Drum Machine Designer - But using it with another VST than Quicksampler - Is this possible?

I really love the way the DMD works: You put samples on the pads and when you create a pattern-region it only shows the used pads and you can start creating drum-patterns. I also like the function to split the midi-notes to the individual tracks as it automatically detects the right tracks for the notes.

 

But I would really like to do this with another sampler that I load into DMD. I like to use a 3rd party AU to do my drums (it's called Atlas, a pad-based drum sampler, but I think it's the same for other AU's like Battery etc.).

 

It's possible to load AU on the DMD-Pads, but my problem is: I would like to load the same AU (Atlas) on different pads in DMD but trigger different notes. So for example: The first pad in DMD triggers the first note in Atlas (both C1) and the second pad in DMD triggers the second note in Atlas (C#1) and so on. But I havent't figured out a way to load the same instance of my AU on different pads, the only possible way that I know is to load a new instance of the AU on every pad in DMD, but I don't want to have to load so many instances of my AU..

 

I hope it's not to complicated to understand..

Great! Thx, the changing of the instrument in the environment - channel worked (although I could swear that I tried this before, but nevermind..)

 

Next step would be - as my plugin is a multi-out plugin - to connect the sub-track with the correct aux-channel so that it's possible to adjust volume and effects directly on the dmd-sub-track. But I guess that would be quite complicated to do

not at all, your instrument plugin should have a multi-out plugin version to put in there, use that version, then open the track stack in the mixer, hit the + button a few times and off you go.

oh but actually you do bring up an interesting point..if you want to AUTOMATE the aux channel...that you will have to do outside of the track stack with a separate track. The tracks inside the DMD track stack are NOT aux tracks. You may run into some issues with that frankly. i guess you should add them as separate tracks in the track stack...so you'd have two tracks for each cell. The non-aux-track would be connected to the DMD cell for midi handling....and the AUX track would be separate, could probably be moved manually inside the track stack, i haven't tried that though, try it and let us know.

not at all, your instrument plugin should have a multi-out plugin version to put in there, use that version, then open the track stack in the mixer, hit the + button a few times and off you go.

Yes, but only the first output is connected to the first sub-track of my DMD-Track stacks. I would like to have it to behave like the DMD-Factory-Presets where my sub-tracks are also directly connected to its specific outputs. I think thats what your last answer refers to?

It looks a bit strange, that when I make a Midi-Pattern in the DMD-Track-stack only the "normal" output is shown, but although the other pads are played, their volumes are not shown directly on the track, because they are linked to the aux-channel.

Thats what I mean: When the Kick plays its shown at the volume-control, but altough the snare (output at aux3) also plays, it's not shown in the tracks or the track-stack. I could probably add the aux-channel to the DMD, but then there's an extra-channel .. would be really cool to make it work like the factory presets

I dont know what you mean by “work like the factory presets” please describe better.

 

DMD is nothing other then a special kind of track stack that routes all the midi at the top of the stack through the DMD midi handler to map pitches to instrument channels. Each cell in the DMD mapper needs to refer to an instrument channel strip in the environment. By default it creates a seperate instrument channel for each cell. However logicpro’s preferred and documented method for handling multi timbral instruments is to create multiple environment objects that reference the same underlying instrument. So by doing that manually In the environment you can create those and then use those as what DMD sends midi to. Read the other threads I quoted to understand.

 

Multi Timbral instrument tracks work as you are noting because they are tracks that all send to one and only one instrument channel so they are all sharing the same master volume fader of that instrument channel.

 

Aux channels are how you can return audio from multi timbral instruments in logicpro but by default those channels Do not correspond to the source midi track. You have to have both really.

 

There is undocumented feature in logicpro with some limitations whereby aux tracks can be created instead of the normal way that logic sets up multi timbral instruments. That can sometimes work but I did not try that inside a DMD track stack I doNt know If it would work. Try it and let us know

 

There are limitations and idiosyncrasies with the aux track trick. It very well might work though so it’s worth a try.

