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Old 10-20-2014, 01:16 PM   #1
_shorty_
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Default trouble: Trigger IO + EzDrummer + Reaper + Behringer x32

Hey all, 1st post here.

I'm a worship leader at my church - so we're dealing with live sound. Previously - we were running an RET drum kit through an Alesis IO trigger into a laptop using some freebee VST player (can't currently remember the name), and then from the laptop via 1/8th inch to 1/4 cable to direct box and into the old sound system via single input. This worked fine using the ASIO4ALL driver.

I've been saving up (in our worship budget) for quite a while to upgrade our sound system. Included in that upgrade was a behringer x32 compact mixing board. Inspired by the new featers of the new board, I wanted to be able to split out the drum tracks into different channels on the board. So, I moved the laptop from stage to FOH, in order to let the laptop double as my DAW PC for recording practices and routing to and from the x32.

Prior to and during our 1st practice on the new sound system (this past Thursday), I had everything set up, and everything worked great. Alesis IO trigger USB out extended to FOH via cat6 cable, and into the laptop. The laptop is also connected to the X-USB card in the x32. Reaper was installed, and after a small learning curve, I had my input and output routing to and from the board, as well as my EZDrummer VST split out to 8 tracks in Reaper - each routed to one of eight drum channels on the x32. This was all working using the behringer USB ASIO driver made for the x32. The practice and our first recording into Reaper went well, as I was able to route my recording back to the board and mix the board from the recording... I was very happy! Additional note - I don't currently have a sound guy.. so being able to mix after everyone leaves is an amazing feature of the new system, and so far, Reaper seems to be a great tool for this.

SO... we get to my problem. The laptop is 6ish years old, that I had previously wiped, and installed a trial version of Windows 8 on it. The trial ran out, so it was forcing a reboot every 30 minutes or so on us. So, I broke down, bought a Windows 8.1 license, copied all my Reaper projects, audio software etc, off the laptop onto a thumb drive in order to do another clean install of Windows.

Friday night, I installed the OS, OS updates, and then all other software at home. I brought it into church Saturday and my recorded practice from Thursday night routed back to the x32 without a hitch. I thought I was happy again - but I was not... I found a new problem, that I could no longer trigger EZ Drummer in Reaper from my Alesis Trigger IO. At different times since then, I've also had intermittent problems with the routing of EZDrummer VST to the tracks in Reaper as well. I can insert a new VSTi using EZDrummer, and it seemed sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it will work, and then with no changes made to the project, it might stop working after 20-30 minutes of inactivity. Saturday my triggering of EZDrummer kind of all of a sudden started working after fiddling with settings just grasping at straws. I saved the project, rebooted, tested and it worked fine. So I assumed we were good for Sunday morning. I was wrong. I came in, powered everything on, tested the drums, all worked fine. Sometime before service started - no output (so we went drumless 1st service). After 1st service, I rebooted, brought everything back up, tested, and everything was fine again. I assumed going into power save mode caused this first mis-hap, so I disabled powersave mode, got everything going again, and it seemed to be all good. JUST before service we tried the drum pads again, and once again, they weren't working!! - so I ran to FOH, and rebooted in hopes they would start working again. This time the project came up, and they wouldn't work at all. It was like routing from the VST to the tracks in Reaper were all of a sudden broken. Very frustrating...

I've uninstalled everything (except EZDrummer) and re-installed each driver and software that I know is involved. And, after some reading through these forums, I seem to be able to consistently make a set of EZDrummer tracks work in Reaper now (I haven't been able to test if they stop working yet after 20-30 minutes of inactivity, though). BUT, I'm still struggling with making the triggerIO trigger EZDrummer in the software. The TriggerIO input is enabled in Reaper. The Tracks show MIDI - 'All channels' as thier input. I can see the triggerIO hardware in the hardware properties in Windows. I can watch the triggerIO hardware disappear and re-appear from the hardware list when I unplug and replug the USB extended from the trigger. But, I'm banging my head against the wall on this one... Any input is greatly appreciated.. and I'm really hoping it's a simple checkbox or setting in Reaper causing this?
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Old 10-21-2014, 06:43 AM   #2
_shorty_
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let me try again with less words... lol.
I'm struggling to get my Alesis Trigger IO to trigger EZDrummer in Reaper. I have the Trigger IO Midi input enabled (I've also tried enable + control). I don't know if it's an input routing thing or what? Any ideas settings to check?

