running tt solo and cubase sx at same time problem

[brenyn]

hi,  
I am using SD2.2  triggered by roland td-20 ,  running a studio pc  on xp sp2 and cubase sx3
interface is TC studio konnekt 48 and tc asio driver on latest version .
pc is a quad 9500 with 3 gig ram ,  and fast drives,

SD2.2 is amazing and  i love it
drum maps are all great , and the kit feels and sounds great in toon track without cubase running .

but I wish to record drum midi files into cubase , while hearing the SD samples ,
 but the latency is too high running SD as a vst in cubase.

is there any way of playing the td-20 thru toon track solo on the pc  to monitor the sound,
while a midi drum  track is recorded as midi in cubase. at the same time as i listen to the cubase mix of the other instruments ( bass, vocals  etc )

ive tried it and cubase and toon tracksolo seem to crackle and hiss at each other ,
this may be down to cpu use ,im not sure if you can run cubase and toon track solo  at the same time ?

or maybe you can if you turn stuff off ?

toon tack buffer is 128 as is the cubase buffer = 128 .

 i could do this using the td-20 sounds to monitor direct in the sound card
 but they sound crap and feel crap .

this is the only issue buts its a killer for me .

Topic

[John]

Hi,

Toontrack solo should not be run at the same time as Cubase on the same computer, unless you have two separate Audio/MIDI interfaces and the CPU/RAM power to do so. You should run the VST plugin in Cubase.

As a sidenote EZplayer Pro has the abitilty to send each Arranger Track to separate MIDI channels and then you Filter the receiving track in Cubase. No bugs, just manual reading;-)

Best Regards,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[brenyn]

ok,  you say you cant run at the same time ?
the problem with using the  SD as vst  is this :
say we have a project in cubase with click , bass track , guitar tracks and scratch drum track- and you now wish to record a proper drum track using  edrums to midi in cubase on a midi track .
the project will play back from cubase into the interface monitoring ( say head phones )
the drummer will hear the track , play the notes , but due to the in / out latency for vst processing – he will hear all the played notes way to late in the overall mix – so will get lost time wise .
Solution
if he could play the notes into cubase while monitoring
a/ using toon track solo sounds .
or the less preferable
b/  td-20 sounds direct thru the interface audio (  but which do not respond as well as the sounds in SD / toon track )
it works ,
 but  b/  does not give good midi results due to the way td-20 sounds play / trigger compared to SD sounds.
NOTE
I can run waves GTR3 at the same time as cubase on the same interface  and record guitars fine using DI’s  –  why not SD/ and toon track solo ?
 
are you saying  i need a second interface of some kind to process the MIDI with  toon track solo output for monitoring
of the vdrums input / output –  and use the audio feed from this into my main card to hear it in sync with cubase ?
this sounds a bit overkill.

NOTE pc is set up for studio – multi cpu is set up in cubase
 
Would it be better if I removed the vst instances of  SD in cubase – so that we dont have Toontrack solo AND vst in memeroy at same time ?  – and just record the raw midi instead of just muting SD in cubase. ?

[Damian Blunt]

There is a button in cubase that turns off the effects that cause latency, so you can hopefully record vstis/audio in real time. This will of course be dependent on your systems capabilities….if cubase is fully loaded with lots of different vsti’s you will almost certainly have to increase your soundcards buffer settings to stop pops and clicks – this will increase latency…..Also the hardware you use will need to have good drivers to enable you to get the lowest latencies.

Even if you could play back solo and cubase at the same time (with multiclient ASIO drivers) the latency would be the same in solo because you have had to adjust the buffer settings on your soundcard to cope with the demands of cubase

Damian Blunt - Toontrack
Quality Assurance
Betatesting

[brenyn]

thanks for the help so far ,  but I dont understand how is anyone else playing and monitoring using SD sounds while recording midi – without using SD as a VST ?

I cannto see how its possible to record real time drums using SD as a vst – the latentcy would be impossible to eliminate .
by its very nature – the project audio reaching the drummer has to be reacted to , and the reponse played back in real time to the drummer –  I cant see how this works with no or minimal latency.- unless you have a dual quad core or a KRAY 🙂

I will how ever see if loading just the bare minimum vsts etc has an effect.

do you think a new seperate midi / audio interface would work  to run toon track solo seperatley ?

[Damian Blunt]

Latency with vstis is impossible to eliminate…..but it is not impossible to get it to a very workable level….for example, my interface gives me a 1.5msec latency, which to me feels unnoticeable (there will be some extra latency introduced by the MIDI interface and module but again this should be negligible).

If you have a decent audio interface you should certainly not need another for S2. You should get equivalent performance from solo as Cubase, so I’m unsure why you’re perceiving a difference – I would also check your project and latency settings.

Sound travels at approximately 1 foot per ms to give you an idea of the impact of the above latency – I wear headphones when recording with edrums, so if the direct mic was close to the drum when the samples were recorded I should get a similar delay to that achieved by sitting on a drumstool behind an acoustic kit (this is over-simplistic but you get the point).

Cubase will record the MIDI information in time even if it sounds like the drummers playing is delayed when performing due to latency (there are some problems with cubase and some motherboards – these problems can usually be overcome by selecting ‘use system timestamp’ from the MIDI devices window – I’m not in front of my music pc so can’t give direct instructions)

I would initially try just using S2 alone in a cubase project, without any other VSTi’s or effects, to see if performance is comparable to solo – which it certainly should be. If it is not there is something going on to cause this.

Damian Blunt - Toontrack
Quality Assurance
Betatesting

[Scott]

I record S2 live in Cubase 4 almost every day. I have a 5 year old P4 3gHz with 2GB of RAM and an RME Digiface soundcard and can get a 3ms/128 sample latency and find it feels fine for tracking S2 live. I can get down to 1.5ms/64 samples using TTSolo but I would expect that since Cubase is a bit of a resource hog.

It comes down to getting the lowest latency you can (zero is impossible) without getting clicks and pops. That may mean tracking some VSTi and then using the freeze function to free up resources so you can keep tracking at a low latency. I also track S2 with a much smaller kit footprint (RAM speaking) by using less layers and unloading unused articulations and then bumping it up before bouncing or freezing.

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[brenyn]

thanks lads ,  i will look at freeing up as much vst space as possible in the cubase project , 
and see if  i can get the VST latency  for S2 down in cubase .

[brenyn]

I couldnt get cubase to work (  its an old version of nuendo any way )    so i tried the old version of reaper – just as a comparision .
and guess what –  instant no latency .

so i bought the new version –  and its working superb –  real time monitoring SD2 from a td20 and recording a full project  at the sametime .

think i will stick with reaper

thanks for all the suggestions .

one thing that really helped  was updating the moboard bios , this dropped the latency down by 30%

[Author]

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