real time drum replacement

[Darcy]

I am using Cakewalk to mix a  live band for a stream mix to Youtube and Facebook.
FOH is being mixed by an A&H Qu 32 and it is sending the PC the channels via USB.

Is there a way to do drum replacment in real time?  

 

[marcL]

Essentially yes! You can use any Drum Replacer plugin like XLN Addictive Trigger, SPL DrumXchanger, ... in the FX of the recording track. It should also be possible to record the output of that track to another track if you want to save the result (not only hearing it).

[Clovis Ramsay]

@Darcy If you are streaming/broadcasting live, I would seriously suggest that you do a test broadcast the day before and observe your latency that will be occurring with the drum trigger plug ins.  You run the risk of having samples sounding off out of time and depending on your setup, you may not even catch it if standing in the same room.  However on the audience end of the stream, they will hear the triggered kick/snare out of time with the natural kick/snare in the Overheads and other mic bleeds. 

If you had a DSP server to handle your plugins, you would have a much better situation here.   Those triggers eat up a lot of memory and CPU, considering each drum would need there own instance of the plug in.  

My suggestion would be to obtain actual physical trigger pads that stick to the drum heads and feed a line out to either a drum hardware unit (like those that power electronic drums) then send out from the unit a MIDI out that would hook to your audio/midi/usb interface to then trigger a program such as Addictive Drummer, MODdrums, any midi drum application will do. 

You can even trigger them through garage band on an ipad and send the output into Cakewalk as an audio track.  

Those are suggestions I would consider if you have never experience the nightmares of live broadcasting a band and relying on samples to trigger from within a plug in that relies on an audio signal, it's a huge letdown and makes me sweaty and anxious just thinking about it lol

[Darcy]

6 hours ago, Clovis Ramsay said:

@Darcy If you are streaming/broadcasting live, I would seriously suggest that you do a test broadcast the day before and observe your latency that will be occurring with the drum trigger plug ins.  You run the risk of having samples sounding off out of time and depending on your setup, you may not even catch it if standing in the same room.  However on the audience end of the stream, they will hear the triggered kick/snare out of time with the natural kick/snare in the Overheads and other mic bleeds. 

If you had a DSP server to handle your plugins, you would have a much better situation here.   Those triggers eat up a lot of memory and CPU, considering each drum would need there own instance of the plug in.  

My suggestion would be to obtain actual physical trigger pads that stick to the drum heads and feed a line out to either a drum hardware unit (like those that power electronic drums) then send out from the unit a MIDI out that would hook to your audio/midi/usb interface to then trigger a program such as Addictive Drummer, MODdrums, any midi drum application will do. 

You can even trigger them through garage band on an ipad and send the output into Cakewalk as an audio track.  

Those are suggestions I would consider if you have never experience the nightmares of live broadcasting a band and relying on samples to trigger from within a plug in that relies on an audio signal, it's a huge letdown and makes me sweaty and anxious just thinking about it lol

Lol, thanks Clovis
I was thinking the drum triggers might be the best option but I've run out of lines from the stage to FOH.  I have used them in the past with an Alesis brain but I guess there would be a few more options in that respect.

I'm only wanting to trigger the snare so I may give it a try with just the one drum and a plugin,  If that doesn't work then I can alway run an extra line for MIDI from the stage.  

[msmcleod]

Take a look a Melda's MDrumEnhancer.  Rather than totally replacing the drums with samples, it "enhances" them with samples.

A hardware alternative would be to get hold of an old Alesis D4 or DM5 module.  The 12 trigger inputs are extremely configurable, to the point that you could use your existing drum mics as triggers ( with full velocity sensitivity), and mix the Alesis drum samples in with the live signal.

They usually go for around $150 on eBay.
 

[Clovis Ramsay]

@Darcy  It is certainly doable with a latest multicore cpu workstation and soundcard (pci-e).  It's the mobile setups that leaves one without a sense of confidence and expectations of reliability.  But either option can be undermined by an audio trigger plugin not detecting the variations of hits or introducing latency in a live situation. 

Plugin triggers are not cheap either, the Addictive Trigger cost as much as a bundle of physical trigger+heads and a MIDI interface. I am a fan of the various mobile MIDI interfaces that connect directly to a smartphone or tablet then using an app,  line out the audio to the DAW.  

You have options at least with some points to consider now, and the experience will ultimately improve and add to your engineering skillset for the better.  Good luck!

[Clovis Ramsay]

16 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Take a look a Melda's MDrumEnhancer.  Rather than totally replacing the drums with samples, it "enhances" them with samples.

A hardware alternative would be to get hold of an old Alesis D4 or DM5 module.  The 12 trigger inputs are extremely configurable, to the point that you could use your existing drum mics as triggers ( with full velocity sensitivity), and mix the Alesis drum samples in with the live signal.

They usually go for around $150 on eBay.
 

When I was in a metal band, our drummer used this exact setup and it made our sound so much better live.  It was just better in all areas with monitoring, eliminated issues with standing waves on the stage, and the drummer didnt have to worry about the kit going out of tune during the show lol

[bitflipper]

I've not tried it myself, but have been in the audience for a live demo of realtime drum replacement. In that demo, a drummer was sitting on a folding chair slapping different parts of his body and tapping his feet. No triggers were used, just microphones. The software being touted was Drumagog, but I'd assume any drum replacement software would work as long as the latency was low enough, including Cakewalk's own drum replacer. To get the latency down it might require a dedicated laptop; if there are enough separate mics on the kit, you could take a direct out from the board to drive the software, thus avoiding the need for a special setup. 

The drummer in my band has had triggers installed on his acoustic kit. They drive a dedicated sample module. Works great. It wasn't a cheap mod, though.

 

[Darcy]

Ok so what I ended up with was a program called aptrigga3
https://www.apulsoft.ch/aptrigga3/
You can just insert it on the channel strip and go. Turns your snare into, well another snare or whatever you like.
I run both the acoustic snare and the sample together on two channels with the same input. Little to no latency.

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by Darcy