Recording my Roland TD-11 drums in Linux Mint 18.2

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Ecopixi
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Recording my Roland TD-11 drums in Linux Mint 18.2

Post by Ecopixi »

Hi Guys,

I recently got the Roland TD-11 drum kit which is excellent :D. Ultimately I want to record my playing along with music tracks from the internet using OBS but not sure how to get the set up right. I am completely new to this so any help is greatly appreciated.

My headphones are plugged into the drum module.

If I attach the mix in line to my laptop headphone jack then I can play music from youtube or whatever and hear them through my headphones connected to the drum module along with the drum sounds from my playing - which is ace.

My understanding is that if I connect a high speed USB cable to my laptop that should allow sounds played back by my computer to be heard through the drum kit and can be recorded on my laptop. However when I have the USB cable plugged in I cannot hear any sounds from hitting the drum kit, but if I play music on my laptop I can hear that in my headphones attached to the drum module.

I'm not sure why this is. The kit comes with a USB driver for windows/mac so I thought maybe that is the issue but it seems odd that music can go from my laptop to the module using that cable. Also likely that my sound/pulseaudio/alsamixer set up isn't right. Also probably some things I don't know about that are needed to get this to work too!

Can anyone help me to get this working?

Once I've done that I also want to add in the mic and video from my laptop webcam in OBS to make the recording.

Cheers!
Baggypants
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Re: Recording my Roland TD-11 drums in Linux Mint 18.2

Post by Baggypants »

If you have a go with Audacity you’ll probably be able to record the drums. The TD-11 usb audio won’t come out of the computer speakers if the computer is sending it’s output to the TD-11.

The TD-11 will appear as a sound card to pulse and alsa. Try using alsamixer to see if there is a loop back mode you can turn on. Or looking in the TD-11 manual to send audio to headphones & usb simultaneously.
Ecopixi
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Re: Recording my Roland TD-11 drums in Linux Mint 18.2

Post by Ecopixi »

Hi thanks for your reply.

So without using any other bits of software I realised that I can hear sound through my headphones connected to the module when the USB audio is plugged in to my laptop. The first note plays exactly on time, any further hits play anywhere between 5 - 30 secs after I've hit the drum. Why would that be?! I didn't realise this before as I just thought I was accidentally triggering things randomly moving around.

(I see the TD11 as a sound card in alsa and pulse though there are no options. I turned on loopback mode in alsa for my laptop sound card with no effect. I also had a look in the manual about sending audio to headphones and USB at the same time but it doesn't really say anything. I had a super quick go to try and record in Audacity but I just got crazy sounds and screeches back. I probably need to investigate that further. As well as the USB audio output the module also has a choice of MIDI out and stereo audio outputs.)

To be honest I probably don't understand the basics of connecting audio to a computer. There seems to be lots of different options available.
aicram
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Re: Recording my Roland TD-11 drums in Linux Mint 18.2

Post by aicram »

Hello,

I am not very familiar with pulse audio, however, maybe learning how to use jack and setting that up could
help you. Hopefully, someone with more knowledge here can help you.

I use jack audio that I set up with the excellent cadence. Thanks to Falktx for his wonderful programs.
You can make audio connections with catia in cadence, or as I do sometimes, use patchage for connections.
Many use qjackctl for connections, too. If you focus on learning more about jack audio maybe that will solve
this for you. I am not totally sure, but it works for me with my simple set up with my yamaha midi keyboard.

Once you get this set up, I would love to know exactly how you did it. I wish to work with OBS eventually.

Good fortune with your project.

aicram
Ecopixi
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Re: Recording my Roland TD-11 drums in Linux Mint 18.2

Post by Ecopixi »

Thanks aicram I will have a go checking out jack.
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