emusonacid!

Hello all,

Have been reading about the Emulator X for a few days now, and the soundcard and sampling software both look fantastic. I will be needing to get a good software sampler to trigger drum samples (from my PC via MIDI) into a trigger input sound module, and triggered from an ekit. Only thing is I'm not 100% on whether Emu X is sutable for this, as I don't know anyone else who does such a thing. So I thought it would be wise to post here & see if anybody else who uses the Emulator X does anything similar, before I buy. I'm assuming I'm not the only one!

There are of course other options, including the BFD which also looks fantastic, but the Emu X seems to be getting great feedback also.

Anyone use the Emu X as a soft samp to trigger drums from an ekit? Am aso considering using it live eventually, but I'm not to keen on using a PC live. Anyhow, any feedback would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Pete

Thanks for the reply timebomb. Do you use this combination live at all? I was wondering whether 5ms would be noticeable live, i.e. whether the drums sound slightly delayed compared to the other music.

Just to clarify how your setup is configured..

Emu X & Emu soundcard connected via MIDI to the Ddrum module, which is hooked up to all the pads. Is this right? One more question, and you'll have to forgive me here if its a silly one, I'm new to MIDI. Is a MIDI interface capable of triggereing mutiple high quality samples or is it somewhat limited in bandwidth? in other words does using MIDI become a limiting factor? or is it the best way to go about what I am trying to achieve?

Thanks again for the reply.

Thanks for the reply timebomb, everything is all starting to make much more sense. i do intend on using the samples live, so latency is an issue, however as you and many others have stated, it is omnipresent. if we are to point fingers at anything, its got to be MIDI, which unfortunately is a neccesity in my context.

Just to clarify, when you are setting up patches for dynamics - I'm assuming each patch requires one of the 127 MIDI notes. i.e a 20 layered snare would leave 107 notes for the rest of the kit - am i on the right track here?

How many patches do you think would be adequate to mimic an acoustic kit? How many do you use, for example? I've been reading about the more advanced drumming specific software samplers like BFD and DFHS, which use huge multi-samples, whose expressiveness tends to be limited by the hardware. Would I be able to simulate that kind of quality with the Emu X - ok not quite as high quality... but say half the layering and not including all the bleeding, but still very dynamic. Does this sound like a plausible task for the Emu X?

Thanks!!

Hey timebomb,

I do indeed have a Hart Pro 6.4 ekit in the UK. I got mine shipped from the US about a year ago now. A few weeks later Hart finally manged to start distributing in Europe exclusively through http://www.edrumonline.co.uk/index.html , although I'm not complaining as at the time the dollar was still weak and I got myself quite a bargain. obviously now, Hart do not ship from the US to the UK. However, the Harts are still quite reasonable compared to the Rolands in the UK, and they come with no prebundled module - which at the time could of prompted me to go straight into sampling - but instead I went for the most convenient option and most popular module, the TD-8... a sound module which uses the COSM technology. Really knew nothing about sampling back then (still don't really!), didn't even consider it - but I have been recording alot recently through Cubase, and although I find TD-8 sounding fine for practice & playing live (with a bit of tweaking), you can't escape that ekity sound on recordings. And so voila, here I am on the verge of buying something to sample for my recordings, and eventually to use for my live shows with the Hart kit.

I absolutely love the Hart kit. I can have countless silent sessions late at night, with no complaints from my neighbours. And all those extra practice sessions do build up, I'm definately a better drummer for it. REcording has been very easy - its like having a mic'd up kit available 24 hours a day - but thats almost silent! Albeit the sounds are not high quality, but soon that will all change with sampling in place of the onboard sounds. The Hart's are made of real quality hardware - each drum itself feels quite solid & heavy, let alone the kit! unlike many plastic like ekits available. They also look fantastic, the first thing that strikes you is how good they look. The Kontrol Screen super-ply mesh heads are the most realistic feeling by far.. not too springy but not unresponsive like some rubber pads. Overall, would reccomend the Hart ekits over any other manufacturer at the moment - and now they ship with the new TE3.2 trigger system as standard!

right, I'll stop rambing now, need more coffee...

Back to sampling quickly
So theoretically through MIDI I could have an ekit with 127 pads, each triggering a sample with as many as 127 velocity layers. Although realistically this would never be the case - i'm just trying to striaghten out this concept in my head, if this is true than MIDI really holds no limitations at all! Would latency issue increase beyond 3-5ms if I got alttle carried away with my samples, or would MIDI handle continuous layered samples live? if MIDI can handle it, what would be my weakest link? my CPU, my RAM, somethings got to give right?

Regards,
Pete