For the e-drummers - experiences with USB audio interfaces

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 01:23 AM

To all the e-drummers out there: Have you got any positive experiences with USB audio (/MIDI) interfaces used in conjunction with your e-drumming needs? Of course, I'm mostly talking about round trip latency here with respect to triggering & monitoring drum VSTi's like Superior Drummer.

On my PC I'm still using an ageing but ace Echo MIA together with a fairly cheap USB MIDI interface and have no issues (no perceptible latency) when working with 64/128 bytes buffers. However, I'm trying to put together an affordable mobile solution based on an i5 laptop and a USB interface.

Of course, I expect to hear positive stories about the RME interfaces, but I was hoping to get something more affordable. The one I had been leaning towards is the Komplete Audio 6 as it's supposed to have one of the lowest latencies in its price class. However, just when I was about the pull the trigger I headed over to the NI forums and read a fair few reports about USB issues on Win 7 64bit with this interface... which made me rethink. So, yeh, I understand that you will always hear bad news stories on the good ol' interweb, but it was enough for me to at least pause...

So.... any good experiences, recommendations?

ivansc · 10-28-2014, 01:50 AM

Sorry - Roland with a choice of 2 RMEs depending on laptop or desktop here. No issues. Ever.

You only spend the money once with RME.

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 02:57 AM

Thanks Ivan... yes, maybe I should just save up & spend once....

Evan · 10-28-2014, 03:50 AM

I am on a quest as you 3dmus. It's very rare that I get a clear cut answer on USB interfaces and very low-latency needs.

RME is very (ridiculously) expensive. It may be worth it for professional applications, but not everyone can go that route. Plus, one may need additional lesser-specced audio interfaces for outside the studio.

Most USB audio interfaces on the market today are several years old. I am not sure how that may affect performance and stability. TASCAM have released new products in 2014 (http://tascam.com/products/pc_audio_interface/) but not enough feedback on those yet.

USB 2.0 has proven to be capable of demanding low-latency operation, taking RME's interfaces as an example. So I am still very curious on how others are doing, and keeping an open eye on this thread for more opinions.

J9mm · 10-28-2014, 03:54 AM

Hey,

not sure If I am pushing a long the right lines, but I use a Yamaha DT xpress IV for my drumming - I use a zoom R24 as interface and I have a separate midi in. The zoom has direct monitoring which I can use to bypass and latency.

I hate playing with any latency, so I just select a kit from the DTxpress which is connected via Audio In to the R24, I can then monitor this directly, along with the Music / Click from Reaper. I normally set to a 50/50 split.

At the same time I record the midi signal in Reaper, without a VST loaded.

Then afterwards I set up my EZ Drummer on the midi track and edit as required...

I used to do the same thing with my old Steinberg Mi4 interface too

Simple and no latency to worry about.

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 04:10 AM

@J9mm - yes, I've been thinking about this too and indeed, as long as the interface has direct monitoring, this would work. However not an ideal option in the context of my use: I'd like to be able to monitor the VSTi live as I plan to use it in a rehearsal space, not just recording; i.e. I want to have the flexibility of choosing whatever drum sound I want (my brain drum is ok, but compared to something like superior drummer it's lacking...not surprising of course).

@Evan - yes! It's frustrating. I realise that for RME you're not just paying for top-notch components but also for their R&D. Thing is, I don't mind slightly less rugged components, slightly more mundane pre-amps etc, as long as it would have rock solid, low latency drivers. You'd think that there's a market for that and it can't be that the only people smart enough to develop these type of drivers are employed by RME! I know of course things are not that simple.... but still, seems like a few companies are missing a trick here. Then again, what do I know?

ivansc · 10-28-2014, 05:01 AM

FWIW I paid £300 for my Babyface lightly used soon after they were released.

There has to be some used bargains out there still.

And the hard ware is so reliable I had no qualms at all about buying used.

If you can get one for the equivalent of £250, that brings the price right in line with all the also-rans new.

ronmac · 10-28-2014, 05:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivansc

Sorry - Roland with a choice of 2 RMEs depending on laptop or desktop here. No issues. Ever.

You only spend the money once with RME.

This! I am always pleased that I followed the " buy once, cry once" maxim, and chose RME as interface provider. Rock solid and always up to date drivers. They recently released software upgrades to products over 10 years old. I have had to trash lesser brand product less than 5 years old because of a lack of support.