I have EZDrummer VST sending to multiple tracks in Reaper, so I see the root track levels come in any time a sound is made from the VST. I also see the individual drum mic signals coming into each EZ1-EZ8 channels that were created automatically for me. That all works, and I can mouse click each drum/symbol in the EZDrummer VST and hear sound.

I cannot, however, seem to reliably make the Alesis IO trigger, trigger the drums in the VST. I've had it working at different times, but it's been frustrating. I'm REALLY hoping it's some setting or routing issue. I'm pretty green to Reaper, so any help/direction is appreciated.
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Old 10-21-2014, 07:04 AM   #3
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Hello _shorty_ and welcome to these forums. You'll find many helpful people here and a lot of useful information.

Bypass EZDrummer for the moment (click the Power button next to [fx] in the Track Control Panel (TCP), you may need to drag down the lower edge of the TCP to see it)

Check that you have got the track Armed for Recording and that Input Monitoring is enabled (green speaker icon) and that the Alesis is selected as the MIDI Input device.

Please record some MIDI from the Alesis. Do you see the MIDI activity indicators (red dot or line in the track's meter)? Does the recorded MIDI clip show the notes?

Does EZDrummer require the notes to be on a specific channel? Looking in the MIDI Editor / View Mode: Event List - on what channel are the recorded notes?

We can move on from here when we have your answers.
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Last edited by DarkStar; 10-21-2014 at 07:13 AM.
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Old 10-21-2014, 07:10 AM   #4
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Thanks for the reply! That's the kind of troubleshooting info I was looking for! I'll go over at lunch and try your suggestions and will report back my findings. Thanks again!
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Old 10-21-2014, 11:16 AM   #5
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The track was not armed for recording! It's working now, so THANK YOU! I never even thought to enable it because I never intended to record it, just play it through to the board...

Which makes me think of another question: I am playing these EZDrums via this Alesis trigger through Reaper (of course). These tracks are routed to channel numbers 25-32 on my behringer X32 board (via output routing in Reaper + input routing of the X32). I have 32 tracks created in Reaper + the 1 Root FX track for EZDrummer + the 8 individual EZ# Drum tracks. Routing in Reaper is set for input and output to and from channels 1 through 32. Then EZ# tracks are also routed to outputs 25-32 of of Reaper.

So signal flow (in my mind) is from EZDrummer via each EZ# track into the x32 board (channels 25-32), then looping back out of the x32 as inputs into Reaper on tracks 25-32 in Reaper. If those tracks 25-32 are set to also output to the board, is that going to compound my volume output to the board? Does that degrade my signal in any way? I suppose it might ever so slightly delay the second version of the signal back to the board? Should I avoid this? I guess in theory, I can record my EZDrummer (triggered live from Alesis trigger) instead of the input back from the board? Would I just have to set each EZ# track to record? Any thoughts/feedback on what would be best?
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Old 10-21-2014, 01:32 PM   #6
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Also, for monitoring only:

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Old 10-21-2014, 01:51 PM   #7
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I'm sorry if I'm being dense, but what does that setting apply to? You're suggesting I should set that on my EZDrummer FX track? so I'm not actually recording that track? Or is that in regards to my question of recording my individual input EZ tracks?
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Old 10-22-2014, 06:13 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkStar View Post
Hello _shorty_ and welcome to these forums. You'll find many helpful people here and a lot of useful information.

Bypass EZDrummer for the moment (click the Power button next to [fx] in the Track Control Panel (TCP), you may need to drag down the lower edge of the TCP to see it)

Check that you have got the track Armed for Recording and that Input Monitoring is enabled (green speaker icon) and that the Alesis is selected as the MIDI Input device.

