Hi Evgeny,
Sorry for not sharing your opinion, but let me explain my thoughts.
“I think applying EQ inside Aerodrums is a very nice idea, its easy to implement.”
Yes, it would be nice, and you are certainly right about finding and implementing open EQ algorithms, but I think this would require a lot of programming to be integrated into the GUI, and I really don’t see how all this could easily be managed just with our drum sticks. I already regret that we can't see and mix the volume of all the elements of one kit together on one page, I don't even imagine how it would be with an equalizer for each element. I think this should/can only be done outside of Aerodrums GUI.
“adding a multi-track ASIO output brings Aerodrums into DAW category”
“Most users wont benefit from it”
No, it will bring Aerodrums into the professional category. It’s the same with e-drums from 1000€ upwards. They all have multiples outputs, despite most users will never use them. Nevertheless
all manufacturers offer them for their more expensive kits, because an e-drum that can be used professionally just needs it. There are certainly a lot of people who are using Aerodrums just for having fun and there is nothing wrong with it, but anyone who uses Aerodrums for live playing will quickly find out that there is another even more important thing sorely missing: to be able to control Aerodrums by hardware (other than a mouse) in real-time. Every electric/electronic instrument has at least an easy accessible volume button.
For live playing this is essential. Professional e-drums do even have group faders, here from the e-drums I’m playing once a week.
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Some time ago I was speaking with Yann about this and I told him that I would really like if I could control my Aerodrums by MIDI with my MIDI controller-surface.
Now, beside changing the Aerodrums kits by MIDI commands, everything else (hardware faders, separate equalizing, sending to multiples outputs) and a lot of more I could do externally of Aerodrums just with audio routing. And I could control all “materially” with my MIDI controller-surface. This is primary all I would expect from a “professional” e-drum kit.
But being able to change the Aerodrums kits by MIDI commands (by pressing a button like I can do with each e-drum) would still be another nice feature for live playing.
Finally it’s up to Aerodrums to decide in which category they want to play. (I will be happy eatherway, because I’ve learned to manage otherwise, but by making compromises.)
“must use something more stable and predictable than portaudio library”
Maybe I don’t have your knowledge about system-internals, but I can speak about what I had in my hands. I’m using Jack audio for Windows since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, in the beginning it was just for being able to do online rehearsals with Aerodrums and Jamulus and in 2 years I never had a crash whilst playing. Today I’m this confident that I use it for my gigs. It’s true, there had been problems in the past and I was forced to use a downgraded version for months, but the last version “jack2-win64-v1.9.20” runs fine. Also still 2 years ago it was quite complicated to install Jack for Windows, but nowadays it’s very easy. And with a Mac portaudio isn’t used, the JackRouter for OS X is a CoreAudio “user space” driver that allows any OS X CoreAudio application to become a Jack client.
I was primary reacting to this thread because of Richard’s idea:
Richard wrote:
we would configure it to output multiple stereo channels, e.g. one for each drum.
I think it would be more usable to stick with the manner like it’s done with e-drums.
This is the back of the Roland TD-30 I’m playing:
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8 direct-outputs (4 mono and 2 stereo) and 2 master outs, and I think I’ve never seen more.
So just 10 ports/sockets would be enough.
If compatible with the internal design of Aerodrums, but this I don’t know, the for me most versatile and maybe (I’m not a programmer) most easy to implement solution for all this would be if Jack audio could be natively supported by Aerodrums as an alternative sound-system for Windows and Mac, so we could choose between Wasapi/Asio/Jack pour Windows, and Coreaudio/Jack pour Mac. And by choosing Jack we would automatically have 10 sockets for connections (by taking the example from the TD-30). But again, I don’t know if it’s realizable, I’m not a coder.
This is what they say on their website about Jack integration (I only understand half of it):
Your app must be callback-based. This means that you should not block on writes or reads from a PCM device; rather, you should have your app be “driven” by a function that gets called at regular intervals. This is a design decision.
Note that code written for any callback API can generally be ported to any other callback API fairly easily. Code that is written around a “blocking I/O” model generally needs to completely redesigned to be used in any kind of callback API.
This might give an idea if Jack integration in Aerodrums would be easily possible.
There is more and more music software for Windows having integrated Jack natively, the last one I know is Jamulus. There’s the list from jackaudio.org:
Ardour
Bitwig Studio
Carla Plugin Host
Foo YC20
Harisson MixBus
LMMS (starting from v1.3)
MuseScore
Radium
Zrythm
The list of all applications supporting Jack natively, all operating systems combined is much much longer:
https://jackaudio.org/applications/
And Jack works also with MIDI. This could replace a virtual MIDI cable like LoopBe for applications supporting Jack natively.
Some links I found:
Using JACK on Windows
https://jackaudio.org/faq/jack_on_windows.html
Jack OS X
https://resumebuilderpro.com/resume-examples/jackosx
How do I make an application use JACK?
https://jackaudio.org/faq/making_a_jack_app.html
API
https://jackaudio.org/api/
Before programming features probably only used by a hand-full of people, wouldn’t it be more wise to give them the possibility and teach them how they could do it externally, than making Aerodrums more and more overcharged and complicated to use for all the others who would never use those features.
Just my 2 cents