EZ Drummer 2 and a Korg nanoPAD

[Trevor Tranchina]

I just installed EZD2 and love it after 5 minutes. I’m trying to figure out how to set up my nanoPAD to work with it but aside from installing the driver (Mac OS X 10.9.2) and selecting nanoPAD PAD (that’s how it appears) I don’t know what to do. THe EZD2 manual pdf is not very descriptive. Thanks in advance.

Topic

[Henrik Ekblom]

Are trying to ge it to work when running EZdrummer 2 stand alone mode or in a host (Logic, Cubase or similar)?

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[tooner10]

i’m in a similar situation. i picked up an nanopad about 3 years ago. ashamed to say i’m just getting around to using it now with my new EZD2 install as a plugin in presonus S1Pro 2. the nanopad is a usb pluggable device. when i plugged it in windows 7 automatically found the latest driver.

so i can see the nanopad in EZD2 and the instrument channel receives the midi input. the problem is the latency is too high on this thing and it’s impossible to play along with anything i’ve already recorded in real time!! in fact, even if i’m not playing to something pre recorded (e.g. just trying to jam some beats on the nanopad in isolation), the latency makes it impossible for me to play in real time.

i normally record through a firestudio mobile by presonus which has it’s own asio driver and i can monitor record *audio* without any latency issues. like i said earlier though, this device has it’s own driver and plugs straight into the usb port and has nothing to do with the firebox drivers.

so… is it even possible to adjust the latency on the nanopad usb device? are other’s using this thing with EZD2 without latency? if so, what do i need to do to get this thing to work w/ EZD2 and no latency? i believe the nanopads shipped w/ EZD lite in the past so my guess is the thing had to work without latency??? any help greatly appreciated

thanx

[Scott]

Make sure you have selected your Firestudio soundcard in the settings menu in EZD 2 (if in standalone). You should be able to adjust the latency from there, or, access your Firestudio control panel.

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[tooner10]

@Scott said:

Make sure you have selected your Firestudio soundcard in the settings menu in EZD 2 (if in standalone). You should be able to adjust the latency from there, or, access your Firestudio control panel.

so that is going to actually help a nanopad that isn’t actually plugged into the firestudio or using any of it’s hardware? just to confirm / reiterate, the nanopad plugs straight into a generic laptop usb port. it’s a vanilla usb device.

thanks

[Scott]

Yes, it should, provided that you are listening to the output of EZD2 through your Firestudio (headphones or speakers) and using the ASIO from the Firestudio. The latency is usually caused by not selecting the proper ASIO sound card option in the Settings menu.

In EZD2 (standalone) click ‘Settings’ at the top. Select ‘Audio/MIDI Setup’. Under ‘Audio Device’ select ASIO and your Firestudio. Click the ASIO control button to open the Firestudio control panel and lower the latency (64-128 samples should be good).

Under ‘MIDI Devices’ you should be able to select the NanoPad.

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[tooner10]

@Scott said:

Yes, it should, provided that you are listening to the output of EZD2 through your Firestudio (headphones or speakers) and using the ASIO from the Firestudio. The latency is usually caused by not selecting the proper ASIO sound card option in the Settings menu.

In EZD2 (standalone) click ‘Settings’ at the top. Select ‘Audio/MIDI Setup’. Under ‘Audio Device’ select ASIO and your Firestudio. Click the ASIO control button to open the Firestudio control panel and lower the latency (64-128 samples should be good).

Under ‘MIDI Devices’ you should be able to select the NanoPad.

ok.. i’ll have to give it a try. i got held up yesterday with a few things.

one last thing. i’ve got two laptops with identical EZD2 and S1 Pro daw setups except that only one has firewire capability which means i can only use the firestudio mobile interface with one of them (the firestudio isn’t a card, it’s an audio preamp / mixer / AD converter thing that connects via a firewire card to the one laptop).

i currently would like to leave and use the other laptop w/out firewire capability in another location to arrange and lay down midi tracks to audio that has been recorded on the other laptop and transferred to the second laptop via external hd. simple playback (and i imagine mixing too) works great on this second laptop. i don’t have any special driver and just listen to playback straight through headphones via windows 7 mixer. for a variety of reasons, i don’t want to move the one laptop and associated gear back and forth so assume that’s not an option ;).

so is there some way to remove the nanopad latency issue on this second laptop without the firewire interface and firestudio mobile (and it’s asio driver)? can i just install the firestudio asio mobile driver on the second laptop and never plug a device in or something to get what i want? or is there some generic asio driver i can use to get the midi recording latency down vs using whatever windows is handling audio with now? for some reason, i think the korg nanopad should supply an asio driver itself but it doesn’t appear to?

thanks for being patient and helping

[Scott]

I use a Windows 7 laptop (I’m actually typing on it right now).