Stu · 10-28-2014, 05:38 AM

I recently bought a Komplete Audio 6, and although I have yet to really stress test it, first impressions are very good. I have no problems running at the lowest latency setting even in cpu intensive projects, everything seems very stable. Build quality is very good, preamps clean and quiet. I had read some bad reviews (although there are many more positive ones) and I have not experienced any of the trouble people have mentioned at all, so far it has been the easiest to set up from the box of all interfaces I've owned and certainly better in terms of latency performance than anything Focusrite, Alesis or Allen & Heath have produced.

For reference I'm running win7 pro, Gigabyte board, AMD FX6300, 8GB RAM.

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivansc

FWIW I paid £300 for my Babyface lightly used soon after they were released.

There has to be some used bargains out there still.

And the hard ware is so reliable I had no qualms at all about buying used.

If you can get one for the equivalent of £250, that brings the price right in line with all the also-rans new.

I would go for one if I would be able to get it for £250! Been checking eBay and the cheapest I could spot was one in Germany (£350 + shipping) but most units were over £400.

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 05:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stu

I recently bought a Komplete Audio 6, and although I have yet to really stress test it, first impressions are very good. I have no problems running at the lowest latency setting even in cpu intensive projects, everything seems very stable. Build quality is very good, preamps clean and quiet. I had read some bad reviews (although there are many more positive ones) and I have not experienced any of the trouble people have mentioned at all, so far it has been the easiest to set up from the box of all interfaces I've owned and certainly better in terms of latency performance than anything Focusrite, Alesis or Allen & Heath have produced.

For reference I'm running win7 pro, Gigabyte board, AMD FX6300, 8GB RAM.

Thanks for the feedback Stu - and you run win 7 pro 64bit?

Stu · 10-28-2014, 07:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3dmus

Thanks for the feedback Stu - and you run win 7 pro 64bit?

Yes, forgot to mention that! 64bit with 64bit Reaper.

ivansc · 10-28-2014, 07:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3dmus

I would go for one if I would be able to get it for £250! Been checking eBay and the cheapest I could spot was one in Germany (£350 + shipping) but most units were over £400.

Gosh they have gone up a lot then!

You could buy them new factory fresh all day long for just over £400 when I bought mine.

Glad I bought when I did! And of course there is a reason they dont show up cheap second-hand I suppose... they are very reliable and very good.

_shorty_ · 10-28-2014, 07:32 AM

Forgive my ignorance - but how does a VST instrument such as EZDrummer or Superior drummer work with an interface like Komplete Audio 6?

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 07:58 AM

Hey shorty - you'd use the MIDI port to hook your e-drums up. In Reaper you would then select the KA6 as MIDI input for your track with say ezdrummer and the KA6 ASIO audio out as audio output.

_shorty_ · 10-28-2014, 08:09 AM

Okay - so you still deal with the PC and DAW as a middle man for the actual sound and any latency based on that PC OS and hardware... I still don't quite see how this is going to affect latency that much - unless the drivers and such are just a lot better than the other ASIO drivers you'd typically use for this application anyway?

In the past, for live application - we've run Alesis trigger via USB into a laptop and run EZDrummer out of the headphone jack. I know this is cheesy, but it was cheap and worked. I guess the advantage with some card like this is that it gives you a better output... and I'm assuming a nice efficient software driver to boot that should in theory reduce latency?

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 08:26 AM

Right - it's similar. You used the Alesis trigger which converted your pads to MIDI instead of a straight MIDI out from e-drums. The difference in terms of latency would mainly be in the output latency introduced by the soundcard. So, you would have used your onboard soundcard maybe with ASIO4ALL? Difference with a unit like the RME would be that due to the way RME coded their drivers, implemented buffers etc, their latency would be lower.

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 11:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stu

Yes, forgot to mention that! 64bit with 64bit Reaper.

Thx Stu! BTW - do you use it specifically for e-drumming too?

brainwreck · 10-28-2014, 05:38 PM

3dmus, if your main concern is latency for e-drumming, maybe you could do e-drumming with the onboard sound and asio4all. See this thread (post #7 and #11): http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.p...ight=windows+7

I agree with you about low latency. Mediocre latency performance for usb interfaces seems to be the accepted norm for windows versions after XP.

Leo · 10-28-2014, 10:44 PM

I recorded a band with edrums / midi on my i5 + NI Komplete Audio 6. Zero issues :-)

Usb interface issues often seem to be related to usb controllers and the bus power supply. Using a dedicated hub (internal or external) would help. I haven't had any issues with the KA6 on W7 x64, but fixed some breakups with my previous interface by using a powered usb extender.

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 11:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brainwreck

3dmus, if your main concern is latency for e-drumming, maybe you could do e-drumming with the onboard sound and asio4all. See this thread (post #7 and #11): http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.p...ight=windows+7

I agree with you about low latency. Mediocre latency performance for usb interfaces seems to be the accepted norm for windows versions after XP.

