My DAW is Pausing occasionally & producing a low frequency artifact.

[Tele' O'Neil]

Hi Guys! WOW! What a work of ART! In all my years of being involved with recording I have never heard such beautifully recorded drums PERIOD! Congratulations to everyone involved with this project! Congratulations Toontrack!

I have a few issues I would like some help & clarification with. Firstly, Regarding the Forum!
I see a heading for “Superior Drummer 3 Pre-sales” but I don’t see a heading for “Superior Drummer 3 New owners Questions & Requests”? Maybe I have overlooked it so please let me know where it lives?

Here’s my system description > My PC
64 bit Windows 7 Pro OS SP1
Intel Q9650 Quad Core CPU with 12mb Cache @ 3.00 Ghz
16 gb of system Ram
1 x SSD 250gb Solid State Boot Drive
3 x 3TB 7,200rpm Hard Drives for Samples & audio data storage
3 x 3 Head Video card on HDMI connectors
2 x 27″ HP monitors
1 x EGOSYS PCI 32 ch Audio card with extremely low latency
1 x Midas M32 Mixer

My Drums
Set of 2 Box Digital drums with 4 toms & 3 cymbals all equipped with 2 ply mesh heads.
___________________________________________________________________________
OK, here’s some issues & questions.

#1 – Is there a way of loading a smaller footprint of the new or even existing kits within the new S3 GUI so I can conserve RAM & make my Sonar files a bit smaller? After creating a template that is around 5,700KB in size Sonar has started pausing occasionally & I am experiencing some low end artifacts along with the temporary stoppage. I have some older templates that are over 7,000kb large & they have never produced this type of artifact. When the problem arises there’s a bit of a slow down (or stutter) that is associated with that sound which sounds like the Enterprise moaning after some sort of mishap in the Galaxy! Yikes what a description! I have tried to set the PCI card audio at various settings (from 32 to 1024 samples) & there is no difference. I even routed the entire mix via my new DANTE card in my Midas M32 & the problem still persists regardless of what hardware I use or what latency settings I use. The Midas M32 is the latest acquisition in my studio & when I used Superior 2 it was flawless. I realize that S2 is nowhere near the same as S3 but some help in this department will go a long way into making this the only platform I use from here on in. If I have to upgrade to a newer PC with M.2 SSD drives that will take me a couple of years before my financing department (my wife) approves this purchase! Yikes! So I have to try to make this work with what I currently have.
#2 – Is there a switch whereby I can turn on a GM / GM2 Midi map? When I program my tracks initially I do so on the Piano grid & rarely use the 2 Box Drum pads. The 2 Box kit is only ever used when a drummer is part of a band & I need to record live tracks, otherwise I use the sequencer.
#3 – Is there a way of splitting the Cymbals / Toms or any other articulations to their own discrete mixer strip / track? Currently everything that Toontrack has deemed OH includes far too many instruments that I want to have more control over. I also want to render (Bounce) these to separate audio tracks for further processing. What I’ve done in the past with S2 was place each crash & ride cymbal on their own midi tracks, then bounce them one at a time but the procedure is rather convoluted & takes a lot of time so I was hoping this was going to be taken care of in this release.
#4 – Can I create a new mixer strip for my own samples that I want to import into the S3 drum sampler?
#5 – By adding an additional snare drum does this allow me to edit & manipulate the new sample in it’s own strip that could potentially become the snare drum to be used in the song? Or, does this sound have to be used with an existing snare drum? I know it sounds like a silly question but I want clarification as I plan to use my own Hi-Hat samples & I want full operational control & not simply add to the existing Hi_Hat channel.
#6 – Will there (or are there) youtube videos covering topics of interest for users such as the questions I am asking you?
#7 – What is the label on the very top of the mixer strip refer to? To the left the text label row it reads “Bleed Enabled” & has a dropdown arrow but I don’t know what it’s purpose is or what I should be aware of? Sorry!

Even though you might think I’m being too fussy with my questions & requests I assure you I absolutely love this version & am looking forward to using this for years to come.

Thank you so much to all @ ToonTrack, you’ve really made my year!
Cheers!

Tri-Net Media

Topic

[John]

Hi,

please see my replies below:

@Vic Klonin said:
#1 – Is there a way of loading a smaller footprint of the new or even existing kits within the new S3 GUI so I can conserve RAM & make my Sonar files a bit smaller? After creating a template that is around 5,700KB in size Sonar has started pausing occasionally & I am experiencing some low end artifacts along with the temporary stoppage. I have some older templates that are over 7,000kb large & they have never produced this type of artifact. When the problem arises there’s a bit of a slow down (or stutter) that is associated with that sound which sounds like the Enterprise moaning after some sort of mishap in the Galaxy!

