nothing working, need major help

[bladelawless]

Make sure you do a send all (top left). I seem to recall strange results from the number of inputs not matching.

all started working again. I have the whole kit triggering now except for my hi hats and controller, not even going to attempt that yet. There are some big latency issues and getting sysex error almost every time I do a send or a send all, I usually have to click send or send all multiple times before it's successful, running it to usb 2.0, usb 2.0 is probably not enough. I stopped using usb for midi and used the midi in on my soundcard which is a Focusrite Saffire 56 going into the computer with firewire, helped latency a bit, installed ASIO4ALL and turned the samplerate down to 64 and it helped get rid of most of the latency but only when I play one drum at a time, whenever I try a beat using bassrum, snare and ride, the latency is unbearable making the kit unplayable and it happens if I do a long snare roll, hit the bass drum too many times in succession or play any one drum too fast and then if I go too crazy for say 15-20 seconds on any one drum or combination of drums the entire kit just cuts out, no sounds until I wait 5-10 seconds and everything works again. I don't get it, I have an Asus motherboard with Q6600 quadcore and 8 gigs of ram, do I need a newer, more powerful computer? I read on this forum of memebers using older computers with Intel Duo processors successfully.

[dmitri]

So, is the original problem gone now?

USB2 is far more than enough for MIDI.
Soft synth latency is mainly dependant on the right ASIO2 drivers, PC speed and the Soft Synth software.

Is the problem now the latency or that sounds stop for some time?

[bladelawless]

So, is the original problem gone now?

USB2 is far more than enough for MIDI.
Soft synth latency is mainly dependant on the right ASIO2 drivers, PC speed and the Soft Synth software.

Is the problem now the latency or that sounds stop for some time?

yes, the problem seems to be gone. There must have been a loose wire on the snare centre piezo because it broke right off the piezo when I flipped it over to take a look at it yesterday and had to change the entire trigger harness on that drum as well I found that I had the harness too tight as the cone was creating a small hump in the middle of the skin, after putting the new harness on looser than I had the other one on, I was able to tighten the skin more than before and it seems to be responding much better. The bass drum is another story, harness mounted triggers do not work the best on drums larger than 16 inches as the harness straps will create a trampoline effect and sure enough I have been having a hell of a time calibrating a bass drum to get a decent response without retriggering unwanted triggers, will have to create a crossbar type of mount for the bass drums and isolate the crossbar to drum mounting with some kind of soft rubber to keep crosstalk down and I may end up remounting the rest of my triggers on crossbar type mounts since they can be made to be adjustable and this would really help in calibrating everything since I have now learned just how sensitive the piezos are, they seem to work best when the cones are just touching the skin as opposed to being pressed against the skin. In any case, I am now able to get positional sensing on my snare as well as my ride.

As far as the latency goes, midi cable is working much better than usb was, ASIO4ALL driver has cured a lot of the latency I was experiencing with a sample rate set to 64 but the MD still 'times out' and occasionally stops sending signals to Superior Drummer. Don't know but would love to know what will cure this issue.

STILL getting sysex error every single time I do a send all and about 70% of the time I do a send and I have to click send over and over again before the setting changes from red to black, don't know what's going on there, would love to be able to solve that.

[Kabonfaiba]

I'm still rocking with the Q6600! Running at 3.2Ghz since birth for 8 years now. Only 4GB RAM though.

1) What I would say is this: Speedstep (anything that does dynamic multiplier adjustments, eco modes, etc) disable all these technologies, particularly on older computers where these things were still pioneering experiments compared to today. They only cause instability to time-critical operations such as ASIO.

2) MDM needs babysitting. Only yesterday I used the send all command to create a backup of my config on another memory slot, all seemed to go fine, except it didn't apparently. When I loaded the config from the backup, certain settings where just nonsense. Running a get all command - MDM revealed that some of my 3rd zone settings got messed up, one of my crash cymbals was labelled a rototom, etc. random settings just get corrupted. So I just avoid using Get all.

3) Don't use ASIO4ALL with dedicated audio interfaces, use the native drivers from the manufacturer. The Focusrite Saffire 56 looks large and complex, so maybe read up on how they expect you to use it in live VST situation. i.e. there might be particular channels which are the low latency outputs.

MD still 'times out' and occasionally stops sending signals to Superior Drummer. Don't know but would love to know what will cure this issue.

You and me both!

I think once you get closer to ideal settings, this problem certainly reduces. I think part of the problem is that Megadrum is so unrestricted from trigger to ARM CPU, it's quite easy to overload it. I think hot inputs have a lot to do with this problem too, and I think great care needs to be taken in configuration as well - achieving clean MIDI events is just as important. Which might mean you have to run unsensitive pads, use CC4 smoothing, use high thresholds until you can dial up the performance.

[dmitri]

As far as the latency goes, midi cable is working much better than usb was, ASIO4ALL driver has cured a lot of the latency I was experiencing with a sample rate set to 64 but the MD still 'times out' and occasionally stops sending signals to Superior Drummer. Don't know but would love to know what will cure this issue.

