Simple virtual drummer instrument

[Drew Stephenson]

Seems it's a Reaper thing. Mutes and solos work at expected speeds in standalone, but a Reaper project with no other content at all introduces these 4-5 second delays.
Which is vexing and peculiar.

[Drew Stephenson]

Ah, it turns out I have less than 6GB left on my drive. That might not be helping.

[Drew Stephenson]

Well, it ain't that. Guess it might be the age of my machine but it might just be it doesn't play nicely in Reaper.
Need to try and figure out how to route the different parts of the kit to separate reaper channels and see if it responds better like that. If that's possible. At least there's what looks like a comprehensive manual available.

[MOF]

Ah, it turns out I have less than 6GB left on my drive. That might not be helping.....
Well, it ain't that. Guess it might be the age of my machine

Are you sure? Especially if you don’t have much RAM the hard drive is used as virtual RAM. I remember reading ages ago that the system drive should have at least 10% spare capacity.

[Drew Stephenson]

Yeah, i was right at the limits. I now have 200GB available but still having issues.
Also dragging and dropping grooves doesn't seem to work.
(And it doesn't look like i can separate outputs in to different channels on my DAW).

Further regrets...

[muzines]

(And it doesn't look like i can separate outputs in to different channels on my DAW).

I'm sure you can, Kontakt has multiple outputs... this is a fairly fundamental feature in a drum library...

Edit - I had a look, and yes, you can send drums to multiple outputs. Kontakt's multiple output support is, uh, less than intuitive , but basically, go to the Outputs tab in Kontakt, and choose/create, say an 8x stereo output config.

Now, choose a multiple output instance of Kontakt in your DAW, and you can route individual drum channels to whichever of Kontakt's outputs you want in the Mixer -> Settings tab (where it says "Output") - all the available outputs you have configured in Kontakt are available from that menu.

[garrettendi]

Can you get a refund if its inoperational? You’ve had it about a week

[Drew Stephenson]

As Desmond has demonstrated above Garretendi, the issue is almost certainly with me and not with the software. Though I thought I had pretty much done what's suggested. Will have another look.

[muzines]

Seriously, Kontakt's multi-output handling is just terrible, over-complicated and weirdly implemented.

What you'd expect to do:

- Load a multi-output Kontakt in your DAW (say, 8x stereo outputs)
- Create whatever additional mixer channels you need in your DAW to handle the Kontakt outputs
- In Kontakt, assign the kick to Kontakt output 1+2, the snare to output 3+4 etc... job done!

What you *actually* have to do:

... you know what, I was going to step by step the procedure but it's so unbelievable it would take me 12 paragraphs. You basically have to nuke the initial configuration (which probably has a few stereo outputs and a 5.1 surround config - useful!), and create a new bunch of Kontakt outputs, and map them to the *actual* plugin outputs.

But the list won't update until you make the new configuration the default, and remove and reload the multi-output Kontakt (yes, you make changes to the output config, you have to reload the plugin!). Now the list of available outputs will be correct, and you can now map (*sigh*), the Kontakt outputs to the host output channels (so that, eg Kontakt Stereo 1 is mapped to Outputs 1+2, Kontakt Stereo 2 is mapped to Outputs 3+4 etc - yes, you have to do this manually for no on godly earth reason.

*Anyway*, once you mapped all that stuff, and saved it as an output configuration preset, you can probably now load your actual Kontakt instrument, and assign your Kick to Stereo Output 1 (which we've told Kontakt is the plugin output 1&2) and so on.

Once you've got a working config saved, it's fine, but if you're not familiar with it, it will do your head in. I still find it fairly unbelievable everytime I go back there and look at what you have to do...

[The Elf]

Kontakt's multi-outputs can be a very confusing minefield. Take a bit of time to understand what it's asking of you - it will be time well spent.

[Drew Stephenson]

Ok, I'll knuckle down to that when I've got some time and patience. I assume beating yourself to unconsciousness with one of your own limbs is somewhere around step 8?

[muzines]

Ok, I'll knuckle down to that when I've got some time and patience. I assume beating yourself to unconsciousness with one of your own limbs is somewhere around step 8?

Yes, but the temptation to do that starts to kick in around step 5...

[Drew Stephenson]

Right, good to know, thanks.

[stellavista303]

Enjoyed reading this thread. I was in the same boat a few months ago and after reading this article on SOS I stuck with Logic Drummer (because it is so fast and easy) but set it up with my own mix using UAD plugins mainly:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... tual-drums

Basically I switched off all the default effects and mixing in Logic and pretty much followed the instructions in the article above more or less. So whatever solution you choose I would recommend reading the article above also.

[Drew Stephenson]

Thanks stellavista303, I've read that article a couple of times already but it's always good for a refresher.

P.s. for anyone following along I've got the drag and drop sorted. Unlike every other drum instrument I've played around with (quite a few now!) where you navigate through the folders to the groove you want and drag it from the sub-menu, with NI you have to select that groove, then go up to the preview player and drag the sample from there. Which is, I think, not at all clear from the manual.

[Drew Stephenson]

Well, thanks to Desmond (again) and a nice chap on youtube I now have everything set up routing to channels in the DAW which means mutes, solos, fader changes etc all happen in real time. Which is nice.
And it's all saved as a template instrument which loads up correctly in one hit.

[muzines]

It's just a shame it takes a team of four people to do something which *should* be fairly straightforward.

Kontakt is an *amazing* platform, but there's so much about it that's inherited from the early days of plugins that need re-thinking (at least in terms of the interface), but NI are *very* reluctant to change things because of the fact that the platform generates a lot of licensing money to sample developers, and they don't want to break or disrupt things.

Look at the difference in interface for editing and creating multisampled instruments in Kontakt - which is more or less the same interface from Kontakt 2 in the early 2000s, and Logic's new Sampler. Now which interface do you want to spend months working in on large, multi-thousand sample projects..?

Anyway - at least you can just enjoy using it, now!

[Drew Stephenson]

Yep, already dropped it into one project to replace the Manda Powerdrummer I was using before and I immediately prefer it.
Confirmation bias is a wonderful thing!