Drum Rack for live drumming set

[elpernyl]

Hi
I'm setting up a set in Live7 to play electronic drums live with drum pads.
For each song I have a different Drum Rack using 11 cells and all kinds of effects assigned to both cells and sends.

So far I managed to build 19 of these kits, all of them inside a single Drum Rack that switches the specific Drum Racks with the chain selection. That way I can change kits with midi signals without stopping and also use the macros to control different things for each kit.

Everything worked fine until I finished the last kit. Now I get pops and clicks all the time, so I guess I reached some kind of limit.

I don't think it is the CPU because it never goes above 60% and usually stays around 40% (using Speedswitch to monitor usage).
I also though it could be the slow internal hard drive, but I tried exporting the set with all the samples to a faster external HD and still get the same problems. Also, the HD overload light doesn't light up, like I've seen it do with other kinds of projects.

So looking around the forum I found this thread that mentioned RAM overload because of using too many Simplers in the Drum Rack. The solution proposed is to switch to Sampler within the Drum Rack so that the Drum Rack would load the files directly from the drive instead of using RAM.

So I have some questions and want to get some opinions before I buy Sampler.

Most importantly, I want to know what's causing the glitches!!
CPU, RAM, HD?
When exported, the whole project's size is 40mb because all the samples are really short.
The pc is a Dell Inspiron 700m, XP SP2, 2GB RAM, Live 7.0.14, RME Hammerfall DSP.

If I switch to using Sampler instead of Simpler in the Drum Racks could I start having problems with the HD read speed?
I prefer to use the internal one, even if its 5400rpm.
Still the sample size is so small...

I though about saving the different kits as Drum Rack presets and then loading each one at the start of each song, but it is a pain compared to selecting chains, specially playing live.
Is there a way to change the presets on the Drum Rack without using the mouse?

I can use the external pads connected to the USB as a midi device or through the RME midi in, but I also get these noises when I play recorded midi clips. Since I'm already usind the RME midi in and can merge two signals, would it be better for performance if I don't connect the pads as a midi device? (one less usb device connected)

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to explain the situation in case anyone has a different approach to doing this.

Cheers

[solacerodgers]

wouldnt it be easier to buy something like battery and load it for this? It accepts program changes from midi and can be used as a vsti.

[Airwave]

you need 4gb of ram.

[dancing Ray]

Hi elpernyl,

I have the same problem. I will try davethedrummers tricks (thanks for the link, I missed that thread) this afternoon (european time) and report back.

Ray

[elpernyl]

Thanks for the replies!

@solacerodgers: buying Battery is certainly something to consider, but I work so quickly in Live that I would prefer something integrated within the same software, especially since I record and resample lots of stuff in Live that ends up in the drum rack. So first I want to see if there's a solution within Ableton soft.

@Airwave: why would I need 4GB of ram for having 40MB of samples in use? I've been using Live7 for a while producing music and audio for cinema with huge complex projects and I've had no problem with the 2GB I have. Is there some strange memory management that happens when drum racks are triggered?

@dancing Ray: I'll be waiting for your results! Hope it works out. I wanted to try it with the demo, but since there's so much to do (19 kits x 11 pads = 209 replacements!!) I didn't want to do all the work and then have a file I couldn't save.

UPDATE: I'm starting to think it is the CPU. BTW, my processor is 2.10GHz.
I tried setting Live to external sync because another computer running live will be controlling the BPM and kit selection through MIDI and the CPU usage went up about 15% and the noises got a lot worse. To play I don't really need it to sync this way, but I wanted to mention this here.
To me this is strange because I've had projects that go up to 75% without glitches, so it could be a combination of CPU and something else.

I hope people keep sending some answers about this and the other questions I posted before.
Cheers

[dancing Ray]

Sorry elpernyl,
I started replacing the Simplers and came across other problems, so it will take a little longer to verify that Simpler-Sampler thing.

[elpernyl]

dancing Ray, no problem
thanks for the help checking this out
i wrote to support this weekend asking some questions about it
i'll post here any answers

[dancing Ray]

i'll post here any answers

That would be great!!

Do you (or anybody) know if unracking devices saves cpu power?
I don´t want to hijack your thread, I think i will make another thread for this.

