Addictive Drums question

[yyzt4e]

Hey all,

 New to E-drums.  Got a Simmons SD1000 a couple weeks back. For practice and messing around for my first electronic kit its pretty nice.  I had some question so another member pointed me here.  I installed AD on my laptop and had some latency issues, got that fixed by installing a ASIO driver.  Works great now.  So I primarly will use this for low level noise practicing at home.  I have it all set up connected to the kit via usb for AD and have headphones out of my laptop to get the sound out of the laptop using AD.  Is there a way to also play music along with this to practice? 

[AlanK]

Hi again. You may have already read my response in the other thread..in any case, we've got the exact same scenario almost. So what I do to play along is use a small cheap mixer and/or audio interface, where you can plug in your mp3 source and then mix the volumes out of one of those units and of course your headphones will have to be plugged into the mixer or interface. Besides, you can always find uses for the interace or mixer.. I've now got 3 microphones so it's great to be able to patch them into the system as well as have my mp3's coming through a channel, and my Addictive Drum output. And, the other day, I patched my kid's electric guitar into the interface and even added some fx to it so that it wasn't just straight plain guitar, and we split the headphone connection and jammed "silently" with my stepdaughter's singing into two mics.. was pretty cool. So I'd definitely invest 80 bucks or so in a 4-6 channel mixer, you won't regret it.

[yyzt4e]

Thanks for the info  I will defiantly look into a small mixer. Gonna make it so much better having this capability.

[AlanK]

Defiance is always the best route! Sorry, just had to... typo? 

[yyzt4e]

Nice, Thanks

[yyzt4e]

So, in the meantime can I use a 3.5mm to a 1/4 female splitter to run it from my PC to a PA for use with my band?

[AlanK]

Yes, absolutely. Laptop to PA works fine using whichever cable and/or adaptor is necessary to plug into your PA. I was doing that for months.. I've been wondering if there's a chance my laptop doesn't have enough power to push the audio properly to the PA.. which is partly why I bought a mixer, thinking that may amplify the signal a bit before it reaches the speaker (I had my own single powered speaker behind my kit when I played with buddies.. at first I went module to my PA, then when I started using AD, it was midi to laptop, then like you, laptop out to PA speaker. I haven't been back to that jam setup in a while, but will bring my mixer and audio interface next time I go and see if I get better sound (also, my PA speaker isn't the best over there). Will see.. but your setup should work

[M@e T]

I always just use an audio splitter so you can play tracks from the laptop and listen back at the same time. Simples.
M@

[AlanK]

The splitter works and is probably the quickest/easiest setup but I just found it was hard to adjust volumes on the fly..getting at the laptop volume can be tricky and then you have to pick up or reach for the mp3 source too.. most of the time I'd find the backing music I'm playing to will spike or be too quiet (yes, I've run the volume leveler but there's always some songs that don't match the standard levels for some reason, those can be deafening if I'm playing on shuffle and have headphones on). Sometimes I want to turn up or down my drums, and I'd have to reach to the laptop, and it's always on my left, and it's hard to manoevre with my left finger to get to the tiny volume icon. So for me, getting a cheap mixer or using my audio interface that has huge knobs, makes it so much easier to use one hand to bring up or down the drums or music quickly without losing my timing.