KVR Audio

crosshairs0809 · Post by **crosshairs0809** » Sun Aug 20, 2017 3:29 pm

Hi,

I recently bought the Social Entropy Engine to go along with my Casio XW-P. In the process of converting my software - based music to hardware equipment. What I'd like to do - I have one of Engine's track for bass, another for lead, another for drums, etc. Is it possible to route the individual tracks and spread them across an analog mixer? That way I can control each track of the song, and not just the keyboard itself. Or is there some kind of technique I can learn that will do this sort of thing?

There is a next step involved as well but that won't be solved until I can get this sorted out. Thanks!

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Sun Aug 20, 2017 3:49 pm

How many audio outputs does the Casio have? Do you understand that midi is not audio?

gaf_thit · Post by **gaf_thit** » Sun Aug 20, 2017 5:32 pm

Seems like it's stereo out only, so if you want to record separate stems for bass, lead etc, you would have to record 1 time for each part.

How many outputs are there via usb? The manual didn't mention it.

A bit unclear to me what you are asking though... But hope you get it sorted.

XW-P1 seems like a fun board though. Drawbars and rotary speaker effect and stuff. 6-part sound layering.

Edit:
Just curious, do you use the social entropy for the XW-P1 exclusively?

crosshairs0809 · Post by **crosshairs0809** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 3:29 pm

Sorry meant to get back sooner...

thecontrolcentre: Yes I do know that Midi is not audio. The XW-P1 has only one midi outport.

gaf_thit: One USB port. At the moment, I have Engine controlling the xw-p1. If I can get everything working properly, I am going to add the Alesis SR18 for drums. Currently I have to connect the keyboard to one channel and the drums on one channel, and all the sound comes through the two channels. What I'd like to do is have further mixing control and have, say a bass from the keyboard on one channel of the mixer, a lead from the keyboard on another channel, and have a kick drum from my Alesis SR18 on one channel, hihat on one channel, snare drum on one channel, etc. Sort of like mimicking a real-life setup. But since I can't afford mics and a real drum set it would be nice to figure out how to replicate it for my Alesis SR18. Make sense? Would drum pads do the trick?

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 3:35 pm

crosshairs0809 wrote:Sorry meant to get back sooner...

thecontrolcentre: Yes I do know that Midi is not audio. The XW-P1 has only one midi outport.

gaf_thit: One USB port. At the moment, I have Engine controlling the xw-p1. If I can get everything working properly, I am going to add the Alesis SR18 for drums. Currently I have to connect the keyboard to one channel and the drums on one channel, and all the sound comes through the two channels. What I'd like to do is have further mixing control and have, say a bass from the keyboard on one channel of the mixer, a lead from the keyboard on another channel, and have a kick drum from my Alesis SR18 on one channel, hihat on one channel, snare drum on one channel, etc. Sort of like mimicking a real-life setup. But since I can't afford mics and a real drum set it would be nice to figure out how to replicate it for my Alesis SR18. Make sense? Would drum pads do the trick?

Ok. You understand midi isn't audio, so you understand that if the Casio has only 2 audio outs, then that's all it has. Adding a midi drum pad, mixer, etc wont change that. Is there possibly a multi-audio output board (add on) for your keyboard? If not, then 2 audio outs is all you've got.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 3:40 pm

For clarity: your "Engine" sequencer only sends MIDI messages to your synth & drum module which obey the MIDI messages and play the notes, thus outputting audio.

Looks like both the XW-P1 synth and SR18 drum machine have only stereo audio outputs. So if you connect those to a mixer, you'd get one Stereo channel with audio from the XW-P1 and one Stereo channel with audio from the SR18.

That means: there are no separate audio channels for kick, snare, hihat, etc, since the drum machine only has a single stereo output.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 3:59 pm

LOL @ people who didn't do this the first time around. Sorry, not trying to make fun of you, it's just that once you do all of this you will realize what a right pain in the ass that it actually is.

