Has anyone ever used a midi drum pad like the Roland SPD-SX to trigger Spitfire libraries?

jwing

I have a Roland SPD-SX and as a drummer originally, it's really great for me to be able to play virtual instruments with the feel of sticks on a drum-like surface.

The SPD-SX has no problem triggering most virtual instruments and drum kits - for example I use it all the time in Kontakt for NI's drum libraries (StudioDrummer, AbbeyRoad Drummer, DrumLab, etc.) and some other third-party libraries (Drumatic). It also works well with Logic Pro's Drum Kit Designer. Everything triggers as it should including fast rolls and dynamics.

However, for some reason, my Spitfire libraries do not get along with it. Both Kontakt (Joey Burgess Percussion, Bernard Hermann's Toolkit, Percussion Swarm) and the newer Hammers and Resonate.

What happens is in all of these libraries, they will only sometimes fire when I hit a pad. So if I'm playing a fast 16th note pattern, only about half or less of the notes come through. Even if I play a slow pattern, there's lots of missed notes. Also velocity-sensitivity is weird – it will simply not accept any soft notes. I have to play really hard.

And here's where the plot thickens: I observed that this only happens with what I'd call trigger-based samples, as is most of the percussion. However of the few samples that are gate-based, such as rolls, grooves, and a lot of the percussion swarms, they will respond to my pad hits perfectly and accurately. Strange.

As I mentioned, I haven't noticed this issue in other libraries. And yes, I've tried them in other DAWs and I've restarted my computer etc. I've also tried the SPD over standard midi (DIN) and usb midi. Same issue regardless.

Has anyone else here with experience using the SPD-SX or similar drum pads with Spitfire libraries ran into this issue, and if so what have you done? Is it something the way the libraries are programmed?!

spd

Same issue here, exact same setup (although with HZ Perc Pro. Did you ever get a resolve to this issue?

Best,

T

jwing

https://community.spitfireaudio.com/discussion/comment/10720#Comment_10720

Hi, sorry for the late reply, actually I did get it resolved. It was an issue with how I had the SPD set up - apparently some libraries (including Spitfire) accept note values only of a certain length, and the notes provided by the SPD which are triggers are too short which is why they usually don't respond.

I asked Charlie Clouser over on VI-Control and he actually had the fix - in short, you have to change the SPD pads to gate mode, and adjust the length until it starts to work correctly (I personally found around 1 second to be ideal). You can read his full response here.

If you compare before and after in a piano roll recording, you'll see the notes themselves are longer, which is what the Spitfire libraries need.

Let me know if that works for you!

Ian27_

How do I fix this issue I don't have a drum pad with this feature. I have a kat multipad and it doesn't have the ability to turn on gate mode.

Ian27_

Nevermind on that last comment