Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Hope this doesn't post twice. What do I need to trigger PC drum software from my DTX SPIII kit for live performance? Wanted more sounds. If done a bit of resaerch....seems I need a midi to usb cable, a drum sample pack and a sequencer for the PC..... wanted to take a minimalist approach to see how it works...ideas?

Hi Chris,

I've done this with my DTXtreme IIs, but it should be no different to what you want. In my case I used BFD2 as the drum samples/virtual instrument(VI).

You don't NEED a sequencer, many of these VIs have a standalone mode, as well as VST/etc mode of operation. VST was steinberg's invention I think, some standard way of making VIs compatible with a number of software sequencers/Digital Audio Workstations (DAW).

What you Might want to do is buy a good Audio interface for your PC. m-audio ones get great reviews from people I know. I have a MOTU Ultralite, which is connected via firewire (as are many) but I think USB 2 isn't far behind, if it all.

Whatever you get, make sure it has good ASIO drivers (Audio Stream Input/Output - it's a protocol for digital audio). Most will have these days, but make sure your operating system is properly supported - especially if you're running or going to upgrade to Windows 7.... That said, MOTU/m-Audio/RME/Eidrol etc, all seem to have that sorted nowadays.

I think the lack of ASIO drivers or poor ASIO performance in Keith's case is what gave him such big latency...250ms is pretty huge. I (can) get down to about 5ms.

PC sound cards, such as Creative Soundblaster XXXX or on-board sound chips tend not to have good/any ASIO drivers. You can download (for free) ASIO4All, which can work quite well, but is definitely no replacement for a good audio interface.
You'll also need a "decent" CPU. Nothing stupidly powerful for what you want to do, I think. Anything half decent from the past 2 years should be fine. More RAM helps, as more samples can be loaded into Memory and not have to stream from your hard drives, which can add all kinds of weird and horrible noises/artifacts.

With BFD2 for example (not sure about BFD) you can map your pads to whichever drums you like within the program, which is quite a cool feature. It's the only one I've used, so can't comment on other similar drum samples/programs.

What I would do in the first instance is get hold of *some* kind of virtual instrument... there may be a trial version of BFD/similar floating around and the ASIO4All drivers, assuming you just have a basic sound card and see how you get on. I'm not sure if you can remap the notes that come out of your drum module to another when you hit a pad. I'm not actually sure you can on mine, but maybe.. I think I've done it... Anyway, if that's not possible and you can't do it in the drum program then you might get some interesting things going on, but it will at least give you a rough idea of performance, and whether or not you'd need a better audio interface to get the latency down.

AISO has a buffer size (in samples) from something like 64 to 2000+. With lower values, you get lower latency, but the CPU has to work a lot harder, so you might get dropouts/clicks/pops. I think 192 is what I use, presently for most things and that gives about 10ms of latency.... which is nigh-on unnoticable...at least to my ears :)

Sorry if the above is too much info/bad info/confusing, but I hope it helps somewhat.

Any questions, I'll do my best to answer. This e-mail was quite rushed.

To: DTXpress@yahoogroups.com
From: keith@...
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:05:43 +0000
Subject: [DTXpress] Re: Software triggering

The only real advantage is (arguably) that you can go 64 bit with windows 7, but windows XP is *mostly* 32 bit. This lets applications use more RAM - you're limited to 3GB total with 32 bit anyway, I think. There is/was a 64 bit version of XP floating around (not sure if it was ever available to buy at most places), but if you're gonna go 64 bit you may as well move to windows 7.

So in that sense, windows 7 (64bit) IS preferred. More RAM for samples is a good thing. Mind you, hard drive speed if streaming samples from disk (which a lot of the VI's I've used do) is also a consideration. 7200rpm vs 5400 - go for faster.

I'm probably going way over what's necessary for you here anyway. You'll most likely be only using one sample library, and since it's drums a relatively small number of samples.

I'm not sure about toontrack stuff, but at least with BFD2 I know you can choose to load only the 16bit samples, rather than 24bit in order to keep things running smoothly. Take up a lot (LOT) less space (and therefore RAM).

Right I've had enough of work, going home... back later :D

To: DTXpress@yahoogroups.com
From: cbarnhart44@...
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:22:19 +0000
Subject: [DTXpress] Re: Software triggering