MegaDrum doesn't send signals to Superior Drummer (or any other software) - it sends MIDI data to a MIDI port (USB or standard). Superior Drummer reads MIDI data from MIDI ports it's configured to read from. Are you sure that MegaDrum stops sending MIDI data? When it 'occasionally stops sending signals', does MDM Log also stops showing data coming from MegaDrum?

STILL getting sysex error every single time I do a send all and about 70% of the time I do a send and I have to click send over and over again before the setting changes from red to black, don't know what's going on there, would love to be able to solve that.

Can you please make a video showing this?

[bladelawless]

As far as the latency goes, midi cable is working much better than usb was, ASIO4ALL driver has cured a lot of the latency I was experiencing with a sample rate set to 64 but the MD still 'times out' and occasionally stops sending signals to Superior Drummer. Don't know but would love to know what will cure this issue.

MegaDrum doesn't send signals to Superior Drummer (or any other software) - it sends MIDI data to a MIDI port (USB or standard). Superior Drummer reads MIDI data from MIDI ports it's configured to read from. Are you sure that MegaDrum stops sending MIDI data? When it 'occasionally stops sending signals', does MDM Log also stops showing data coming from MegaDrum?

STILL getting sysex error every single time I do a send all and about 70% of the time I do a send and I have to click send over and over again before the setting changes from red to black, don't know what's going on there, would love to be able to solve that.

Can you please make a video showing this?

yes, MDM midi log stops showing data from Megadrum.

will make a video shortly of the sysex error. thing is, when I click send all, it does actually send all despite showing the sysex error, what happens is that it hangs when it reaches 96-97% then goes to 100% and the sysex error lights up.

[dmitri]

Maybe you have cable connectivity issue between MegaDrum and the PC? The symptom looks very much like it.
Can you try another USB cable?
Can you try it with a powered USB hub?

[bladelawless]

Maybe you have cable connectivity issue between MegaDrum and the PC? The symptom looks very much like it.
Can you try another USB cable?
Can you try it with a powered USB hub?

I have tried a few different USB cables, same result.

Gonna get my hands on a powered hub. I'll let you know how it works out. Not a major problem right now, as I mentioned, it seems to be transferring the information despite sysex timeout

[dmitri]

When I made a suggestion that it looks like a 'cable connectivity issue' I was actually inferring it from what you described as it 'occasionally stops sending signals', not from Sysex errors.

[bladelawless]

I'm still rocking with the Q6600! Running at 3.2Ghz since birth for 8 years now. Only 4GB RAM though.

1) What I would say is this: Speedstep (anything that does dynamic multiplier adjustments, eco modes, etc) disable all these technologies, particularly on older computers where these things were still pioneering experiments compared to today. They only cause instability to time-critical operations such as ASIO.

2) MDM needs babysitting. Only yesterday I used the send all command to create a backup of my config on another memory slot, all seemed to go fine, except it didn't apparently. When I loaded the config from the backup, certain settings where just nonsense. Running a get all command - MDM revealed that some of my 3rd zone settings got messed up, one of my crash cymbals was labelled a rototom, etc. random settings just get corrupted. So I just avoid using Get all.

3) Don't use ASIO4ALL with dedicated audio interfaces, use the native drivers from the manufacturer. The Focusrite Saffire 56 looks large and complex, so maybe read up on how they expect you to use it in live VST situation. i.e. there might be particular channels which are the low latency outputs.

MD still 'times out' and occasionally stops sending signals to Superior Drummer. Don't know but would love to know what will cure this issue.

You and me both!

I think once you get closer to ideal settings, this problem certainly reduces. I think part of the problem is that Megadrum is so unrestricted from trigger to ARM CPU, it's quite easy to overload it. I think hot inputs have a lot to do with this problem too, and I think great care needs to be taken in configuration as well - achieving clean MIDI events is just as important. Which might mean you have to run unsensitive pads, use CC4 smoothing, use high thresholds until you can dial up the performance.

I have a Xeon 5470 3.33ghz with 12mb cache and the adaptor that arrived today, will be installing that as well as a USB 3.0 card that I will use to connect to a powered rackmount usb hub and upgrading to a SSD as well. Updated the Focusrite driver which now gives me a 32 asio buffer whereas ASIO4ALL gave me 64 and it's helped quite a bit, can't wait to see how the other upgrades will improve the overall performance of the MD. All in all, once you start getting the MD dialed in, it is hands down the best edrum module in existence and with 15 more physical inputs that I am not using at the moment I will expand this kit over the next year to add 4 more cymbals, another ride, another hihat to stay closed all the time for double bass work, three roto toms, a gong, a cowbell and a couple of bongos and maybe a timpani. I have found the MD is quite reliable after it's been initially set up, I was afraid of turning off my computer after I finally had it working but it hasn't failed to run exactly as I left it after every reboot. After a steady week of frustration, I am quite pleased, just need to fine tune the drums themselves and get some better settings. Wonder if shielding with some kind of liquid electrical tape any exposed circuitry in the drums and the MD will get rid of any possible interference?