Before I buy dk+ - a few questions

[Karmacomposer]

Question 1: How hard is it to save your own patterns? How to you compile those into styles? How do you then load those in to dk+?

Question 2: Can you download midi drum grooves, like from groove monkey, for example, and then load those grooves into dk+?

Question 3: Using Sonar 5 Producer Edition, does DK+ lose it's settings upon shutdown. Everytime I load in Sonar, DK+ seems to start from scratch and I have to load the drum kit and styles all over again. Not a big deal if I eat lunch and come back to finish up. A VERY big deal if a client comes back a year later and wants to re-do something and I have no idea what the kit was called and what style we used, etc.

This drum vsti sounds great and looks great - it may be what I am looking for and quite affordable. However, the above questions are really important to me and will be the deciding factor.

Mike

[D-Fusion]

Hi i know that the demo version does this, but i am not sure if the buy version does this (I will check now)
Yep it does remember the preset/Rythm used in a song

i am not sure how to save a rythm set yet (so maybe someone else can help you there).

[Karmacomposer]

thanks for the quick reply.

I know it's not entirely fair, but I am looking at dk+ PLUS all expansions and EZ Drummer by toontrack (like I said, not entirely fair), but I will be buying one of them

Mike

[D-Fusion]

Ok i am not familiar with the EZ drummer.
I just looked at the manual and to save the setup with your pattern just click on the bank button and choose save (Everything will be saved in the bank you create)

If you are going to only save the pattern you have created "right click in the pattern editor where it says abcdefgh", and choose save pattern.

You can also hold down the E button and drag it to your Dk+ midi channel in the sequencer (Sonar), and it will output it to midi on that channel

I am not sure if it is possible to import midi in, but you can always turn of the built in step seq, and add a drum midi in the host sequencer.

[Branis]

1. (from the DK+ 1.5 manual)

Right clicking on a pattern button opens a menu with the following functions:

"Load" load a single pattern file

"Save" save a single pattern file

"Copy to" copy the single pattern to one of the other 23 memories

"Load All Patterns" load a 24 patterns memory file

"Save All Patterns" save a 24 patterns memory file

"Export SMF" export the single pattern as standard MIDI file. 1.5: Drag&Drop export is available by the note icon on panel.

As you see it's very simple

2. I'm afraid the answer is no. DK+ can't import midi files, but can export them.

3. I don't know about Sonar, but it works fine in energyXT. The previous version of DK+ (v1.2) didn't remember the bank and style names, but it's fixed in 1.5. In your case I think it's a demo limitation.

[liqih]

thanks guys,

few more words about this:

Question 1: How hard is it to save your own patterns? How to you compile those into styles? How do you then load those in to dk+?

saving it's very easy, to make a style save a "MY_Style.dk seq" with the patterns you made for a specific kit
of the Factory Kits, copy "MY_Style.dk seq" in the folder of that kit (name starts with F, E.G. FElectronics MFB 512),
so My_Style will be available by the DK+ menu.
Note that you may copy "MY_Style.dk seq" in any "F" folder, so that MY_Stye will be available for all Factory Kits,
but since not all kits are mapped to the same notes and have different sounds you need to customize the style
for any kit.

[Branis]

cool, I didn't know that

EDIT:

I guess you ment "MY_Style" instead of "MY-Stye"

[liqih]

cool, I didn't know that

EDIT:

I guess you ment "MY_Style" instead of "MY-Stye"

yep, <grin>

also

a ".dk+" file save both kit mapping and all 24 patterns,
but the DK+ styles are saved as ".dk+ seq" files,

the trick is on loading:
if the ".dk+" file is inside a folder which name starts with F
AND this folder is inside the library folder, then DK+ plugin will not load the patterns
from the ".dk+" but it will look for ".dk+ seq" files inside the same folder.

This way the style menu is populated.

[DarkStar]

my turn,

So what are the advantages of the Factory kits saving Sequences in ".dk+ seq" files compared with the Custom and User kits which save them in the "dk+" file?

Also, AFAICT, a Factory kit can have many styles (up to 22 provided in the releases), and each style can have up to 24 patterns.

Whereas the Custom and User Kits have only 1 style ("internal"), and this style can up to 24 patterns.

Have I understood this correctly?

[liqih]

yes!

illimitate styles for a a Factory kit