Please record some MIDI from the Alesis. Do you see the MIDI activity indicators (red dot or line in the track's meter)? Does the recorded MIDI clip show the notes?

Does EZDrummer require the notes to be on a specific channel? Looking in the MIDI Editor / View Mode: Event List - on what channel are the recorded notes?

We can move on from here when we have your answers.
UGH!.. this is so frustrating! So I saved my project when everything was working fine the other day. Came in, powered up, opened my project, and ..... nothing... So, I brought your directions back up to try again.

*Bypassed EZDrummer - CHECK (FX turned red)
*Track armed for record - CHECK (Set for Record: Input (audio or MIDI)
*Green speaker icon - "Record Monitoring: ON"

*started record - went up an beat on the drums a bit. Came back to play them back, I see no dots bumps or levels or anything else coming into that channel.

I tried to see what channel it might be coming in as, but nothing inputted.. so I View Mode: Event List yielded '--' as a channel.

I checked, and my alesis trigger channel is set to 10, so I changed the midi input to triggerIO channel 10. Still didn't work.

After that, I went into Properties\Device and changed the Audio system away from 'ASIO' to WaveOut.. Closed the properties window, came back in, and turned it back to ASIO.. and then I had inputs. I recorded again indeed produced MIDI dots now, and I got output sound through EZDrummer. Everything came in Channel 10.

I changed the input back to 'All Channels', and it stopped working again. Turning input back to channel 10 did not help. I cycled the Device off and back on from ASIO again, and it didn't help this time. It's currently not working.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated since our next practice is tomorrow. It seems like something not right since the same settings don't always yield the same results. Man this is frustrating. I'm thinking of wiping out the whole system and starting over... advice?

Last edited by _shorty_; 10-22-2014 at 06:39 PM.
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Old 10-23-2014, 06:06 AM   #9
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With no responses, I decided to wipe out the laptop last night and do a clean install of Windows. Tonight before practice, I'll go over and install everything with hardware plugged in. I'll report back on my progress. If it doesn't work tonight, I'll be reverting back to our old VST player/3mm jack output from PC into the board - just to get us by until I can get some feedback and get Reaper working.

That exercise of reverting to the other VST player may yield some interesting troubleshooting information in itself.
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Old 10-23-2014, 04:16 PM   #10
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As I feared and kind of expected - it's the X-USB Behringer USB driver. Everything works great up until I install that driver and try to use it... Haven't figured out the solution yet, as I kind of need that driver to output from reaper into the x32. Anyone have any ideas?
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Old 10-23-2014, 07:15 PM   #11
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Does it make sense that this driver would affect the midi input into reaper? The midi input devices are a different property page/section...
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Old 10-23-2014, 07:26 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by _shorty_ View Post
As I feared and kind of expected - it's the X-USB Behringer USB driver. Everything works great up until I install that driver and try to use it... Haven't figured out the solution yet, as I kind of need that driver to output from reaper into the x32. Anyone have any ideas?
Sorry you're not getting many replies. I don't have much to offer, but I'm assuming you have downloaded the latest x32 driver? How about the x32 firmware?

I have recorded quite a bit withe the x32, with no real problems. However, I have not tried to record while also having a separate midi device connected to my laptop. I can't see why that should matter, but I'll try to do that this weekend as a test.

One thing you might try - the asio4all driver instead of Behringer's. Less than ideal, for sure.
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Old 10-23-2014, 07:41 PM   #13
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Thanks for the reply! I can trigger the ezdrummer vst in reaper if I use the asio4all driver... But then I can no longer route those tracks to the x32. Right? If you could test that separate midi device thing for me, that'd be awesome. I do have the latest drivers and installs of everything available... However I have not checked or tried to update firmware on the x32 itself. I'll have to do that tomorrow and test again.