You'll find, for example, that adding the SR-18 for drums may not be enough because it will sound like shit without being able to process the drum parts separately. Even if you can get by with the two pairs of outs you will eventually get annoyed at the ambience that's baked into many of the samples. If you're going to go this route you should look for drum machines with multiple outs, or, do what most of us did back in the day, use romplers/samplers with multiple outs for the drums that aren't being synthesized. In fact, AFAIK, the SR-18 is not really modern at all, rather, it's just a small upgrade/downgrade from the SR-16 which has been around since the 90s. So, since you're not getting really modern drums anyway, you'd probably be better off going for an old and cheap rackmount rompler with multiple outs. The K2000R can usually be had for about the same price as a new SR-18 and has, IIRC, 10 outs. Skip the main outs which go through the noisy built in budget effects and just use the direct outs.

Also, you're going to invent new profanities for your mixer if it doesn't have multiple busses. I consider four to be the minimum but eight is where you want to be. Patchbays are a blessing and a curse, and get ready to spend a shit-ton on cables. Literally, you will eventually spend thousands of dollars on cables if you stay on this course.

I have a small hardware studio today because I think that it can be fun, but, I'm not a purist about it so I still work mostly ITB. In my tiny hardware studio (which already has more gear than you've described FWIW) I take the best of what I've learned from my past experiences to avoid headaches. For example, I don't mess around with little drum machines like the SR-18, I think that they are a waste of time. OTOH, I do have a bunch of machines that are able to create drums with character, e.g. TAMA TS3xx, Synare, etc. as well as several romplers and samplers. I keep patchbays to a minimum and prefer to have as many fixed paths as possible. Yes, it's more limiting, but it's ok if it's not the only way that you work.

The thing with this hardware fetish that's all the rage right now is that it's really fun and lightweight at first and seems like a good direction, but, there's very little middle ground. As it gets more complex it explodes in cost and complexity unless you are really disciplined about fixing how you work with it.

crosshairs0809 · Post by **crosshairs0809** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 4:13 pm

A buddy and I just want to make something work, we're not musicians by practice, just hobbyists. We want to make some tunes on our own free time without worrying about album deadlines, we have no dreams to play on stage... The problem with me using Cubase in software, I was too focused on getting the right mix down and having the right VSTs. It got too distracting while I wanted to write actual music. Going the hardware way seems more interesting to me because I don't have to worry about looking for the right type of virtual instruments, I can just connect the equipment to the mixer that I have and focus on writing melodies. And I do realize the pros and cons with using hardware vs virtual instruments.

Here's my equipment currently:
Alesis SR18
Casio XW-P1
Social Entropy Engine
Mackie Mix8 mixer

And yes, I am starting to realize about all of the cords that are taking up space, but it is something that we are willing to work with. What we need to first is to sync the Alesis and Casio together so we can be playing the same song together, which is what I bought the Engine for. The mixing functionality that we want can wait.

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 4:26 pm

It should be relatively simple to sync everything from the sequencer. The Alesis & Casio will need to be set to receive midi clock from the sequencer. Alternatively, the Alesis could send midi-clock to the sequencer, and the sequencer sends to the Casio. You'll need to dig into the midi sections in the manuals. Good luck.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 4:41 pm

thecontrolcentre wrote:It should be relatively simple to sync everything from the sequencer. The Alesis & Casio will need to be set to receive midi clock from the sequencer. Alternatively, the Alesis could send midi-clock to the sequencer, and the sequencer sends to the Casio. You'll need to dig into the midi sections in the manuals. Good luck.

Yes, but, yes and no. What you will discover is all of the pros and cons of old school midi syncing which includes both clock and midi machine control and their various modes and standards. So you end up trading all of the headaches of working on the mix for new headaches of getting everything setup and synced.

It used to be generally better with hardware, but I don't think that it is anymore. Ableton link, and before that OSC sync actually make syncing software across multiple machines somewhat less painful than what I remember.

Still, it's not too bad if you limit your expectations. The problems come when you want to arrange songs on your sequencers and expect both machine control and song position to work flawlessly. If you just do it quick and dirty with midi clock and maybe MMC or maybe not, it can work well. This is how a lot of old school techno live acts were set up.

This is also why I think a hybrid approach is better. Song construction and mixing are generally better ITB. I use my DAW as a multi-track tape with my hardware studio taking bus outputs and routing them to DAW tracks. I jam on the hardware, record the audio and then cut and mix in the DAW to make "songs."

Good luck indeed!

