USB Audio vs MIDI & Preamps - TR 8S // Music Producer Diaries
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ส.ค. 2024
- I've heard of some confusion on how to sync the Roland TR-8S with their computer- when should I use USB audio? Why is the timing off when I use MIDI sync over USB? How can I tighten up the timing when recording my drum tracks?
USB audio is a fantastic addition to the machine. The TR-8S allows you to make fully robust beats and 'song starters' as I call them- complete with fills, breaks, intros, and outros, and dump those into your DAW to further expand upon. I love this because I love having the ability to make music and bang out ideas on a box sitting in bed with Netflix on the TV or something, hit save, make another, hit save, make another... and then later dump them into Ableton.
If you make dance music you should absolutely have a drum machine. In my opinion, it's essential to your studio, even if you just have one drum machine and your computer. The ability to come up with the structure of your song before starting to add layers of pads, effects, basses, etc. is crucial. It cannot be overstated how helpful this can be. Also, dance music very much rotates around the sound of Roland's legacy of drum machines. Other things too: samplers, sound CD's (now Splice), synths, etc; but any official dance music track has a solid base drum groove that carries the song from start to finish. It's quite literally, the beat.
Using sound packs or sample CDs for this can be good, without doubt, but having direct access to what I consider the 'heart and soul' of dance music- the TR-909, the TR-606, 707, 808... it gives you a massive advantage of speed, originality while still keeping the popular sound, and fun. I specifically like the TR-8S for this because it has all of those machines in one box, as Analog Circuit Behavior (ACB) sounds. This means you're tweaking synthesized sounds versus tweaking samples which can lead to artifacts. While artifacts aren't detrimental and samples can and often do sound great, the flexibility you get with the ACB sounds is staggering. You can pitch your toms way up to a click or way down to a boomy bass tom. You can make sure your hats are in key with your other percussion without sounding steppy or crunchy (technical terms here lol). PLUS you can add samples into it. In my opinion the TR-8S is the greatest drum machine ever.
USB audio and MIDI lets you transmit all of your TR-8S sounds into your DAW in real time, so you can make tweaks to drum parts, change the pattern parts, add fills or breaks, all in the moment. You can record an entire performance which sounds great on it's own and then add more to it in your DAW. The downside to this method is, it takes a bit of time to setup both with cabling, drivers (only gotta do that once), and MIDI sync delay, so if you only need to add a couple sounds into a song that already exists in your computer, I'd suggest using method number two...
MIDI DIN cable and analog outs. The old school, tried and tested way of getting your drum machine sounds into your computer. It's usually as rock solid timing as there's less room for error, and you've got the convenience of just plugging in your analog or assignable outs into your audio interface. This method produces a super tight, awesome sound overall- especially if you're sending the analog outs into some nice preamps. That being said, even standard preamps sound good and generally add a bit of "depth" to each sound as you track it in.
Both methods have their pros and cons. Overall this machine is super flexible and an absolute joy to have in any studio. You can't go wrong with a legacy device that combines multiple boxes into one.
Question: how do you use your TR-8S in your music setup? Do you prefer using USB audio/MIDI or standard MIDI sync with a cable? Let me know in the comments below! ⬇️
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Thanks for the awesome video Scott. You opened my eyes to the nuances of recording each track individually.
Hey I'm glad you found it so helpful. It really does make a world of a difference! 😋
Just got my TR8S and getting it setup with ableton on windows. Great words of wisdom. Thanks!
Glad you found it helpful dude! 🙌
Just what I needed for my TR-8s, thank you for sharing!
I am currently setting up my TR8s on my new computer and I completely agree with what he says. When you run your machine through pre amps the drums just sound way better. I am currently with a scarlet 2i2 so I record everything one instrument at a time but it is totally worth it in terms of sound quality.
i realize Im quite off topic but does anybody know a good place to watch new tv shows online ?
@Cesar Yehuda i dunno I would suggest flixportal. Just search on google after it :) -josue
@Josue Draven thank you, I signed up and it seems like they got a lot of movies there =) I appreciate it!