With the x32, we also got an S16 digital snake, which has midi, but I read the midi in x32 was not really designed for midi play through, rather board control. That's why i got the USB extender to extend my midi USB from the trigger IO to the laptop at FOH. What kills me is that it has worked intermittently!! I really hope I'm not running into some x32 limitation...
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Old 10-24-2014, 03:34 AM   #14
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You should be able to use the asio4all driver with the x32. I've not tried that, though.
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Old 10-24-2014, 06:07 AM   #15
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I'll check this afternoon to see if my 32 inputs and outputs show up in the asio4all driver. I guess I assumed they wouldn't. Last night I played with running multiple instances of Reaper using command line -newinst argument. If I can't get this working as I want before Sunday, I should at least be able to hopefully output from the headphone jack into one of the local ports on the board and still record from a second instance of Reaper using the other asio driver. It appears the different instances will accept the different drivers, but I don't know if it will work yet or not.

Even if it does, it is clunky though (since the last audio device used always loads - meaning I can't just auto run on boot up and not worry about it), but it should hopefully get me by until I get a solution to my issue. I don't want to have to go another service/practice without the drums... lol.
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Old 10-29-2014, 10:28 AM   #16
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Default Resolved! - I think...

Time will tell, but I think our issue is resolved! After tuning the Windows laptop (shutting off/disabling software and hardware that was not necessary - as well as setting some advanced power saver settings), I went in and I was able to trigger the VST reliably as well as up the communication IO to the X32 back up to 32 input/outputs! I haven't tested long term yet, but so far, so good!

Our Setup: We installed a new x32 Compact and the S16 snake. We are inputting 16 inputs from the S16 to inputs 1-16 on the x32 as well as routing those same inputs to Card Outputs 1-8 and 9-16 (which translate to inputs into channels 1-16 in Reaper). The X-USB Card is setup via Firewire with 32/32 inputs/outputs. Within Reaper, we are triggering EZDrummer (via USB extender over cat6 - input from Alesis Trigger IO). There are 9 EZDrummer tracks in Reaper (1 master MIDI track split out to 8 x individual drum mic tracks) which are each routed to outputs 25-32 (via Reaper routing matrix + X32 Routing, Card 25-32 input into X32 channels 25-32). We can play the drums live, as well as record any session simultaneously (note: drums are recorded via the midi input triggers vs some loopback from the board which works nicely). I can then adjust routing in the X32 to play back those recorded tracks and mix just like everyone is still there/playing. Sure, people have been doing this for a while now, but this is new for me, and all I can say from the perspective of a worship leader who has gone without a sound guy for a long time now is: "Awesome... Thank you Jesus!.. oh, and you too, Behringer and Reaper ".

For reference, here are some of the articles I used to help me tune our Windows 8.1 laptop. Most of them are for Win 7 - but almost everything still applies, and there is a link to current services in the blackviper link to check those new ones that are not referenced in the main table.
http://blog.dubspot.com/optimize-you...ic-production/
http://global.focusrite.com/answerba...dows-7?id=1071
http://www.devicedriverfinder.com/bl...-usb-root-hubs
http://www.blackviper.com/service-co...onfigurations/
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Old 11-18-2014, 02:04 PM   #17
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I wanted to provide a status update in hopes that I don't mislead anyone into thinking that Windows 8 is an OK OS to run. With the updated legacy driver - I have been able to make it work, but soon found out after my last post that it was still very finicky. Each time booting up, I'd have to tweak buffer settings just to make the firewire interface work. Note: I wouldn't have to increase my buffer sizes (like you'd expect).. I simply have to change them (up or down) until I found one that the computer liked that particular day.

I got fed up and 'upgraded' to XP pro. I had an unused media/license around, and even though it's 'not supported' it has never and will never go on the network... so I'm not too concerned. I installed everything and set it up on XP, installed necessary drivers, disable unneeded hardware, modified power settings, and it took off and worked rock solid 100% so far without any tweaking necessary. I'm optimistic that our system will be more solid and reliable from this point on.

I hadn't run XP in a long time - it was kind of a shock to seeing less than a couple hundred meg of memory being used... lol
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