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Hi there,
new to this forum, I searched this kind of topic before posting but did not find anything, so here we go.

I'm trying to use my DDrum electronic drumkit to trigger samples from drum sample libraries on my laptop (either standalone samplers like Artistic Drums, or as VST instrument in Cubase).
Note that I want to use this setup for LIVE performances, NOT for recordings, therefore a low latency is highly important.

My sound card is a MOTU 828mkII connected through firewire to my laptop, running Win XP Pro with latest MOTU drivers.
The DDrum module is a version 4 upgraded to a 4SE (eprom), connected directly to the MIDI IN of the MOTU.

This setup runs like a charm when recording Audio (for other type of projects), and it runs fine as well when I playback a previously recorded set of MIDI tracks to the samplers (because of Cubase's pre-buffering I guess). BUT a big latency (i.e. 500ms) appears when I use MIDI in a realtime situation :? .

So I have 3 questions for you guys :
(1) did anyone already experience this kind of latency issue with electronic drumkits (like DDrum, Roland TD-x, ...) ?
(2) do you think the delay could be generated by a badly designed MIDI hardware (this DDrum module is 5-6 years old) ?
(3) which method could I use to try to ISOLATE the problem ?

Many thanks in advance for your help !
Cheers,
Meph

Comments

Kev Sun, 10/31/2004 - 14:01

This is a typical problem.

I tend to use the sounds in the drum module while recording and then swap for play back.

Try this,
turn the local triggering to sound OFF
ddrum to midi IN port
midi OUT port to ddrum

do you still have latency ? ... if not you can blame the sample software and there is no real time substitute to Cubase's pre-buffering .