Using Roland V-drums with Receptor? Help!

[Nikki Nexo]

I know that Muse Research is working with Alternate Mode to put out the ultimate "drum module" for electronic drummers. They are beta testing Drums From Hell starting next week. It will include having 2 gigs of RAM! I know that BFD is already available and the BFD samples sound fantastic, but then there's DFH. I'm interested in the Receptor to use as my drum module live, but the quirkyness of it (from what I've read here in the forums) has me a little concerned. I would like to stay away from taking a computer on stage if at all possible, i.e. the crash factor.

I have a Roland e-kit with the TD-10 Expanded brain. How much latency should I expect via MIDI from the TD-10 to the Receptor?

Will there be a noticeable amount of delay (latency) from the time I hit the drum, to the sound of the drum actually coming out of the FOH PA speakers or my in-ear monitors? Like a dat-dat type of thing?

I have an Emu E4X hardware sampler that I've used via MIDI with no latency at all. In fact, the Emu tracts the drum hits better than the TD-10. But the thought of using BFD or DFH live on stage is unbelievable. The drums on those sample programs ROCK! Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks.

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

I know that Muse Research is working with Alternate Mode to put out the ultimate "drum module" for electronic drummers. ...

I have a Roland e-kit with the TD-10 Expanded brain. How much latency should I expect via MIDI from the TD-10 to the Receptor? ...

Will there be a noticeable amount of delay (latency) from the time I hit the drum, to the sound of the drum actually coming out of the FOH PA speakers or my in-ear monitors? Like a dat-dat type of thing?

I have an Emu E4X hardware sampler ....

Hi Nikko

Bryan Lanser here. I usually don't get involved with forums, but this is just too close to my heart to not jump in, being a percussionist, and having worked at E-mu for a good portion of my life as well.

We are indeed working with Alternate Mode on getting Receptor dialed in as the ultimate drum module. And you are correct in stating that DFH and BFD are both nothing short of amazing, but I should also say I am blown away with Artist Drums from Best Services which we just installed for Simon Phillips (who just picked up a Receptor). I'm also very impressed with RM-III, RM-IV, DR005 and DR008, the latter of which is probably one of the most under-rated drum plug-ins out there. Needless to say there is a ton of drum capabilities with Receptor, and its only getting better!

Here at Muse we are testing Receptor with a drumKat, which is arguably the fastest "drum hit to MIDI converter" out there. I had the opportunity to bash away with DFH and BFD, and both were blazingly fast, and that is with sample buffers set to 128. I also tried the Artist Drums at 64 samples with my DK10 at home, and I was surprised how much MIDI I could through at it and not get so much as a click or pop out of Receptor. I don't know if BFD or DFH will be as forgiving at 64 samples, but we'll find out!

Its been a while since I've fired up my E4, but I'm confident that Receptor is as fast or faster than your trusty Emulator, but much more importantly you won't believe how much better cymbals are going to sound when you throw 2GB of RAM at the problem! Interesting aside: the guy who designed the E4 at E-MU with me designed the audio I/O for Receptor, so you know it sounds great.

I played some Yamaha DTXtremes the other day, and I would have to say the response speed of the drumKat plus Receptor versus the DTX drums were comparable, and that's with headphones on which is the acid test. That being said, as soon as you go through a PA with speakers that are 15 feet away, you're going to introduce 15mS of latency or more just because of the speed of sound. Moral to the story: monitor locally and don't listen to the mains!

Sorry for the longwinded reponse - can you tell I'm passionate about drums? (and Receptor!) I'll see if we can't actually quantify some of the latency and get that info off to you.

[Nikki Nexo]

Bryan,

What is the latency of a mic on an acoustic drum to the mains or headphones? Just curious.

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

Bryan,

What is the latency of a mic on an acoustic drum to the mains or headphones? Just curious.

Forgive me if I get a little technical on you or if this is stuff you already know, but it makes for an interesting conversation because everyone obsesses about a few of milliseconds of latency, but the world around is is FULL of latency!!

