44, and we were having a lot of audio sync issues with recorded tracks. We were working on about a 90 second piece with about 8 tracks of 24/96 audio and one Edirol inserted playing a click note manually programmed on a MIDI track (long story). It seemed like removing the Edirol helped somewhat, but the driver still seemed twitchy to me. There was also about 3 second gap between the time we pressed play with recording armed and the time playback started. My system is currently more robust than the one we were working on (but it was no slouch), , but I'm subscribing to the "if it aint broke don't fix it" mentality here.

Now it is quite possible that I have not recorded anything since upgrading to the .46 driver. As I said, I have done this process several times before with no issues. So this has me wondering if maybe it is an issue with the new driver.

One way to find out, I guess.

[mbuster]

I'm no guru, but I don't think th problem has anything to do with MIDI. As you said, during the recording process, it sounds fine. The MIDI triggering is obviously working OK.You're just recording audio from the vdrums. Therefore, Sonar has no idea what the hell it's recording, and couldn't care less about MIDI. You might as well be recording a kazoo, as it's just audio.
I'd lean towards the driver issue you mentioned, although my delta card has been fine since the driver update.

[skinnyarms]

it's probably not, but it might just be a latency thing

you should try muting everything before you record

[James Argo]

I'll go download the driver and check it out, Dachay


Jaymz

[jamie_drum]

Have you changed the default sample rate? I had a weird problem once where I changed the Sonar default sample rate from 96KHz to 44.1KHz. Thereafter, when I opened a project that was originally recorded at 96, and played a MIDI track through the VSC, the timing of the notes (and the pitch) was totally screwed up. It didn't work right till I changed the default sample rate in the Audio Options dialogue back to 96.