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Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 5:13 pm
by Benni
Hey Richard and Yann,

Really annoying I typed all of this out and then for some reason it didn't post! So, take two...

I just want to say to start with - I am not a drummer, I have never drummed in my life but Aerodrums is amazing! It's such a great tool that is really surprisingly simple and easy to use. It sounds great and slowly but surely I am teaching myself the basics of drumming!

So, I was looking forward to the MIDI update but I can't seem to get it working correctly so far. I run Aerodrums on a 2011 Macbook running OSX 10.9.2 and am trying to use Aerodrums with Logic Pro X.
I installed the MIDI update and followed the instructions in the manual, setting up the IAC midi port. I ran Logic X and Aerodrums - selecting in the MIDI menu MIDI ONLY and the IAC Port. In Logic I set up an instrument track running Drum Designer and proceeded to test. Nothing. I presume this is because I have not set up Logic to receive information from the IAC port - but after spending a while trying to find out how to do this, I still didn't know how. So I instead tested the other 2 MIDI ports in Aerodrums - COREMIDI,USB2.0-MIDI PORT 1 and COREMIDI,USB2.0-MIDI PORT 2. Port 2 again did nothing, however Port 1 worked! I was happy, I could play the drums in Drum Designer... for all of 15 seconds. After about 15 seconds, all functionality ceases and I can no longer use Aerodrums to control the plugin. The plugin seems to have malfunctioned too - clicking the drums you get no audio. Relaunching the plugin or selecting a new drum kit preset causes Aerodrums to start working again, before once again promptly stopping. I've tried a few different things to tackle the problem, but none have made any difference.

- As it is COREMIDI,USB2.0-MIDI PORT 1 that is functioning, I disabled the IAC port in the Audio MIDI setup. This leads to COREMIDI,USB2.0-MIDI PORT 1 not functioning at all.
- Tried different MIDI channels on the instrument track (1-16 and ALL)
- Tested different graphics settings within Aerodrums
- Tried different channel settings in Logic for instrument track - stereo, multi output...
- General testing of various project settings etc
- Restarted both softwares and Mac

It's a little frustrating as the update offers a whole new potential for Aerodrums but it just doesn't want to work. Maybe it's just me and I've set it up wrong, but I thought it'd be good to see what you guys thought!

Anyway, as I said to start with, fantastic product! Very pleased with it as a whole, hopefully can sort this MIDI issue out for even more fun!

Thanks,
Benni

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 6:48 pm
by Benni
So further investigation shows that this problem only occurs when using the Drum Kit Designer instrument plugin. Have tried numerous other instruments such as Ultrabeat, Retrosynth etc and they all work fine and do not "crash". Hoping you have some ideas because I am a bit stumped!

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:06 pm
by Sipaliwini
Thank you for trying other plugins. Right now my guess is that Drum Kit Designer is not keeping up with the number of hi-hat openness MIDI events we send (we send 125 per second).
Could you make a kit without hi-hats and without kick and let me know if Drum Kit Designer crashes with that kick?

I will try to see if I can experiment with Drum Kit Designer.

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 8:20 pm
by Benni
Ok I gave it a go but I don't actually think that it is possible to do that. I don't know if you are familiar with Drum Kit Designer or not, but it's based around a series of preset kits (all are kick, snare, hat, 3 toms, ride and 2 cymbals) and you can swap out each element of the kit for a different variety of said element, ie: you can change the snare to another snare, but couldnt change it to a tom. As far as I am aware, and am trying to do, you cannot build a kit from scratch, nor delete parts of a kit from an existing preset - so yeah don't think I can do that :( if you get a chance to look at it that'd be good!

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:51 pm
by Sipaliwini
Oh no I meant create a new kit in Aerodrums, you can do that there: go in Drum kits, clone the small rock kit, click Edit, click on "13in hi-hats" then on the left arrow "<" button to remove it, then click OK.

Now try drumming with that kit into DKD, if it doesn't crash it means the hi-hat openness update rate was too high for it and we can look into customizing it.

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 1:00 am
by Benni
ah right, my bad! will try it and post my results

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 11:19 am
by Benni
So I took the hi hat out of the kit and nothing changed. Then took the kick out as well and still the same problem.

Also having another weird issue now with the setup screen. In the first section where you align yourself to the drummer, the screen is totally black, as if the cameras view is obstructed by a lens cap. There is no problem with the camera and it can still see and read what is going on as in the lighting screen it shows its normal display and it still reads incoming information.

Image

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 2:20 pm
by Sipaliwini
It looks like a more general issue with DKD then, if MIDI works fine with other plugins.
I know we just only released MIDI so it may sound cheeky, but Logic Pro X and Drummer & Drum Kit Designer are young and very complex programs, so they may have some teething issues.
I have posted a question on the Apple Support Communities page for Logic Pro: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6077089
When I tried to post on Apples' LPX feedback page ( http://www.apple.com/feedback/logic-pro.html ), it asked so many questions I didn't know the answer to that I gave up. You could try it.

We're looking into this black camera image issue, it is the first time we see it. Does it now always do this, including between re-starts, re-boots and unplugging+plugging the camera?

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:23 pm
by Benni
Thanks for posting to Apple, will keep an eye out for a reply. Yes you're right the issue seems to lye with DKD - I downloaded the BFD3 demo and the MIDI triggering was working fine, albeit I had to change some mapping settings but there was no crashing and it was working as expected.

The camera thing seems to be an issue related to USB hubs. The black screen only happened yesterday and until then everything was functioning normally whilst running through a hub, but now unless I run the camera directly from my laptop I will get that black screen.

Re: Hello! First thoughts and the MIDI update

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:25 pm
by Benni
And yeah just checking out LPX page, so many unnecessary questions!