Klaus, you old rascal, you forced me to use my dictionary for nearly every second word to understand you…and that as a german to a german inside an english speaking forum…unbelievable.
The military is part of my life for more than 25 years and yes of course, it is affecting how I’m acting sometimes in civil life. I would lie if I would deny it. It is never meant in a bad way when I’m using examples to explain or to compare situations. That’s my way of visualizing a situation. I’m dealing with situations from another point of view and therefor I’m using sometimes a military situation to make it impersonal. Sometimes it matches perfect. If a new drummer, that is having problems with the rudiments, would asking me for something very complicated that he likes to play I would say: “A soldier should learn how to shoot with the old rifle before asking for the machinegun”. That is impersonal, but it matches the situation.
You can compare that with your childhood as the parents said: “Big boys don’t cry”.
(or the german version: “An indian chief knows no pain”.)
Klaus, thank you very much for explaining me your configuration.
That is very interesting. You are recording your drum set to different tracks inside your DAW like recording a drum set inside the studio. That’s fantastic and therewith you have given me an additional option I’m able to look on. Thanks again.
I have to split my answer now because of the given situation with the band and our equipment and the situation that I’m working in my free time for a recording studio with mobile recording service.
1.) Equipment of the recording studio:The guys of the studio are the keyboarder (Richard) and the guitarist (Andreas) of the band I played with during the 80’s.
Good friends and musicians are never loosing contact.
Here is the Link to the webside that is showing the equipment:
Link removed - Google linked to this article !If our band would like to produce a high quality studio CD my friends from “
(name removed because of Google)” would do it inside their home studio for free.
That is one reason why my choosen equipment is not including recording functionallity.
And here is another crazy situation:
My friends from “
(name removed because of Google)” asked me if I would like to start a new band project with them next year. Next year I’m on my meanwhile ninth (and hopefully last) mission and my current unit in Germany will be moved end of 2013 to another garrison, which is forcing me to move.
The new garrison is in a distance of 15 kilometers from the recording studio.
You know what that means.
Reunion after more than 25 years.
And Richard the keyboarder would like to see me using a TD-30 drum-tec kit.
Uhhhh….we will see what the future brings.
2.) Recordings of the band inside the rehearsal room:Our soundman is recording the whole band at the same time.
Therefor he is picking up the channels from the PA mixer with “Audacity” on his laptop.
The e-drum set sound uses two channels inside the PA mixer.
The quality is good but not comparable to a studio recorded CD.
It is absolutely ok for our intension because we are only recording small sequences of the songs, mostly the sung parts to check the harmony afterwards.
The next thing is that we are practicing with a normal loudness. That’s the big advantage of the e-drum set.
I do not have recordings from our band at home for practicing.
It may sound strange but a lot of the played songs, especially the rock classics, are burned in my mind and I played these songs thousand times and finally I grew up with these songs.
I’m only practicing a bit, and only with new songs.
Because of the e-drum set I’m focused on the sound creation. That is my challenge and it makes so much fun to work with sounds. If available I’m using drumless tracks from newer songs for practicing and my sound creation is orientated to the original sound. And if I think that a specific song needs a bit of another sound I’m doing it because it is my interpretation how that song has to sound with me as the drummer.
Normally we are using the original sequence of a song.
But live on stage is different. You have to work with the audience.
And if it needs a longer guitar solo, yeah.
And if the keyboarder likes to answer that guitar solo with a keyboard solo, yeah.
And if I like to do something crazy, yeah.
Ups, I missed the bass guitar, yeah.
That is playing live and it works if you are playing together with flexible and creative musicians.
3.) Xenyx mixer and internal USB sound card:That part is not more up to date.
The PreSonus FireStudio Project replaced the Xenyx mixer.I was looking for something to combine all my sound sources together in one device and to mix the sound. And it should be easy to handle at home, in the rehearsal room and on stage.
I had a lot of impressions through the used equipment of my friends from the recording studio, equipment from the bands we worked with and finally the equipment of my own band.
I saw some versions of the Xenyx mixer series being used from some bands.
I spoke at first with the band about my plan of using a 2 in 1 set and afterwards with my friends from the recording studio. We discussed several options. And I was looking for active speakers in addition.
The offered Behringer bundle from the musicstore Thomann with 2x 15” 215D active speakers and the 1222 USB mixer was an option to kill two birds with one stone. I studied the downloadable manual, watched several videos, phoned with the PA section from Thomann and explained my intension.
I drove to Thomann (250km) one week later and got my headphones and prepaired laptop (with Asio4all, Addictive Drums, Cubase and VSTHost installed) with me.
After half a day sitting in a small room with mixer and my laptop connected and listening to the active speakers I made my decission and bought that bundle.
I took the additional chance to walk over to the drum section for taking a closer look onto the new DM10 X kit (plastik rack clamps, thin and wobbly snare stand, 12” pads with notch at the bottom, crash and ride cymbals with A+B ports etc.).
Laptop adjustments:I downloaded and used this manual from Native Instruments for preparing the laptop to get the most performance out of it.
Select your operating system.
Windows 7 Tuning Tips for Audio Processing
http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/847/Windows+7+Tuning+Tips+for+Audio+ProcessingWindows XP Tuning Tips for Audio Processing
http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/343/Windows+XP+Tuning+Tips+for+Audio+ProcessingWindows Vista Tuning Tips for Audio Processing
http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/354/Windows+Vista+Tuning+Tips+for+Audio+ProcessingMac OS X Tuning Tips for Audio Processing
http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/974/Mac+OS+X+Tuning+Tips+for+Audio+ProcessingI made additional adjustments and deactivated some drivers I do not need.
Furthermore I’m using a program called TuneUp Utilities.
That program has a “Turbo mode” and is deactivating also some unnecessary functions.
Third-party analyzing tools:These tools are shown inside the manuals from Native Instruments and are very helpful for your system.
DPC Latency Checker
http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtmlLatencyMon
http://resplendence.com/latencymonAsio4all settings:That part is not more up to date.
The PreSonus FireStudio Project replaced the Xenyx mixer.Here are the settings for VSTHost:
Here are the settings for the Xenyx USB sound card:
My USB device “Power-On” sequence:
Laptop > Xenyx Mixer > Both modules > Start of VSTHost