Hey Brainwreck - thx! That sounds very promising! I may try that first. I still have to order my laptop (refurbished i5, in line with my quest for an affordable mobile setup!), so will go ahead with that and try this first.

3dmus · 10-28-2014, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leo

I recorded a band with edrums / midi on my i5 + NI Komplete Audio 6. Zero issues :-)

Usb interface issues often seem to be related to usb controllers and the bus power supply. Using a dedicated hub (internal or external) would help. I haven't had any issues with the KA6 on W7 x64, but fixed some breakups with my previous interface by using a powered usb extender.

Very good to know, thanks Leo. ultimately I would like to have a dedicated interface like the KA6 (or RME if my funds will permit it!). Main reasons, aside the better audio quality, would be to be able to have a separate headphone mix (click track for the drummer) and of course some xlr inputs to record guitars and vocals and such.

Stu · 10-29-2014, 01:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3dmus

Thx Stu! BTW - do you use it specifically for e-drumming too?

I will be using it for e-drums at some point but up to now the biggest latency test has been using ampsims, something where latency has always been problematic for me in the past as it really puts me off. I'm happy to report that it's no longer an issue!

3dmus · 10-30-2014, 03:38 AM

Thanks all for your input- I managed to find a deal on eBay for a B-stock KA6 one with 1 year warranty. In addition to that I had a £10 Ebay discount voucher so managed to get it for £139 with free shipping (normally it's around £185 in the UK).

Will let you know how well it will work with my refurbished laptop I ordered (lenovo x201 i5 with a 120GB SSD for just over £200!)

3dmus · 10-31-2014, 02:29 AM

Well, I received the KA6 today. I haven't received my refurb laptop yet, but tried it on my desktop DAW

...and... so far so good! Installation was a breeze (took literally under 10 seconds). Ran Reaper with an existing project, works a treat with the ASIO drivers.Tried Guitar Rig...and already was great with the buffer settings it was at (96 samples), but 32 samples works w/o any issues as well. E-drumming... no perceptible latency. Note that I'm just a novice drummer, but drum rolls all registered correctly etc.

One of the things I was looking forward to try out was being able to have the metronome routed to the headphones out only and have the main out w/o it. Again, works great.

Tried normal Windows/browsing stuff like Spotify, youtube but also a game. After that switching back to Reaper.... No issues.

So, whilst this was only like a 30mins test or so, so far I'm impressed. I will need to run some more exhaustive tests though, but if all keeps working as it is right now, it will replace my interface for my desktop DAW too.

ivansc · 10-31-2014, 08:45 AM

Result! Have fun.

3dmus · 10-31-2014, 09:07 AM

Thanks Ivan! Having great fun here... and my desk is all of the sudden a lot tidier now that my mixer with the zillion cables (to front my old PCI soundcard) is out of the picture

Evan · 10-31-2014, 11:38 AM

great stuff 3dmus, please do keep us updated...

some questions:

1) Did you install latest drivers from NI site?

2) The interface connected to a hub, or direct to a USB port?

3) Your OS? 32/64bit?

thanks and enjoy your new gear

3dmus · 10-31-2014, 01:39 PM

Hey Evan -

1) yup, very latest drivers, downloaded today from the NI website
2) direct to one of my USB2.0 ports
3) Win7 Home 64bit

Mind you, this is on my PC - my refurb laptop should be arriving next week (i5, Win 7 Pro 64bit). Will keep you posted on that too.

3dmus · 11-15-2014, 06:54 AM

Just a quick update:

Good news:

- works very solidly with my "new" refurb laptop. I used it in a rehearsal last week and had a blast
- have been working w/o any issues with Reaper on both my PC & Laptop

Bad news:

- on my PC, the standard Windows drivers (non-ASIO) are so-so. Every so often I get these micro-crackles. I tried a new USB2.0 PCI card to fix it (as some folks reported that this fixed the issue for them), but, problem remains. For now, I get around it by setting the Windows default device to my Echo Audio and have connected the digital out to my digital in on the KA6. Trouble is that due to a lack of mixer software, the only way to monitor the input is by using a DAW like Reaper. Not a huge issue though as I just saved a project as "Digital-IN enabler" with just 1 track the input set to digital-in and monitoring on. So, if I ever do any browsing, youtubing etc, I just ensure that Reaper is running with that project is loaded.

So, not ideal, but in practice I've already gotten used to it.

Summary: great audio interface for music making, not so good for normal PC duties. Not saying everyone would have this issue, but at least some people do.