ReWire problem in AA2.0?

I think, but am not 100% sure, that there is a rewire problem in AA2. I just got BFD drum module and am trying to get it to play into Audition through reWire. I managed to get Audition to accept it, to set up all the tracks necesssary, and then to launch BFD as rewire.

At this point all the Record buttons on the rewire tracks are enabled

When I try to arm the tracks to record, AA insists I save a session, but as soon as I do, all the rewire tracks disable their record buttons and I can't get them back! I can still play the grooves in BFD, but that's it!

Any suggestions from the AA gurus?

I'll have a look later. Fortunately I have BFD sitting on one of the machines with AA2.0 on but strangely, I've never experimented with the reWire capabilities of it.

Much appreciate it Steve, I got it sort of working as a VST client in FL Studio, then rewired FL to Audition (whew), but the sound isn't perfect, a few crackles etc.

Steve,

If I understand how this works, I don't need to get BFD as a rewire slave immediately. I still have to have the midi commands to actually fire the drums, unless I want to use only the built in grooves or grooves I make. So I have tried using Fruity Loops Studio and I can rewire that into AA, then load BFD as a VST plugin to FL. I can load midi files in FL and play them through BFD and record them in AA. It isn't elegant but it works.

So I have a work around until we find out why BFD doesn't work on its own.

Unfortunately there will be a slight delay in the promised investigation caused by the filling-in of a few forms...

Okay, this is a progress report...

If I understand how this works, I don't need to get BFD as a rewire slave immediately. I still have to have the midi commands to actually fire the drums, unless I want to use only the built in grooves or grooves I make.

That's all true - and I have got it to work within AA2.0 - well, some of it, anyway - the rewire audio functions are okay, but there are MIDI problems I haven't yet solved.

My initial problem was that I discovered that there were updates I hadn't got, so I spent an eternity (and this is with a 10Mbit/sec download stream) getting all that together and rebuilding BFD from scratch. It previously wouldn't work with rewire at all, whatever you did. First thing you have to do is make damn sure you don't have ASIO drivers in BFD enabled - they can't be shared, so use the Windows setting (this isn't what you are going to hear, anyway, so it doesn't matter at all). Next, set the rewire option to be stereo, not one of the fancy outputs. You may be able to use one of the fancy settings, but I didn't for testing purposes.

In the Audition rewire setup screen, use Audition as the rewire host, and then tell it to lauch BFD rewire. It won't. So launch this manually from the start menu. I didn't use the 'alternative panel' mode, so I don't know if this makes a difference or not. Now, if you set BFD to trigger from song stops and starts, you can get it to play grooves, and get the groove sequencer automation to work fine. If you record 30 seconds of audio silence on another track, and then export the audio, you get the groove sequencer playing along nicely in your mix. BFD rewire will only work in this mode when it's minimised - which is also a bit weird, I think.

What I have completely failed to do, though, is persuade BFD to be triggered by any sort of external MIDI signal at all, but only in rewire mode. I can trigger everything just fine in standalone mode, but nothing in rewire - using identical settings. This rather stops it being useful as it is in Audition without a workaround like yours, and may actually be a BFD problem, not an Audition one - although quite frankly I'm not at all sure about this yet either - it may be caused by something silly.

The investigation continues...

Thanks for the update - I will try this out immediately!

But how do you record BFD playing along with your silence?

Don't worry I found it - Bounce down to track

But how do you record BFD playing along with your silence?

Don't worry I found it - Bounce down to track

Or just export the mix. I recorded something to go along with it, just to see how well it syncs - and it's not bad. And it really is the rewire track you get - you can effect and EQ it with the AA2.0 mixer, and automate it too. But this total lack of MIDI control in rewire mode is a complete bugger - I can't find any way to enable it at all. I've tried just about every reasonable combination of settings (and a load of quite unreasonable ones too) that I can think of. And now I've run out of time temporarily, so this will have to wait until later for more experiments.

I can't even try it with Sonar at present, because that's on the portable, and the huge BFD isn't...

(Groan) I think I know why you can't activate the BFD MIDI when it's in rewire mode now. The rewire module is expecting its MIDI input to come from the host application, and even if you import a MIDI file into Audition, it can't be sent back to the slave device, because Audition can't remap it. If this is the case, it will require an almighty great kludge to make it work correctly. Without the remap, it may not even be possible at all. And it is a pain, because it's all you would need to do, really.

At least, I think that this is what's happening. It makes a depressing amount of sense...

even if you import a MIDI file into Audition, it can't be sent back to the slave device, because Audition can't remap it.

A shot in the dark here.  Are you using virtual Midi cables, such as MidiYoke? That should give you Midi Out from AA 2.0 and Midi In to BFD.  But I don't know if that works the way you need it to while in Rewire mode.

even if you import a MIDI file into Audition, it can't be sent back to the slave device, because Audition can't remap it.

But I don't know if that works the way you need it to while in Rewire mode.

That's the problem - it doesn't.

Well Steve, I have almost given up on BFD via AA. I have been working on loading the midi file into Fruity Loops, loading BFD as a plug-in and rendering the tracks to wav from FL. It can render as many tracks as you like to separate waves at once, in 32 bit format.

Currently the only problem is that it refuses to allocate tracks for the BFD all version. So far I can get  the 4 groups recorded, and, if I get the mix right, this might be enough.

It is a shame that there is so much trouble with these rewire units, the manual say it will work with Cubas SX (I can't get the audio recorded from there), Fruity Loops (as mentioned) and many others I haven't got.

Given my experience, I wonder  how well it works anywhere!

New problem: the drums sound fine when I play through FL, but when rendered the cymbals are all choked - noticeably!

I tried again with Audition but:
There is no way to get ALL tracks to work - it just won't do it. ANother problem I have found is that all the cymbals get cut off sharply after about 1 second! They sound fine when you play it "live" but when it is mixed down it is wrong! This is going to drive me nuts, I knew I shouldn't have bought BFD!

Quite frankly, in many ways I'm amazed that it works at all. There are some serious problems anyway, never mind the ones reported so far. Closing the rewire app from within Audition can be a complete disaster - it's crashed Audition once, but the worst thing it did was to cause a page fault that caused an XP BSOD - and that's serious. It's not clear where this fault originated from, but I'll tell you for nothing that Audition 2.0 has never done that on its own before - draw your own conclusions.

At present, AA2.0/BFD rewire is not a happy combination, however you look at it.