Sound travels at 1136 feet per second (346 meters / second) at room temperature (77 degrees F, 25 degrees C for our Euro friends).

So if you are miking your snare and your PA mains are say 20 feet away, you'll have 0.0176 seconds, or 17.6 milliseconds of "acoustic latency" between the time you hit your snare and the time it gets to back to your ear via the mains. (I'm ignoring the time it takes for the signal to get from mic, through the mixer, to the amp and to the speakers since this all happens at the speed of light (186,282 miles per second!) and therefore is negligible, or in other words sound as an electrical signal travelling down a wire moves alot faster than a sound travelling acoustically through air.

Of course the acoustic sound you hear from your snare, which is maybe three feet from your ears, will swamp the amplified sound you hear the PA, since sound attenuates from a point source following the inverse square law, or 1 / r squared where r is the distance from the sound source. Therefore you'll hear your snare drum in 2.6 milliseconds after you hit it sitting at your kit, and that sound being closer, will likely swamp out the effects of hearing the more delayed sound coming through your PA.

Now about those headphones: The strange thing is that it is technically possible to hear the sound in your headphones using a close mic on your snare _before_ you will hear it acoustically... a weird thought, but true, since sound going through a wire is much faster than a sound going through air. I've sure you've "felt" this strangeness when listening to your close miked kit during recording, and this is why everything sounds more "immediate" when listening with phones on.

Typical MIDI drum trigger to drum module latencies are on the order of 5 milliseconds, which is like having the snare drum 5.6 feet way from you instead of 3 feet. I personally don't find this to be a problem at all, in fact, the latency that you hear due to MIDI is quite possible more natural, since it is closer to the sound you hear when you play acoustically! In other words, the latency that occurs with electronic drums through headphones is not too different than what you might experience playing acoustic drums with no headphones a little farther away from you. In my experience, the only time latency becomes a bit problem is when you start mixing latent signals with the original, where you will introduce nasty phase shifts and notch filters into the audio, i.e. the realm of flanging and chorusing.

The point is this: a lot of people tend to stress out about a couple of milliseconds of latency on synths and drum modules, yet we have no problem with the latency that occurs when we put our keyboard amps 10 feet away from us, introducing 9 milliseconds of latency... Receptor, with 128 sample buffer settings, is introducing about 3mS of latency at 44.1kHz - definitely tolerable for me, but when you start talking 512 samples (11.6 mS) or 1024 samples (23.2 mS) (settings that are typical in laptops using USB interfaces) then the perceived latency exceeds what is normally encountered in the physical world and things start to get weird. This is all perceptual, so you may be more or less tolerance of latency than I am.

Personally (and I'm sure I'll get flamed for this) I think we should make sure our gear works well, and then after that, we should all be worrying about laying down heavier grooves, writing better songs, and driving the audience wild with better performances!

[Nikki Nexo]

Thanks Bryan for the "tech-talk." I'm always looking to learn something new about music and sound.

Amen to your last paragraph! I agree that we should focus on the music and the process of writing great songs more than "Well, I'm looking for the latest and greatest sound card with the lowest latency, or whatever. We tend to focus too much on the equipment, and not the reason we buy the equipment in the first place,"To make music."

I also agree that when we take the stage to play the songs we've worked so hard on, that we should "put on a show" and drive the audience wild! Anyone can get on stage and play a song, it's another thing to "entertain" and make the audience forget about what's outside the four walls of where you are playing. Even if it's for a little while. That's worth the price of admission.

[Nikki Nexo]

Oh by the way, did I mention that the lynch mob is waiting for you outside with torches?

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

With so many cool tools available, it is really easy to lose sight of the purpose of those tools. That's why we've focussed so much effort in Receptor in trying to get the technology out of the way of the task at hand... making music.

Personally, being a drummer, I think we are lucky to have a much shorter path to making music than keyboardists, where the complexity of the tools can be quite daunting, and can even become an end in itself.

But I'm with you on your tag line: its all about the groove!