EZD2 Distortion when triggering multiple drum sounds

[Rob Taylor]

Hi all

I’ve been wrestling with this for some time now and hoping you all might help me turn the corner and fix this for good.

I bought EZD2 and some expansion kits last fall and was thoroughly enjoying using them in my DAW (Presonus Studio One).

I’ve never considered myself a drummer but had bought a Roland TD-17 KVX for the studio a couple years ago and have dabbled a bit over the years on it and other kits. I knew that one of the cool applications of EZD2 was that I could trigger the sounds with the TD-17 so I eventually got around to moving some things around and getting everything cabled up and ready to go. Plan was to play via USB for the stand alone EZD or via MIDI for the plug-in.

Problem was, when I tried to sync the two up, I was getting tons of latency or, when I reduced the buffer size to 128 or 64, the latency would vanish but the sounds would simply destruct into a garbled mess of digital distortion. This happened regardless of whether I was using USB triggered stand alone or MIDI triggered plug-in.

I poked around in the various settings and online articles etc and eventually got really close to ‘zero’ latency with clear, crisp sounds. Only problem was when I played any really fast succession of hits on the kit, some of that distortion would creep in and ruin the belief that I’d solved the problem. So, I’d poke around some more and try other settings and reaching out to other Roland users etc but things would either only get worse or just get back to this same place where all sounds well so long as I don’t play too fast (obviously not the ideal when it comes to drums).

I thought maybe it was a limitation of my old laptop only having 12gb RAM or 7 year old USB hardware or something and even lamented in one post to a Roland group that it seemed crazy that my $40 mouse can trigger the sounds without issue but my $2k drum kit cannot.

Long story a little bit shorter… I was just working on this today and trying everything I could think of to solve it when I began clicking on the plug-in within S1 and clicked really quickly with the mouse and got the same distortion results.

So it’s got nothing to do with MIDI or USB or the TD-17 but simply something to do with EZD2 itself.

Important note: This does NOT happen when playing patterns or songs within EZD2. Even at super high bpm, these all sound perfectly clear with not a hint of distortion heard.

I’m hoping there’s a setting or something that I’ve missed or failed to consider and implement properly.

I’ve monitored system CPU and memory usage during all of my tests today and neither ever exceeds 60% so I don’t think it’s related to my PC but will list specs below just to be thorough.

Thanks for any replies that might be helpful!

HP Envy 17 Notebook – Windows 10 – Latest version of EZD2

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4710HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.50 GHz 12Gb RAM

Presonus Studio 68C interface

EZdrummer version: 2.2.1
Operating system: Windows 10

• This post was modified 4 years ago by Rob Taylor.

Topic

[Brad]

Sorry, I’m going to ask some things you probably have looked into, but here goes…..

What are your buffer settings that are giving quick throughput and do you have zero-latency switched on in S1?

Have you brought up the performance monitor in S1 and checked “Show Devices” does it show that EZD is overloading the processor?

Does this happen when you are using EZD as the only plug-in within a session or does it start to distort with the addition of other plugins?

EZdrummer version: 2.2.1
Operating system: macOS Big Sur (11)

Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

1

Thanked by: Rob Taylor

[Rob Taylor]

Hi Brad and thanks for replying.

I was going to say… “I’m not using any other plugins at all in any of these testing processes” and, yes, low latency monitoring is enabled even though I don’t believe it should be needed with just one plug in but I’ve been sort of trying everything and this didn’t see to hurt.

But when I popped into my empty song template just now to consider your questions, I found I did have a bunch of effects like reverb, compression and EQ as well as EZKeys available and active on empty tracks. I’ve disabled them all now and it seems like it may have reduced the frequency of occurrences a small bit, they continue to persist

Keep in mind, since the issue is repeatable in the stand alone application, I’ve sort of shifted my attention to EZD2 itself as opposed to S1 as I’m assuming S1 settings are irrelevant to how the stand alone behaves and issue appears identical across USB and MIDI triggered instances.

That said, here are some more S1 settings I’ve applied:

Dropout Protection: Max / Process Block Size 2048 samples / Process Precision 64Bit / Use Native vs Hardware is greyed out and unavailable

Monitoring latencies for instruments are as follows: Standard – 69ms/6632 samples    Low latency 3.21ms / 308 samples

Buffering at 64 appears to produce optimal latency/quality result aside from described issue

Windows Task Manager monitoring shows CPU usage maxing out about 27% during heavy use while S1 tells a different story…

CPU usage indicator hovering around 50% with random spikes to 100% during zero use of EZD2 while heavy use takes it right up to 100% / red indicator on

Please feel free to ask anything else that might help nail things down. Thanks again

 

[Brad]

The Studio One performance monitor will display a breakdown of device CPU usage by plug-in. When you play quickly, what does the CPU for EZD show?

I know it may sound unmusical, but could you try drumming really fast using the EZKeys plug-in and see if the same issue happens? (Just an experiment)

If you set the buffer/block size to 128, does the problem go away completely?

Does it make a difference as to which EZD EZX/Kit/preset you have loaded?

In the Universal Control interface, is the block size 64 as well? Trying to get my head around setting the block size in the driver and application (EZD or S1) the Quantum TB driver I believe doesn’t have that option)

EZdrummer version: 2.2.1
Operating system: macOS Big Sur (11)

Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

1

Thanked by: Rob Taylor

[Rob Taylor]

Hey Brad, thanks for hanging in here with me!!

FYI, for now at least, I’ve kind of given up on the stand alone app as it falls apart at 128 and only sounds good at 256 which creates far too much latency to be useful. All testing moving forward will be within S1 unless otherwise specified.

When you play quickly, what does the CPU for EZD show? – 22 – 25 before playing then up to a peak of about 38 at maximum input when distortions begin to apear

… try drumming really fast using the EZKeys plug-in and see if the same issue happens? About 30 before playing then up as high as 41 during max input but, interestingly, no distortion of sound whatsoever

If you set the buffer/block size to 128, does the problem go away completely?  Within S1, 128 still seems to be low enough latency to be playable but, yes, at maximum playing speed, some distortion continues to appear. Switched to 256 and WOW!!! All distortion events seem to have vanished and still no latency!!

Does it make a difference as to which EZD EZX/Kit/preset you have loaded? Yes, it did seem as though the more complex kits resulted in more distortion than the basic ones

In the Universal Control interface, is the block size 64 as well? The block size in Universal Control matches up with whatever I set within S1 options. They seem to link automatically. Not sure if that answers your question.

I believe there are 2 things I was doing ‘wrong’ before that this process has helped me discover and resolve. One was toggling the low latency monitoring within S1 which was previously not toggled a few days back. The other is this one just now. That being that I never imagined 256 would provide low enough latency to be playable so didn’t bother trying after toggling low latency monitoring.

So, BAM! The DAW plug-in side of things is solved! I suppose I can live without the stand alone app but would like to resolve that too if possible.

 

Either way, thank you so very much for helping me reach this place. Very excited about my set up now as it is incredibly fun to play these great sounding kits with my TD-17!!

[Brad]

Excellent, glad you got it to the point where you can enjoy creating music! As far as the standalone app, might worth while playing around with the block size in Universal Control and the buffer size in the app itself and see if you can reach a happy place. But for now…. play on!

EZdrummer version: 2.2.1
Operating system: macOS Big Sur (11)

Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

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