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FYI - I've used Cakewalk since 94. All audio, all the time with countless live drum kits and full rock bands. I never even touched a VST instrument until spring of 2022 because the bands I worked with didn't have any use for them. I learned from YouTube how to make SSD5 work. Granted, a lot of the videos are a little vague and not SSD5 specific. But all the secrets are there to be had. I asked a couple questions here as well. I felt like a monkey trying to understand magic. And then....it worked. The slots on the side of the SSD5 screen where you build a kit - those are to stack sounds on top of the sounds you already have assigned to the drum pads. Add another snare (in any one of those slots) and it'll trigger simultaneously every time you hit your snare. Generally speaking, add a kick and SSD5 knows to trigger that additional sound along with the one you drop on top of the kick. Add toms, and they'll trigger with toms. Watch this video:

And yes, you can combine your toms to one channel if you wish. Here's a snapshot of my drum break out. I send all toms to one stereo channel. All overheads to the same stereo channel. And one for rooms.

With a 22ms round trip I can't imagine you're not experiencing that as latency already. This is typically what I prefer, but I can usually live with anything less than a 10ms round trip with drums. In my experience, adding tracks so that the VST can route drum sound to different channels won't add to a latency problem.

When you get to the end of this you'll see that everything you were told you can do - you CAN do. You just have no understanding of what you're doing...yet. When Tim gets you THERE...you see how the puzzle fits together and you'll be sad you didn't know all of this for all the years you've been recording audio off your drum module.

I'll bow out here and let the others handle it. Might be simpler without the crosstalk. Good luck.

You've found the VST instrument. Cakewalk knows it's there. That's good. You need to watch this. Between the manual, this video, the previous two videos and the videos you referenced by Creative Sauce, you should be able to figure it out. This video shows you how to get the VST instrument into a track and how to set it up. Not Slate...but same basic idea.

This will also come in handy.

You'll find Slate Drums shows up in Cakewalk as instrument or a soft synth - not your typical plugin, like an effect. You have to load it like you would a VST instrument. Info on that is in the manual and there are loads of videos on YouTube that can assist. I realize this is all a foreign language to you. It was to me too at one point. It looks like a long, dark road...but it's not as long as you think. I promise - if you get it set up and save it as a template your problems will be solved and you can just get on with making music. This video will be relevant when you get there:

Yes. Greg's method will get you the sounds you're used to from your Roland brain. A VST will probably require you building a kit that you love. There are a lot of great VST drums in the wild that people swear by. I just happen to own the Slate Drums - which works great for me. I think any VST3 drum kit will allow you to send all sounds out to individual tracks where you can mix traditionally. If you're using an electronic kit, I can't imagine not using a VST for simplicity and flexibility all the way through songwriting, tracking and mixing.

No. I think what he's suggesting is that you record your part until you like it. Then you can send the midi data for each drum back to the drum brain, one drum at a time, and record the sounds coming off the brain, one at a time to individual tracks.

But to further answer your question. You'd would need to create a map for your kit and the VST drum plugin of your choice. Creating a map sounds daunting, and indeed is, the first time if you've never done it. I learned how on YouTube...just like you're trying to. I prefer the VST because your midi events are still triggering samples. You can change your mind (and sounds) easily as the mix progresses. The drum sounds that you think work great for live performance may not sit in a mix the way you think they will when it comes to a studio recording. You never know...and options might be your friend.

David...Greg's way would definitely work for you if you wanted to go that route.

To boil this down, you want to be able to record midi drums and then control each sound individually, on individual tracks....right? 100% possible with Cakewalk...people, myself included, do it every day. You'll record all the midi to a single track (you can still edit every single midi hit on any drum from there in the midi editor) and assign outputs from your drum VST to additional tracks where you can compress, eq, pan, use sends for aux fx busses, etc. All that. The best of both worlds....the ability to edit a live drummer. It's fantastic. And I know you say you have no need for quantizing. But you can do that too. I use Steven Slate Drums and have it set to output sounds to individual tracks for kick, snare, toms, HH, ride, OH and rooms.

Interesting. When I built this PC (late 2022) I also purchased an Apollo X6 to go with it. I had non-stop computer crashes with the Apollo on Thunderbolt. Change sampling rate...blue screen. Change buffer size...blue screen. I sent the Apollo back and picked up the Lynx Aurora - and I've been stable since.

I am as well with a Lynx Aurora 8 and an Asus add-on thunderbolt 4 card. The add-on card was a little tricky to get running, but it has proven solid.

Maybe you'll use it if you buy it again.

Yeah. That's the job of 3rd party plugins. ?

ugh...yeah...

Not specific to any single synth or instrument. This has persisted for me for way more than a decade, on more than one system, two interfaces, in countless projects, with live instruments and synths. ? I just remembered to finally ask here about it. I do see at least one other thread where someone else was talking about these issues earlier in the year. It crashed on me last night - big time when I was trying to dial in a giant verb to a snare sidestick track, on a project that has run flawlessly since I started working on it in April. @Lord Tim - I just downloaded massive. Yep. That does exactly what I'm trying to do with Sonitus when I have my problem. This will work fine for those giant Pink Floyd style verbs. Thanks for the heads up.

I used to love it. It's just too problematic for me. I don't love Breverb, but I don't have these issues when I use it. The verb I really miss is the old FX3 Soundstage.

Thanks. I'll check it out. I'm hoping we're treated to a great reverb in the new Sonar.

Yeah...Tim, I didn't mention that but that's part of what I'm talking about. It seems to cause a late buffer problem with long verbs. That's one sign I'm bumping up against the limitations, even with a bigger buffer setting it's a problem with long verbs - say in the 3 to 5 second window. Sometimes minor, and other times so bad it crashes the session. Not just A session, but a lot over time. I too have had to shut down sessions and open them again. Seems to settle it down sometimes, but I got tired of messing with it so I stopped using it. I have recorded at 24/96 forever with a Motu 24io (because that's where the Motu sounded best) and now for a couple years with a Lynx Aurora at 24/96. Same problem. Perhaps the sampling rate has something to do with my particular problem.

I don't know if this has been discussed before. I've always been a huge fan of the Sonitus Reverb. I feel like I can get any reverb I want from it, but that sucker will crash a session in a heartbeat when I start working with long verbs. And not on just this current system. I've had this problem on multiple systems over the years, and I had to stop using it. I tried using it again yesterday on a long verb and it crashed my session within a couple minutes while I was tweaking options. Am I the only one?

I worried as much about your offensive post as much as I worried about the offensive posts you were worried about. ? This is all just pixels on my screen. I still have to drive home and figure out a way to get there alive. These pixels mean nothing.

That actually sounds like a standard annoyance feature in software that you're using as a demo. Are you demoing any of those plugins?