Questions about multi output drums

[danjags]

Hi!

 

I have been spending a few hours trying to get this to work right with my drum kits and running into some problems that I haven’t been able to find answers to. I’m trying to program 2 instruments that are in track stacks for multi output processing-

 

A) a Alesis DM6 drumkit with Drumkit designer  and

B) an alesis sampled pro with Ultra beat

 

I have 4 questions. The first two are about the DM6 with Drumkit designer and the second two are about the sampled pro with Ultra beat. Could anyone please offer help?

 

 

1.

On the DM6, the  multi-output processing is kind of working- some of the pads are correctly mapped to the right output channels, but some of them are not. For example, the kick works perfectly, but the cymbal and crash are both triggering something called “Room A”, so it wont let me separate their sounds (even though they are producing different midi notes). There’s alot of issues like this going on- the hit hat is also triggering Room A, and the middle Tom is only triggering the low tom (and nothing is triggering the middle tom).

 

I dont see any place in the settings of the drum kit designer that would allow me to re-route the pads/sounds to different output channels (like there is in Ultrabeat). How can I make this work right?

 

 

2.

I’m confused about how switching the drum kits works because there seems to be two places that can change drums in:

a) the dropdown menu in the top left corner of the drum designer plugin and

b) the library on the left side of logic main screen

 

They each have different drum kits. When I change the drum kit via the dropdown menu in drum designer, it keeps all of the settings/plugins that I had selected. When I click the drums in the library, it changes all of the settings and usually makes a regular stereo (non multi output drum) track.

 

They both seem to be using the same plug in , the interface of the plugin looks just like the interface of the drum designer plugin , just different drums and ones changing all my settings. Whats going on here? And how can I make it so that I still keep the same settings/plugins that I added to the original drum kit no matter which drum kit I change to?

 

3.

Ultrabeat works well with the multi-output processing except for one issue- I’m trying to lock the outputs so that I can change presets in Ultrabeat and still have it route to the same outputs and channels for multi-output processing. I’ve followed instructions in this article https://ask.audio/articles/making-multi-out-setup-easy-in-logic-pros-ultrabeat to create a smart control setting for “auto-set outputs” (specifically Step 3). When I did this, it would change all of the outputs in logic to different outputs than the ones that I had currently selected. It seems to have worked in changing the outputs, but it seemed to change them to random output numbers. Does anybody know what could be causing this? Perhaps that article left out a step? 

 

 

4.

This just happened when I tried to troubleshoot step 3- I’m trying to edit the smart control I made for “auto-set outputs” on the track for the ultra beat, but when I hit the B key to open smart controls, it shows "insert a plugin on the tracks channel strip to use smart controls” in the place where the smart control goes. Ultrabeat IS loaded on that track- I don’t know why its saying this. On other tracks when I hit B it shows the usual smart control, but not on this one. I’ve tried closing and reloading ultra beat and it still says the same thing. Am I missing something? 

 

Thanks so much

Dan

[Arnaud]

1. "Room A" (or "Room B") are simulations of mics that would be placed in two locations in the drums recording room. You can edit whether any element of the kit "feeds" these (as well as Leak -which is leakage of one element of the kit into the pics of the other elements- and Overheads - which is a mic placed over the whole drum kit and is the primary mic for Crashes and Ride-) by opening the DKD plugin window, selecting the element in the kit and setting this at the bottom right of the window. You may need to use DKD in "producer kit" mode (see 2. below) to get these. About re-routing: you can't really do that, but clicking the white (actually, light grey) triangle at the bottom left of the plugin window displays more settings, one of them being the Input mapping mode (such as GM, GM w/ ModWheel hihat control, or VDrums). This could possibly help you get what you want.

 

2. Drop down only changes the settings of the DKD plugin itself, thus you keep the rest of your channel strip settings (such as other plugins, etc) unchanged. Library loads a whole preset channel strip (in standard mode) or even patch (= set of specifically routed multi-output channels strips that are part of a summing track stack) in Producer Kit mode. So that resets whole channels strips to what is defined in that Library preset, that's why it overrides your previous settings (such as other fx, etc).

 

You should note that, via the Library, you have two types of presets available for the "same" kit. One (such as "SoCal") is available at the top level of the Drum Kits folder in the Library ; it is a "standard" version of the kit, in stereo (no multi-output) mode, everything being mixed down to stereo. The other (in this same example, it will be called "SoCal+") you access from the Producer Kits subfolder (at the bottom of the Drum Kits folder), and you guess what is must be: the Producer Kit version of that kit (all of them have a "+" appended at the end of their name). If you select it and open the mixer, you will see that the track for which you selected that patch is now a full (and pretty omplex) track stack. If you click the light grey triangle at the bottom left of that channel in the mixer, it will open up the content of that track stack and you get a whole buch of specific outputs of DKD (which is now in a multi-output mode) with dedicated faders, pan knobs, individual fx plugins such as EQ, etc, plus a set of busses for various purposes, such as PUNCH which is an envelope shaper, for instance. You have different outputs for all the individual mics through which the kit was recorded. Note that the Overheads output is the one for crashes and ride cymbals altogether (just the way you record them with a stereo overhead mic). There you'll also see the Leak, Room A and Room B mics. If you don't touch anything the Standard and Producer Kit versions will sound EXACTLY the same, but the Producer Kit version offers a lot more mixing options, obviously.

 

3 and 4. Sorry, I can't help on these ones. There's one thing you should know, though. if you load the Drum Machine Designer patches from the Library, you're actually loading a whole track stack with UB, in multi-output mode, at its foundation. So if what you're trying to do is use these preset kits of UB in a multi-output mode, you won't even have to setup anything if you go this way. Loading these patches, Logic will do and set up everything for you, and you get to something with a number of similarities to a Producer Kit, but adapted to electronic drums instead.