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 5:01 pm

crosshairs0809 wrote:A buddy and I just want to make something work, we're not musicians by practice, just hobbyists. We want to make some tunes on our own free time without worrying about album deadlines, we have no dreams to play on stage... The problem with me using Cubase in software, I was too focused on getting the right mix down and having the right VSTs.

That's a discipline problem, not an equipment problem.

It got too distracting while I wanted to write actual music. Going the hardware way seems more interesting to me because I don't have to worry about looking for the right type of virtual instruments, I can just connect the equipment to the mixer that I have and focus on writing melodies. And I do realize the pros and cons with using hardware vs virtual instruments.

The grass is always greener and all that. I get it, but you'll most likely discover that for every problem that it helps with it makes two more that you didn't expect.

Here's my equipment currently:
Alesis SR18
Casio XW-P1
Social Entropy Engine
Mackie Mix8 mixer

And yes, I am starting to realize about all of the cords that are taking up space, but it is something that we are willing to work with. ... The mixing functionality that we want can wait.

Yeah, you're miles away from something that will give you passable mixing. That's a scratchpad setup. That's fine, but once you get past the problems of writing, you'll discover endless problems of mixing. There's probably not much point of even using the aux outs on the SR-18 with that mixer. I'd just plug it in and record the stereo bus.

Honestly, if that's the gear that I had, I'd probably just focus on the Casio and not bother with the rest of it. If, however, you find the engine to be a much better sequencer than the Casio then I'm not sure that I'd bother with syncing per se. I'd use the engine as the sequencer and the SR-18 and Casio only as sound modules. This eliminates any problem of MMC or song position. Just do all of your song composition completely on the engine and daisy chain the SR and the Casio midi.

Trying to sync multiple sequencers is a pain. The advantage that it can have is that you can switch patterns on each separately if you are doing a live-ish thing.

What we need to first is to sync the Alesis and Casio together so we can be playing the same song together, which is what I bought the Engine for.

You don't need hardware to sync the Alesis and the Casio. The Alesis responds to midi clock and I'm sure that the Casio sends it. You just need a midi cable.

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Mon Aug 21, 2017 5:17 pm

ghettosynth wrote: You don't need hardware to sync the Alesis and the Casio. The Alesis responds to midi clock and I'm sure that the Casio sends it. You just need a midi cable.

Yep

annode · Post by **annode** » Tue Aug 22, 2017 3:53 pm

To add, a drum pad set/kit can not interface with your Alesis. It has no pad inputs for that.
If you buy a kit with a controller, the controller will have it's own drum sounds but you can midi from it to the Alesis and use both.
EDIT - I forgot to say...if your crafty, you can internally mix instrument sounds to just the left or right channels. This gives you mono audio outputs from the equipment into a mixer.

crosshairs0809 · Post by **crosshairs0809** » Wed Aug 23, 2017 4:30 am

I do appreciate the help all - your information provided has shed a bit of light. Just a project me and a guy want to do during our spare time. We'll find ways to figure out how it will work.

Thanks!

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Wed Aug 23, 2017 5:53 am

crosshairs0809 wrote:I do appreciate the help all - your information provided has shed a bit of light. Just a project me and a guy want to do during our spare time. We'll find ways to figure out how it will work.

Thanks!

It occurs to me that we didn't answer one part clearly. You can route individual drum parts to some extent. You have four outputs on the SR-18. I believe that it works like the SR-16, and, IIRC, to be able to save your drum routings you copy a factory kit into a user kit area. Now, you have four outputs, L/R and Aux L/R. You use an insert cable with the Aux L/R to get the separate outs. You can route these to four channels of your mixer, but, they will be mono. It's probably better to route the aux to the two mono channels and then route the L/R to one of the stereo channels.

Now, in your user kit, go to your bass drum and set it's output to aux and pan it hard left. Go to your snare and set it's output to aux and pan it hard right. Now your kit will give you three levels to control on your mixer, kick, snare, and everything else. Your kick and snare are mono, everything else is stereo. Route your Casio to the other stereo input and bob's your uncle.

That's really not much control, but, if that's what you want to do, that's how you do it. Midi out from the casio to midi in on the SR will get you synced and/or having the casio play drum sounds on the SR.

Using midi sequencer with analog mixer