Live Synth, DR-008, or Soundfonts?

guitar ed

guitar ed

New member
Here's another one for ya. I have an SB Live card. When it comes to drums, I see three options. 1) I can build a kit in the DR-008, which will take a fair amount of time, because I have a layered kit with lots of samples. 2) I can use the Live Synth and load up the drum soundfont, which I already made using the aforementioned samples, or 3) I can do what I'm doing now and load the drum soundfont in my Audio HQ, which makes it the default drums for any midi file that I play. Given those options, doesn't the way I'm doing it seem to make the most sense? I can be sure that I'll use less CPU power by doing it this way. I guess the question is, is there an advantage to using the DR-008 or Live Synth, even if I use the same drum sounds all the time? Thanks

ed
 
...you got one more option... Using VSampler :D

No, that will make you even more confuse :D

Well, AFAIK, either three of them will serve you fine. I mean, if you didn't have any trouble using either one, then go for your taste. FYI, using DXi (DR-008 or LivesynthPro), will make it easier when you need to "render" those MIDI tracks to wave without need to actually record them. Just bounce to track. However, it will somehow "eat" a bit of your CPU power. I also found a minor issue related to tune, I've posted on this thread...

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84703

Otherwise, using soundfonts in regular way (AudioHQ + attach in SONAR way) is more CPU power friendly, but it cost a space in your memory since you upload them to your computer's RAM. And you need to record the MIDI track to audio to get audio track (cannot using "bounce to track" feature) before mixing.

;)
Jaymz
 
Thanx, James. I thought it was three roads leading to the same house, but the soundfont in Audio HQ works well for me. I see what you mean about rendering, so I still need to consider building a kit in DR-008. C-ya

ed
 
The DR-008 gives you total control of the drums! It's fantastic! Try it with the Drumkit from Hell and you'll never use anything else!

And the soundfonts GoldDrums (from www.hammersound.net) and the Blue Jay Soundfont (from the Sonar 2 CD) is great too!

Anyway... the sounds does matter. But the most important part (IMHO) is the programming!

:)
 
I want to agree with moskus here. Using soundfonts is OK for general programming your composition. Once you want to mix down you'd like to have more control over each drum sound (panning, volume, eq, effects etc). A sampler like DR-008 works better.
 
I'm not sure I agree with you, Bloodhound. The reason is, the drum sounds I use for my soundfont are the exact same wav's that I would load into the DR-008. Same sounds. So, either way, I'm still gonna ultimately record each drum sound to a seperate track, weather it's from the soundfont or the DR-8. Once it's a wav on its own track, I have all the control I want. Do you see what I mean? I use a layered set of drum sounds. About 9 snares, 5 kicks, 10 hats, etc. My soundfont is set up to trigger the different samples according to velocity, which is exactly how I would set them up in the DR-8 using the VeloSampler. So, I think it's six in one hand and half a dozen in the other. You take the high road, I'll take the low road, and we'll both wind up in the same place. Make sense? I think so, but it's late and my eyes are burning!!

ed
 
One more thing: The VeloSampler is kinda pissin' me off. I load my 9 snares in there, and when I try to assign the velocity limits, I can't get to 6, 7, 8, and 9. I can see them, but you have to click on the little thing on the left hand side to make it active before you can edit. The problem is, they seem to be located below the bottom of the window, and I can't get to 'em! Anyone know what I'm talking about?? I hope so!

ed
 
The manual really should tell you this. And if not, email angus at fxpansion and ask him...
 
Ed, I see what you mean. Once you bounce the sounds to tracks you hve full control. The way I work is to leave the bouncing to tracks proccess for the mixing stage. Your way does actually give you more control, as the samplers have only 4 audio outputs max to use effects. (not sure about Velo).
 
Well, I've spent most of the day messing with the DR-8, and I think I'm gonna abandon the effort and leave things as they are. To me, it's much more convenient to just incorporate my main drums, bass, piano and strings into my default soundfont. That way, when I open a MIDI file, I have the sounds there rather than having to open the DR-8, and load a kit before I can hear drums.

I play guitar at my church, so I'm always looking for decent MIDI files of contemporary christian music that I can manipulate and convert to a backing track. So I'm opening lots of files, and it would be a pain to have to load the drums for each one of them.

I still think the DR-8 is an amazing tool, and I may still use it if a song comes up where my normal drum sounds don't fit. In that case I would construct a new kit specifically for that song. I'm close to ordering the Drumkit From Hell. I love the way the mp3 demo sounds. Does that include unprocessed samples? They sound huge on the demo, but I was wondering how raw the sounds are.

ed
 
Anyone try putting together drum tracks in Fruity Loops then opening Fruity as a VSTi in Cakewalk? It seems to work pretty well for me... control over each sample channel, panning, effects, etc. Never tried DR-008. How does it compare to this method?
 
If you're using FL, you're basically writing your drum tracks in a step-sequencer. You add channels for each of the drum sounds you need, then you create patterns, eventually putting them all together to form your song. The DR-008 is used to trigger samples from a MIDI drum track. So, you would write your drums in a MIDI track, assign that track to the DR-8, load your samples to the appropriate pads, (creating a drumkit) causing the MIDI info to trigger the DR-8. If you use the same drum sounds all the time, you could spend a little time on the front end creating your kit in the DR-8, then create a drum map to go along with it. Then when you're ready to write your next big hit, just assign your MIDI drum track to the drum map, which is playing through the DR-8, and have at it. If you're comfortable writing drums in a piano roll, I personally think you're further ahead than stringing together a bunch of patterns. You also run into problems with FL if you need say, 7 snare layers, 7 hi-hats, 4 kicks, and 3 of each tom. That adds up to a whole bunch of channels, and it gets to be a mess. I have a SoundBlaster card, so I put together all my favorite drum sounds in a soundfont that I use as my default sounds. Works for me!!

ed
 
Noodlehoss said:
Anyone try putting together drum tracks in Fruity Loops then opening Fruity as a VSTi in Cakewalk? It seems to work pretty well for me... control over each sample channel, panning, effects, etc. Never tried DR-008. How does it compare to this method?
Click to expand...
Do a search in this forum for "Fruitloops" by member Paul881, and you'll get the hot tips... :)

I consider him as the master of combining FL and Sonar/HS! :)
 
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