The Trumpet: Harsh attacks during playback in Logic Pro

edited February 2013 in Windcontrollers
I have almost all the Sample Modeling instruments so far (except a couple of the saxes). But, my favorite one to play is The Trumpet. When I play (using Akai EWI USB) in standalone Kontakt, everything is fine, and I can play with all the subtlety that I want. However, when I record in Logic Pro, things usually sound fine while recording (now that I have the instrument I/O buffer lowered to 256 samples, as recommended). Unfortunately, during playback it sounds as though I'm getting samples from arbitrary velocity layers: lots of harsh attacks and notes that are much louder than I played them, even when I'm extra careful to use softer tonguing than usual.



At first, I thought it was the spikes at the beginning of some of the offending notes in the Breath events lane in Hyper Editor; but, it's not. Then I thought it might be the extra tall velocity bars (All Velocities), but lowering them didn't help. What does work, is connecting the individual breaths so that there are no gaps between them. (Before and after pics attached, but unfortunately in the wrong order). Needless to say, this is rather tedious; I'd rather be playing music than spending hours tweeking things in Hyper Editor. I just did a series of tests this afternoon, and this problem only happens with The Trumpet (not the SM clarinets, trombones, soprano sax, etc.) or instruments from other developers. So, I reinstalled The Trumpet library, but that didn't help.



I've posted to the Akai EWI users group on Facebook, visited the Logic Pro and other forums, even thoroughly searched my Logic Pro manual for a solution to this problem. But, no luck. I would really love to be able to record trumpet music without spending so much time in Hyper Editor to make it sound the way I actually played it. So, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.



— Jason

Comments

  • edited 4:29AM
    I'm not a logic user, but if it doesn't sound the same, it may be because there's a different in logic between what you've played and what's recorded.

    Did you try to offset your CC slightly earlier ?
  • edited 4:29AM
    Thanks, Plougot. I don't know what you mean by: "Did you try to offset your CC slightly earlier?"



    Since this problem only happens with The Trumpet, and not other S-M instruments (or any others, for that matter), I suspect it is not a problem with Logic Pro or my EWI. I'm hoping somebody at Sample Modeling will have an idea what's going on.



    Just to be clear (evidently I'm not explaining the problem very well), when I am recording The Trumpet in Logic Pro (using software monitoring), everything sounds fine. But, when I play back the recording, it is very harsh sounding, even when I'm playing legato with very light tonguing. In other words, the recording does not match the way I actually played the piece. All other instruments play back exactly as they sound while recording. So, it seems to me that it is not a problem with Logic Pro per se, but something about The Trumpet that causes Logic Pro to respond that way. But, there are a lot of technical issues that I do not understand well, so I could be missing something really simple … I hope.
  • edited 4:29AM
    Sorry I couldn't help. I'm having some heavy issues with kontakt based instruments myself. Maybe you should try to contact the support via the contact page.
  • hello,I noticed the problem and I changed the way to record SM instruments. I use my laptop to play SM instruments and I record analog audio to the input of my sound card to another computer with nuendo 4. I get exactly the sound I played live, if I don't do this, there is always a big difference . At this way, it sounds so real...
  • edited 4:29AM
    Solved! Thanks to Peter's patience (and my persistence), this issue was quicly and easily resolved. It turns out that it was >not< a problem with my Logic settings (and of course, not with The Trumpet software itself), but with the way I had set one of the parameters in The Trumpet. Just in case anybody else has this problem: In Conrollers 3, CC25 must be set to 0 (zero). When I first got The Trumpet, I misunderstood the manual and set it to 127! I never noticed a problem while playing, but for two years, I have not been able to record The Trumpet without problems in the playback. A big thanks to Peter for noticing the faulty controller setting (after I sent him my Logic file). Charles: I was thinking about doing something like that out of desperation, but fortunately, there is now no need. Thanks to everybody for suggestions. I'm so happy to be able to record my trumpet playing now!

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