Large Roland ekit set up advice needed – 2 TD20’s

[Paul Alvarez]

My brother is considering a purchase of Superior Drummer for use with his Roland electronic kit. He is currently using 2 TD20 modules and routing 12 pads from the direct outputs into a Presonus RM32ai mixer. He also has 4 mics, 2 for OH, 1 on the HH and 1 on the Ride cymbal. For the possible use of Superior Drummer, he would like to go from the MIDI outputs of each TD20 into the DAW (that also controls the RM32ai via UC Surface). We think we can map the MIDI outputs to create the 12 separate feeds for each of his pads to trigger the samples in Superior Drummer. Please let us know if there is anyone using this type of set up and if this sounds feasible.

If the above is possible, we would then want to output from Superior Drummer to UC Surface to get the sampled sounds into the RM32ai mix. Given that it appears Superior Drummer only has 16 stereo outputs from it’s virtual mixer we’re not sure if we can send 12 mono feeds from his individual pads back to UC Surface. I do not see that the Superior Drummer virtual mixer allows for stereo or mono options. Is this possible? Need to confirm that each of his pads can stand alone in our main mix.

If anyone can help us understand this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Paul

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[Paul Alvarez]

Bump….anyone?? I’m surprised there’s been no comments.

[Pierre-Olivier Langlois]

I only have one TD-20 module, but before purchasing SD2 I did take into consideration the possibility of getting a second module (more pads and cymbals) so I evaluated the possibilities in regards to SD2.
I think it is definitely feasible.
SD2 has 16 stereo outs, which you can consider as 32 mono outs (out 1 Left, out 1 Right, out 2 Left, out 2 Right, etc. each hard panned left or right) if you do the mixing outside of SD2. In that scenario, each drum pad in SD2 would be routed to one of the 32 outs (all leveled equally in SD2) and mixed in the DAW alongside the 4 analog mics. So basically in that case, SD2’s mixer is acting like a pass-thru.

In Cakewalk Sonar for example you would insert SD2 as a Soft Synth by selecting “All Synth Audio Outputs: Mono”, after that you will see all 16 “stereo” outs from SD2 appear as 32 separate mono outs in your DAW’s user interface.

As for the mapping of the 2 modules, you will need to either :
– leave the Midi note settings inside each module to Roland’s default, then set them to a different midi channel to send each module to its own midi track, then assign each midi track to its own custom drum map that will redirect everything to the proper SD2 midi input note;
OR
– leave one module’s Midi mapping to the default and tweak the other Module’s so that they don’t overlap, set them to the same midi channel to one single midi track, then either make one custom drum map or adjust all mapping inside SD2 directly.

It’s been a month since your OP but I hope that helps.

Intel i7-3820 (LGA2011 ftw), Win 8.1, Saffire Pro 24, Sonar Studio

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