 

Otherwise you can still have both tracks inside the track stack it does t really matter. For DMD you’re putting your midi regions at the top of the whole stack, not inside the track stack. DMD routes the midi through to the instrument. Then you can automate the aux tracks you could also potentially hide the aux tracks in a folder so the mixer is not as messy

Edited September 13, 2020 by Dewdman42

Or just make your life easier and put a seperate plugin instance on each cell instead of messing around with multi timbral

I don't have time today, most likely, to figure this out....maybe later...but anyway...here is one of the factory patches from LogicPro 10.4. This patch was removed in 10.5, replaced by new patches that use QSampler instead of UltraBeat. So the new 10.5 approach uses one plugin instance per DMD cell. But this older patch from 10.4 uses a multi-timbral based DMD patch...and yes...using AUX tracks....

 

So have a look at this patch..it works in 10.5 too, its just not included with LogicPro 10.5 anymore. But the thing is you won't be able to start with some template and easily switch to a different plugin. When you swap in a new plugin, the aux channels will all go away and then you have to build up the AUX channels and tracks again from scratch...so there is no easy way to create one shareable template for everyone to start with.. pretty much you just need to look closely at this patch and then figure out how to set that up yourself...

After Party.patch.zip

Alight...here is quick tutorial how to setup an AUX based DMD patch. Again...I can't really make this for you unless I have the plugin you need and set it up for you. As soon as you swap plugins, all the AUX connections are lost and you have to redo it all. Once you do it once though, you can save it as a patch and never have to do it again, for that particular plugin... But note I also ran into a problem in this procedure...so...it doesn't actually work...someone else might be able to figure it out based on these instructions to start out with....

 

1. Create an instrument track, use the patch library and select the factory electronic kit called "Empty Kit" as a starting place
    
   
    
    
   
2. You can open the DMD editor to see that by default it has the first cell populated and pointing to an instrument channel called Inst1. Go to the mixer and add the instrument plugin of your choice (make sure to use the multi-out version of it). I am doing this demo using Ultrabeat.
    
   
    
    
   
3. In this example I loaded up an UltraBeat preset drum kit called "Epic Electro".
    
    
   
4. In the mixer, hit the "+" button on the UltraBeat channel to expand out all the AUX channels for the the multi-outs. DO NOT at this time create any AUX tracks, just expand the mixer with the "+" button for as many AUX channels as you will need.
    
   
    
    
   
5. Now comes the tricky part that you have to do in just the right order.. and frankly I ran into some weird problems where doing this for the 3rd and 4th buttons seemed to wipe out what I did on the 2nd cell button...so... There is probably some very specific exact order of doing this to prevent LobicPro from messing it up as you go, and I won't have time this morning to figure that out, if its even possible, but maybe someone else can figure it out based on this discussion...
    
    
   
6. In any case when you click the "+" button on the 2nd cell, it will automatically create a new instrument channel called Inst2, which will be placed inside the track stack. Now go to the environment and find that channel strip object called "inst2. Note from the mixer window the first AUX channel that was created there. In this case its called "Aux 4". Ok... now in the environment select the Inst2 channel strip, and in the inspector on the left, change the "channel" attribute to "Aux 4". Also change the name of the channel strip object at the top of the inspector to something meaningful, in this case I'm calling it "Snare"
    
   
    
    
   
7. AT that point you should see that the DMD window updated the second cell to call it "snare". Set the pitch values of that cell to hit whichever sound in Ultrabeat..in this case I set it to D1, then I went into Ultrabeat and also changed the OUT parameter of the snare sound to go to out 2 instead of out 1 like the kick on C1.
    
   
    
    
   
8. At that point it's working. The two cells go to the right sound in Ultrabeat and they are each outputting to different outs through the mixer...the snare is on the AUX 4 channel..
    