With 16GB RAM, it seems unlikely that a few MB’s would affect the performance the way you are describing. How big are the kits you have loaded in RAM?
You can unload articulations that you do not use for each instrument, you can unload Bleed you do not use, you can load the sounds as 16 bit and you can decrease the layer limits; all which help minimise the RAM footprint.

#2 – Is there a switch whereby I can turn on a GM / GM2 Midi map? When I program my tracks initially I do so on the Piano grid & rarely use the 2 Box Drum pads. The 2 Box kit is only ever used when a drummer is part of a band & I need to record live tracks, otherwise I use the sequencer.

By Default all mapping is GM compatible (GM Extended), so you don’t need to do anything. If you use your 2box kit, you enter the MIDI In/E-drums Setting to turn on the mapping for the incoming MIDI from your kit by loading the ‘2box’ Preset.

#3 – Is there a way of splitting the Cymbals / Toms or any other articulations to their own discrete mixer strip / track? Currently everything that Toontrack has deemed OH includes far too many instruments that I want to have more control over. I also want to render (Bounce) these to separate audio tracks for further processing. What I’ve done in the past with S2 was place each crash & ride cymbal on their own midi tracks, then bounce them one at a time but the procedure is rather convoluted & takes a lot of time so I was hoping this was going to be taken care of in this release.

Select a Cymbal, then go into ‘More > Route Instrument Microphones…’. In the Mixer Channel drop-down, select ‘Create New Channel’. Do this for each Cymbal you wish to create a separate mixer channel for.

#4 – Can I create a new mixer strip for my own samples that I want to import into the S3 drum sampler?

If you create a new Instrument with your own samples, SD3 will create a new mixer channel for it by Default.
If you add your own sample as a Stack, you simply use the same technique as with separating the Cymbals; select the Stack sample, go into ‘Route Instrument Microphones…’, Create New Channel’.

#5 – By adding an additional snare drum does this allow me to edit & manipulate the new sample in it’s own strip that could potentially become the snare drum to be used in the song? Or, does this sound have to be used with an existing snare drum? I know it sounds like a silly question but I want clarification as I plan to use my own Hi-Hat samples & I want full operational control & not simply add to the existing Hi_Hat channel.

Please see my reply above.

#6 – Will there (or are there) youtube videos covering topics of interest for users such as the questions I am asking you?

There are a lot of available videos already.
Please check out the Toontrack YouTube Channel.
https://youtu.be/iwTtjEVi8l4

#7 – What is the label on the very top of the mixer strip refer to? To the left the text label row it reads “Bleed Enabled” & has a dropdown arrow but I don’t know what it’s purpose is or what I should be aware of? Sorry!

It shows how many Bleeds are enabled for that microphone.

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Henrik]

Regarding “Is there a way of splitting the Cymbals / Toms or any other articulations to their own discrete mixer strip / track”:
When you change, or add, an instrument using Search for Instrument, in the bottom of that area you can select if you want the close (main) microphones to be connected to the mixer’s current microphone channels, or if it should create new channels.

For example – if you have a Yamaha snare and you add an electronic snare as a stack – when you load the electronic snare, you select if you want to connect the electronic snare to the current microphone channels for the snare (“Snare Top” in that case) – or if it should create a new channel…

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[Tele' O'Neil]

Hi John

Thank you ever so much for providing your response to my grumblings! It’s refreshing to know you folks are right on top of things in such a timely fashion.

I ran into another issue & I don’t know where to go to resolve it. Today I started playing a song using the Pearl Default kit with absolutely no additional effects of modifications to the drum kit but for some reason I’ve lost the velocity variation. Everything is maxed out when I play any note via the Piano roll so there are absolutely no level changes. As an example when I click on a note such as the Kick drum & while holding the left mouse button drag the velocity up or down I can no longer hear the difference in the sample level. It does not turn down. What have I inadvertently bumped or touched that would cause this to no longer work correctly?

Are there separate notes for articulations such as a snare buzz or snare drag? How about Tom falms? And of course Cymbal crescendos? Sorry about so many requests!

On another note is there any way to set a View Level of 125% ? When I set it to 150% there’s too much of a jump from 100% & I wind up losing some real estate that can’t be displayed. I see that below 100% the scale is adjusted in smaller increments so I was hoping there was a user input scheme available somewhere?

Thanks again for your help John, I’m so glad you’re on top of things.
Cheers

Tri-Net Media

[Author]

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