@Cesar Yehuda You are welcome :)
Subscribed and liked. Midi and USB instruments have always been a challenge when it comes to latency timing. Great video, this helps paint a picture how to set up a MIDI / USB device, the settings needed and the delay settings. The take away is play with the delay setting so you can import instruments in a tight sync'd fashion. Preamps, poo poo, and character, love it. Digital to analog conversion is something to consider, love how you note the positives of this. Glass half full or empty? Love your outlook. Micro performances, seriously something to think about.
hello, cool. usb, audio looks same same here, i will test again ;) in usb there is no conersion at all right .. going from sample, digital engine of tr8, tr6 straight to daw , less noise , no loss no .. ;) pretty cool for keeping soundcard input for other synth . cheers
Lol yes we all want to get out of Loopville! Great video!
Hi! Thanks for making the video. So if I record it with USB Audio, I get 11 instruments recorded in each seperate track in ableton. But If I use MIDI cable & preamps, I'm getting the drum machine's sound from it's MIX OUT and getting the sound as a whole(only 1 track)?
I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe the TR-8S has 8 analog outputs, so some tracks would need to share outputs as there is 11 drum tracks. Nothing wrong with that as high hats can usually be summed together without issue. I tend to prefer that for recording everything at once, however if you want more nuance and “production value” to each sound (like I talked about in the video) tracking each sound in one by one through the analog outputs is better :)
Glad you enjoyed the video! 🙌🏼🥳
Can you make a video about the midi din with preamps set up? Like connection and workflow ?
I returned my TR8S. I run midi cables and by plugging in and out into interface in and out I was getting continuous data coming from the TR8s out crashing my DAW (FL). I could not stop this from happening, all my other hardware is fine, just that one unit and the output. Wonder if it was faulty - tempted to buy again to find out, as I really like the unit.
Strange! I've never heard of that happening tbh. I'd say maybe do some research on it and try it again. It's one of the best drum machines IMO for sure!
I had a similar issue with TR8-S and Ableton Live 11. I have my TR8-S connected to a dedicated MIDI interface (MIO xl) with MIDI DIN IN and OUT cables, ADAT expander (ADA8200) connected through my audio fuse studio and I had a weird stuttering and crash in Ableton. TR8-s MIDI implementation is very very bad for studio setting. People should be screaming at Roland.
Thanks for making this video! In my opinion using a TR8S as an audio interface for multitracking is one of the biggest advantages to it in the first place! Im looking to get one for this reason. I do have one question though. Since you can connect in stereo to the ext in but through USB that track is only mono, does it add R + L channels together? Or only take the L channel?
Glad you found it helpful! It's definitely one of the greatest drum machines ever and having the USB audio functionality really future-proofs it. TBH I don't know about the stereo external input. Are you sure the input through USB is mono? If it is, I'd imagine it does a L+R sum, although typically L is considered mono.
It would be an easy test to figure out. Just feed it a stereo sample saying "left" in the left channel and "right" in the right sample. It'll make itself very apparent :)
Cheers!
Same here. Latency with usb……no latency with midi out/In
i love the audio over usb thing! when i play live i just need 4 cables!!! from tr8s to macbook, from op-1 to macbook and from macbook to the xone 96. the last cable is a powercord for the tr8s. thats it. live act done.
Audio over USB is truly the future. The S2400 does 8 stereo channels over USB too and it's awesome. I have more than enough audio inputs on my interface, but USB makes it SO much easier!
@@ScottBrio yea. that was something i dreamd a long time off. also that teenage engineering added usb audio to the op-1 was gold :D
@@dankefurnichts wow I didn’t realize that. Amazing!!