    
   
9. Now when I tried to repeat the above on the third cell, the 2nd cell was cleared back to nothing in DMD, I don't know why. This is undoubtedly related to the way LogicPro automatically names environment objects and assigns them to instrument objects on the fly, bla bla bla, something nobody wants to think about it, but in this case its destroying what I did as I do the next...so... There might be some very specific procedure that can get this done without that happening, but am out of time right now to try to figure that out. In fact I think I tried to figure that out a few months ago when I did the GM template and couldn't, but maybe not... maybe someone else can get it to work..

 

As you can see, its probably just easier to use a separate plugin instance for each cell and don't worry about it. Unless you have a very specific reason to need to have all the cells pointing to one plugin instance... Its generally not that big of a deal to have a few plugin instances instead of just one, but if there is something in the way the plugin works where you really need them in one instance...well you have the GM template...but if you want the AUX tracks like the old factory patches...then someone still has to figure out a procedure to get it all created without eating itself as you go...

Thanks for this little instruction.. I tried it before that way and always the DMD-Pad suddenly disappears.

I just tried it again multiple times with some little differences everytime, but till now I didnt figure it out gonna try tomorrow again, but I guess one plugin per pad is really the best working solution

I spent a few hours mucking around with this last night. I could not get anything working in a way that should be considered correct. I would like to summarize my observations here in case anyone can take the torch and figure it out from here in the future.

 

First, observe the Factory library patch I attached earlier in this thread called "After Party". That is what we are wanting to achieve from scratch, but using a different plugin instrument instead of UltraBeat. it should be possible, since obviously Apple was able to create those factory library patches and they continue to work. The patch uses a single plugin instance for DMD, with each cell going to different midi pitch within that single plugin...and the audio routed through multi-out to up to 25 stereo AUX channels associated with that inst channel.

 

 

This factory patch works perfectly!

 

But I am unable to create one from scratch using the tools provide by LogicPro to build DMD based patches. Maybe there is a little trick to get this done, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Its always possible that Apple built these factory library patches some other way using internal apple dev tools to build it up in some way, or else there is some procedure that is not obvious to do it in LogicPro gui.

 

The main problem, as I see it, is that the DMD editor only has the ability to hit a "+" button on each cell, which creates a new instrument channel each time. But in this case, we want a new instrument channel only for the first cell, and then other cells should be effectively adding a multi-out AUX channel (and track) to that first instrument channel for each new cell we hit the "+" button. But alas the GUI doesn't do that.

 

So I tried several different things to work around this. By using the environment we can hit the DMD cell "+" button to create a new instrument channel, then go into the environment and change the "channel" attribute of that channel strip to point to the applicable AUX channel strip that is the multi-out from Inst1. And that does initially seem to work, but there are some odd things about it. Let me explain....

 

First I was able to get a DMD working as desired by using the following procedure:

 

1. Create DMD track, but Battery multi-out plugin on the first Inst1 instrument channel
    
    
   
2. Press the "+" button the battery instrument channel (mixer view) so that I created 16 stereo AUX channels which are attached to the Inst1 instrument as multi-out
    
    
   
3. Go to DMD and click the + button on multiple cells, which creates Inst2, Inst3, Inst4, etc.. instrument channels in the mixer.
    
    
   
4. After having created instrument channels for all the cells I plan to use, then go back to the environment and change each of those channel strip objects (inst2, inst3, inst4), to point to AUX4, AUX5, AUX6 (which happen to be the channel strips that were created for Battery's multi-out when I clicked the + button on the mixer channel).

 

Doing the above, resulted in the following:

 

 

And it appears to work as desired. LogicPro did not eat away the previous cell each time I created the next one. The secret was to create all the inst channels ahead of time before going back to remap them to the AUX channels.

 

Now that being said, this setup will become problematic later, because the first time you try to create another instrument track, even including outside the DMD, the DMD will lose all the references created above, and blank out the cells, back to square one, because I think LogicPro is still probably confused at this point about the instrument object allocations. Note the following image from the mixer after having done the above procedure:

 

 

Notice how the mixer channel strips that I "remapped" in the environment...do not appear correctly...there is something odd about them. They seem to be working as expected the midi from DMD is routed to the right sound, the sound comes back to the mixer through the right multi-out, but look closely at the image and notice that even though those three mixer channels (cell2, cell3, cell4) are functioning as AUX returns from Inst1, the instrument plugin button on the channel strip is empty...and it SHOULD say something like we see on the next currently unused AUX return "Bat9-10".

