I am using a Roland TD30X to trigger Groove Agent SE 6 with the Hardware Controller option active, Yellow. Apparently Midi note 36 on the TD30X is C2 but in GA it is C1. One must transpose down one octave. The TD30X is able to provide zones or multiple midi notes depending on the location struck on a given pad. This possibility is noted in the User Manual for GAse6. After reading these instructions many times, I am unable to get the correct mapping.
The mapping worked out of the box for Kick, Snare, Tom1, Tom2, Tom3, and Tom4. I have a pad triggering my kick on Aux1 and Tom5 on Aux2. I am unable to map Aux1 or Aux2 correctly. Simon Phillips has like 8 toms and I can easily move T1-T4 to any of his 8 toms. So, mapping is working but only sometimes! I also need to place Aux1 with the Kick submix and Aux2 with the Toms submix. I have yet to read up on the submixes.
Aux1 says C1 but there is no sound. I have added C1, C2, C0 as multiple samples on Aux1 but I get no sound. When more than one sample is being triggered, the display says C1… Selecting remove notes indicates that all three notes are assigned, but there is no sound.
Aux2 says D0. There is only one note assigned on Aux2. When I play the Floor tom/Aux2 the sounds triggered are the Kick and a Cymbal.
I have spent many frustrating hour$ attempting to do a simple mapping. Perhaps I was rude in my first attempt at getting help. So, I 'm trying to forget about how many hour$ I wasted trying to get this working. Perhaps I was wrong to expect the documentation to match the reality. This frustration has ruined my out of box experience. I have never had any mapping issues using NI Battery 2 through 4. It just works as advertised. In years past I had no trouble mapping to earlier versions of GAx on previous DAWs. I have mapped the Phillips kits in the past with no issues. It just worked.
After spending some time in the GAse6 manual, I am very impressed with the intended functionality. 6 seems to be a vast improvement over 5. I expect great things after these mapping issues are corrected. But, I can’t even get started because of these defect$ in the interface. These defect$ are present in both 5 and 6 versions.
It has been a goal of mine to trigger a drum VSTi in real time without unbearable latency and without any pops in the audio. My best effort in 8 DAW configurations to date was 20ms of latency without pops, which is not quite playable in real time. On my latest build using a new i7 and 32 gigs of ram I managed 5mS of latency with no pops! I am supper excited that finally this extremely difficult goal is working. I can finally play Simon’s big drumkit in real time with pristine audio. I solute the developers for this huge milestone.
My question sir,
What work arounds can someone suggest to repair this defect? Two pads can not be altered concerning their midi note numbers. All changes are ignored.
Perhaps deleting these two outlier pads and then reconstructing them might correct this defect. If that is the case, I will also relocate them into pads that make sense in terms of grouping adjacent to similar instruments. Does this idea have merit? What other work arounds can you suggest? Thanks!
It would be great if I could simply drop and drag pads between pad groups, say grouping all the toms together in one pad group instead of being distributed across 3 different pad groups. It makes sense to locate all toms together to facilitate mapping the toms from a low range toms to high range tom sizes.
I think I found the issue. The Simon Phillips kit is quite large. This requires many midi notes to cover so many instruments. It seems the developers over lapped some of the instrument notes with some pattern notes!!! REALLY? Perhaps the mapping task was left to an intern and no one in the testing department bothered to verify functionality. This is quite common in the tech dev world. The suits do not budget for proper testing in spite of their ISO9000 documents claiming otherwise. My career was mostly in semiconductor test and we never cheated on testing at Bell Labs in the Orlando Fabs.
Since I was striking single notes and not “holding” the notes allowing the pattern to play, only the first note of the pattern way playing. Apparently pattern notes trump instrument notes without any visual indication of this conflict. So attempting to assign tom5 to a midi note populated by both an instrument and a pattern, the pattern note is played instead of the individual instrument.
There are many many unused notes that were available to place the pattern notes such that they do not clash and replace a used instrument note. But, the developers chose to duplicate pattern notes on all ready utilized instruments, creating a gigantic mess for the end user to fix.
This wasted a week of my time. The only week I had to use for this personal fun project. So, my project failed and I must move on the the next project, but now I am aware of this defect. This was quite expensive.
I found the defect by sitting on my TD50X and striking only the pad of interest. Then I advanced the TD50X midi note number up and down the scale to see what notes were played. I discovered that several instruments could not be triggered because a pattern was triggered instead. So that as it is, many of the instruments are not assignable!
This should only be a problem with large kits. Hopefully the supposed intern did not make such a basic mistake on kits with many many available MIDI notes. One can load the kit minus the patterns to eliminate this defect but then you lose the option of using some patterns mixed with your own.
Please update the documentation to indicate that remapping the pattern may be a requirement if you want to trigger some sounds. Or, better yet, FIX the poor coding choice.
When you spend hard earned cash on a product, it should work as advertised out of the box. In spite of my pain I do enjoy the product and recommend it to others. Next time you need testing done consider hiring a engineer/musician and give them the necessary budget to do the job professionally. I occasionally had such mistakes but my peers quickly pointed them out in such a competitive manufacturing environment. Continuous improvement is always the best path.
Good Luck in the future.
KA
first of all the issue you experienced is no defect, mistake, poor coding choice or an oversight of the test-department, it’s by design and works as specified and desired.
And why should we update the manual? You didn’t read it anyway otherwise you should have stumbled across the chapter “Using the Pattern MIDI Port for Pattern Pads” (since Groove Agent 6 SE it can be found here: Steinberg)