I use Reaper (DAW) as well as EZD2 and EZkeys in standalone.

I use ASIO4ALL ASIO driver and I get great low latency with my built in sound card (and by ‘sound card’ I mean audio interface).

Here’s a link:

http://www.asio4all.com/

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[tooner10]

@Scott said:

I use a Windows 7 laptop (I’m actually typing on it right now).

I use Reaper (DAW) as well as EZD2 and EZkeys in standalone.

I use ASIO4ALL ASIO driver and I get great low latency with my built in sound card (and by ‘sound card’ I mean audio interface).

Here’s a link:

http://www.asio4all.com/

sweet.. so a generic driver exits… work is keeping me at bay from trying the things you’ve suggested but i’ll get on it this week some time when things slow down

thanks for the help scott

[tooner10]

hey scott, i’m now two thirds of the way there

1) on my firestudio laptop, i have zero nanopad latency issues in s1 pro or ezd2 standalone as long as i monitor through the firestudio just as you recommended. i didn’t even have to adjust any of the latency settings on the firestudio. it just works. so one laptop is working fine

2) on the second laptop w/out the firebox and using vanilla window audio support, i installed the asio4all driver like you mentioned.

a) if i used ezd2 standalone and select asio4all / nanopad in the settings like you suggested, it works! i don’t have any latency issues triggering in real-time from the nanopad.

b) however, for some reason, i still can’t get any midi input into EZD2 as a plugin hosted by S1pro on this laptop???? so i’m 2/3 the way to getting what i want.

to be clear regarding “b” above: if i trigger the virtual “image” EZD2 kit by clicking on it with my mouse when it’s assigned to an instrument track in S1 pro, it triggers fine and i hear the drum patches in real time.. the problem is i just never see any input on the midi stream from the nanopad into S1 pro. by input i mean i don’t see any events arrive at the midi input utility that shows what midi events are being sent to S1 pro and also mid never hits the EZD2 plugin hosted in S1 pro. but as i said it works in EZD2 standalone mode???

i’ve tried reinstalling / setting up the nanopad as a keyboard in S1 pro multiple times (it’s a fairly straightforward process) to see if it would help. Part of this involved “rescanning” for the midi devices. S1 pro definitely identifies / sees the nanopad as it makes it available as a device to setup. I see the nanopad in device manager (windows 7) too and i also see that when i do an S1 pro midi device rescan, the device manager refreshes the devices and finds the nanopad again behind the scenes. it’s listed as active and available.

Note that in s1pro when the nanopad is rescanned, one of the LED “scene” lights on the nanopad lights up (a “scene” is korg’s nomenclature for which of four presets tied to four “scene” buttons automatically determines which set of midi notes are mapped to each of the nanopad trigger pads) .. once i start tapping the pads though and or at some random point after the rescan in S1pro, the nanopad scene light just dies which leads me to believe the nanopad itself is actually dead or at least appears that way in s1pro. the only way to get that led light back on, and only temporarily is to rescan but i still never see any midi input. fwiw, when the nanopad is working properly like in EZD2 standalone or via the firebox on my other working laptop, there is always a scene led light active. so it appears the unit is getting cut off in some way but only when used from within s1 pro.

again. it works fine in EZD2 standalone mode also using the same asio4all driver.

hope that all makes sense.

any thoughts on what might be going wrong or how i can fix this one last problem. it doesn’t do me much good if i can’t use the nanopad in realtime with EZD2 as a plugin to s1 pro while i hear the playback of my other recorded audio material.

i’ve also heard something about the nanopad maybe needing to always be plugged into the same usb port for it to work or something to that effect. fwiw, i have 3 usb ports on this laptop and have plugged it into all three to see if i could get this to work. each time i did that, it downloaded and installed the same drive over again so my guess is it’s been configured to work on all three but none seem to actually work with EZD2 as plugin in s1 pro.

thanks

[Trevor Tranchina]

@USMCGTrev said: and selecting nanoPAD PAD (that’s how it appears).

I see nanoPAD PAD and I have it checked. What do I do next?

[John]

Hi,

please see my reply to your other post.

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Author]

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