Thanks for the video! Have you ever seen the TR8s used with FL studio? I’m trying to figure out exactly what I will need to record midi and patterns directly into FL. I’m sure this requires an interface - a bit new to all this so any help would be great
I don't use FL Studio but I think the TR-8S should work fine with any DAW. You don't necessarily need an audio interface as the TR-8S has USB audio for sync and audio recording into your DAW.
hey matey, i just discovered yr channel. just got a quick question for you.
i got a trs8 a novation peak and a moog mother 32.
to record these machines do you reckon it would be better to get a souncard (motu or scarlett) and record each machine via audio out or i can connect the peak and m32 to the tr8s and use it as soundcard itself?(can i record the audio coming out from peak and m32 through tr8?).
thank in advance
Nonā
The TR-8S does function as an audio interface but I personally wouldn't rely on it for recording purposes. Not because it will sound bad per say, but for work-flow issues. Actually, a mixer with USB connectivity would work even better. Then you can have everything hooked up at once and not have to plug/unplug things to record and hear them :)
@@ScottBrio hey Scott, thx for the prompt reply.
well, it’s not a problem to plug and unplug the machines tbh, i’m more concerned about the sound quality compared for example to a Motu audio interface.
i’m thinking about recording every machine just via audio so i get all the fx already set in the synths.
Hello , I was wondering why the Master Fx from the Tr8s does only play but not getting recorded when i set all the individual outputs on logic x 10.5 . If I connect the drum machine to another audio interface instead I don't have found any problem with that, but I need to record all the instruments separately. Thanks in advance
Hey Andrea, I believe the Master FX only go out the main stereo output, and not out of the individual outputs. So, if you want to have a TR-8S effect on your snare for example, route that to go out the main stereo output rather than an individual output. You can still send all your other drums out of the individual outputs.
Alternatively, you can just leave everything routed through the main stereo output, mute everything, and unmute and record one at a time, but this doesn't work well for live performances. It does work fine if you're just recording parts into your DAW for a song. Cheers!
Have you ever experienced getting a crackle in the audio when using USB? I have changed the buffer size but I just don't know how to get rid of the crackle, it comes and goes randomly when I am recording into my ableton Via USB , even when I am programming the parts and running it through ableton it will still randomly crackle . driving me crazy! thanks!
Thanks for the video! Said a lot really clearly. I couldn't understand at first why the output gain of the TR 8S into my daw was so low, and I have heard others say online just use a gain plugin and turn it up but I think maybe it'd be more worth my time to buy a preamp to get more gain, or is there a problem I'm missing with the TR 8S?
No prob! I'm glad you found it useful!
The USB audio volume is a bit low, but it's a completely digital signal, so there's no noise floor. That means you can turn up the volume of each track without worrying about hiss or noise.
If you're not able to get the TR-8S loud enough from the analog outputs, check to see if you have an 'instrument' button on your audio interface. Sometimes that will raise the base input gain on your inputs to make it louder. If you're still not getting enough volume, I'd say yeah maybe get another preamp or mixer to make it louder.
I've been using it with my Scarlett 18i20 and I get plenty of volume without having to use another preamp or mixer :)
@@ScottBrio Thanks that's great! I'll add some gain. I'm also wondering if through the USB it only records mono? I can only seem to get mono signals from my recordings. Is this right? Or is there a way to overcome this and record sterio?
Just found this video .. life saver 🛟
Are saying it is possible to capture USB with FX? How can you do that? Because using it as individual outs I only got dry sound.
Hey Alan, I believe the effects only go out of outputs 1&2 and not over USB or the additional individual outs. What I recommend is if you want effects on any sound in the TR-8S when recording, is to send those out of outputs 1&2 and route the rest to your individual outputs. Personally, I don't use the effects on the TR-8S much- I tend to like to record them dry and apply effects in my DAW, unless of course I'm performing on it in which case using the stereo output is fine :)
Im currently using Tr-8s and trying to record invidiaul track via usb into my daw Reason, i got everything set up properly but i have to switch to the tr-8s audio driver when i want to do that. then change utility settings too, this back and forth step is so bothersome, theres no way around this rite
For some reason ableton live 10 does not recognize my Tr8s via USB anybody experience this
That's frustrating. Did you install the drivers and restart the computer? Maybe try a different cable?
had the same problem. I used a dongle to connect the usb. Plugging it straight into the computer worked for me