 

The mixer thinks that it is still an "instrument" channel even though we attempted to change it in the environment to be an AUX return channel.

So even though it seems to work as expected for now, I don't think this trick in the environment is completely changing the status of that channelstrip, there must be hidden attributes somewhere, which leaves the situation in an unstable state..and perhaps that is why later on if we try to create a new instrument track, LogicPro will become confused about which inst object to use internally, and that's why it will start to eat away some of the DMD cell assignments later on. Just guessing out loud now.

 

So what I can say, so far...is that yes its possible with this hack to setup a DMD in multi-timbral mode, using the AUX tracks...by first creating all the Instrument channels before tweaking them in the environment. But later on, its unclear at the moment what will happen when you continue working on the project adding more instrument tracks.

 

I have not been able to figure out any other way to create a proper DMD setup that looks like the "After Party" library patch mentioned above. That one has the AUX channels properly assigned to DMD cells without issue and works 100% no problems. I just can't seem to figure out how to actually set something like that up from scratch.

 

Plist and CST

 

Another route people may go down to attempt to hack around this would be to have a look at the actual AfterParty.patch pkg contents. Looking inside reveals a collection of channel preset CST files (which are binary) and a single plist file called "data.plist". This plist has a number of interesting parameters related to DMD and track stacks, etc. I played around with a few different things to see if I could hack my way to a proper working library patch, but I could not figure anything out that worked right. maybe someone else might have better luck than me.

 

Or maybe someone has a better idea of how to assign the AUX return from and instrument to a DMD cell, rather then always having to assign them each to a separate inst channel and then attempt to remap to AUX in the environment, or perhaps there is another way to do it in the environment that will do it properly without the problem I showed above that is somehow broken.

 

Ah the joys of hacking...

 

I don't have any more time to spend on this. Maybe someone else will have something to say some day that will figure out the trick to get this working. However Apple created those older library patches...is lost now. The docs don't tell how to do it. Somehow, someone at Apple did it before 10.5 and it continues to work as a functioning patch in 10.5 too, but that patch is no longer included with LPX 10.5, Apple has moved away from using Ultrabeat in its patches and instead using QSampler as separate instrument channels each, eliminating the need to even set something like this up. which is fine for those factory kits, but it does still leave people left in the dark for how to setup a multi-timbral DMD track that works similarly as the Ultrabeat one works...which is really frustrating and could be easily solvable with small tweaks to the LogicPro gui, so I encourage people that are interested to make a feature request. Doubt they will do anything about it though.

One should think that it’s not that complicated as it works with the ultrabeat-Patch, but I also didn’t figure out a way yet where the pads won’t delete themselves

I don't know if it helps, but I found out that as long the DMD-Plugin-window is opened and you change the channel-assignements in the envonment it works and the newly assigned pads stay there, but as soon as one closes the DMD window and open it again they are gone, so there must be something happening when opening the plugin-window that deletes the new pads

yea if you even create a DMD full of cells and then try to create one more instrument track in the project, it will nuke them all. The problem, I'm sure, is related to some underlying thing in the way the environment objects are constructed and modifiable by the environment. It would be nice to figure this out as I think the old Ultrabeat patches are very elegant and would be applicable to some other third party instruments such as Battery, Geist and others.

 

Anyway, for now I feel the easiest and best way is probably to just make a separate plugin instance for each cell.

 

or..you can use the multi-timbral approach I posted originally, that works too, but the only downside is that you don't have the AUX track to use for automation of the audio returns...you'd have to create additional AUX tracks for that purpose on a case by case basis, will work fine, the only downside is the contents of the track stack will have more tracks to look at.