[dancing Ray]

Hey elpernyl,

did you get any results yet?

[blitit]

you need 4gb of ram.

As xp is a 32 bit OS, it can only uses up to 3.2 gb ram. At least thats what i knew.
If u wanna use more, then you'll have to use a 64 bit OS like vista but vista sucks so we'll just have to wait for windows 7.

[elpernyl]

Hey Dancing Ray
I reduced some of the noises by fixing a problem with the laptop regarding speedstepping of the processor, but it was an specific issue of my model (Dell Inspiron 700m) that had a microsoft fix.

But its still far from perfect!
What worked was dividing the drumracks in 2 als files and loading the second one in the middle of the gig.
Its not a very good solution for me because my live sets have no silence between songs and I expected to be able to do this without loading anything.
I also wanted to avoid going to the computer while playing.

Ableton never answered my mails to support, I guess the Live8 release has their hands full because they answered all the mails I wrote before this one.

So I still don´t know what is the reason behind the glitches...

How about you, did you manage to replace the simplers with samplers?

@Blitit
Thanks for the explanation.
Still I think there is no need for that much RAM to load <50MB of samples.
But if it can affect this specific issue I would like to know why.

[Stan_T]

Is there a way to change the presets on the Drum Rack without using the mouse?

The way I do it is to have all my samples loaded into a single Drum Rack then build the actual kits with my controller. In other words, program 01 may be a brushes kit, so selecting program 01 on the controller will point each pad to the appropriate brushes samples.

For me that's been a lot easier than doing it in Live.

[nolivdacom]

Hello,
Stan_T,

The way I do it is to have all my samples loaded into a single Drum Rack then build the actual kits with my controller. In other words, program 01 may be a brushes kit, so selecting program 01 on the controller will point each pad to the appropriate brushes samples

Can you discribe a little how you do this? I need to switch between few preset by clicking A,B,C or D on my Axiom midikeyboard...
How can you assign preset "my drum 1" to the bank 1 etc...
Thanks a lot!

[Stan_T]

Hello,
Stan_T,

The way I do it is to have all my samples loaded into a single Drum Rack then build the actual kits with my controller. In other words, program 01 may be a brushes kit, so selecting program 01 on the controller will point each pad to the appropriate brushes samples

Can you discribe a little how you do this? I need to switch between few preset by clicking A,B,C or D on my Axiom midikeyboard...
How can you assign preset "my drum 1" to the bank 1 etc...
Thanks a lot!

Well, the way I do it may not be the best way for the Axiom. There are a few ways to go about it and I chose the easiest. On my drum controller (a Trapkat) I have the snare on program "1" point to C2 on the Drum Rack. C2 in my case is a Sampler with 10" snare samples. When I switch to program "2" on the Trapkat, the snare pad now points to C3, which is another Sampler with Chocolate Audio's Black Beauty Snare. If you apply this to all the pads, you end up with a bunch of custom sets that don't require any changes to Ableton. In fact, I don't touch Ableton once I've booted up.

There are other ways to do it that might make more sense you're trying to program the keys and not the pads. For example, if there's an easy way to transpose the output from the Axiom, that would be a quick and dirty way to change between sample sets. Just arrange each set in octaves on the DrumRack. There are better ways, but I'm not the best person to give advice on them.

[dancing Ray]

I change my presets via the "chain select" section in racks or via the "sample select" chooser in sampler.
Thus the sounds kind of "morph" to the next preset.

When you have some spare knobs you can set it up for each instrument separately.
Then you can combine any snare with any bass drum with any set of cymbals...

@ elpernyl

I still don´t know if Sampler or Simpler is the better way. I think I don´t have enough samples. I´m more the sound mangling type who tries to get much out of few samples, but

did you try Sampler with the "sample select" chooser?

It seem to me that less devices is a good thing for Live.
Actually I have streamlined my set a bit and thus got rid of the crackling.
Namely I exchanged some Operators with Samplers and combined some rack chains with Samplers into a single Sampler going the "sample select" route.
...
Now I am not bothered by crackling anymore.
...
Instead Live simply crashes

Hoping for a bug fix.
Let´s keep us updated ,
Ray