Windows user, using Reason 13 as my main DAW through the Evans portal interface. I’m trying to record my drums via the Sunhouse VST plugin.
So far I have not been able to make my drum triggers work. That means sound comes out when I manually “click” on the drum zones in the VST. But even after mapping the hardware as inputs (following the A-L then A-R … pattern) no sound gets heard when physically striking my pads.
Everything works just fine when I play within the Sensory Percussion 2 software. The problem really is when working within my DAW with the VST plugin.
Sidenote, no sound comes out of my headphones, only the speaker seem to work in the VST, which is really odd. Thought the ASIO drivers might be wrong but everything is up to date. So here again, no clue where to look for.
The Sensory Percussion 2 Plugin is only fully supported in Ableton. It will load inside other DAWs that support VSTs, but full usage of all seven sensor inputs is restricted by the DAW’s ability to route multi-channel audio into VST instruments. In our tests, Ableton is the only DAW that supports this. That being said, it might be possible to use the plugin in other DAWs with a limited number of inputs.
If you are still interested in using one (or possibly two) sensors in a DAW other than Ableton, here is how the signal flow works:
The sensor channels start on channel 5, so if you plug your sensor into the first sensor input on the Portal, then you need to select channel 5 as the input channel to an audio or aux input channel in your DAW.
You then need to route that audio or aux channel into the Sensory Percussion VST (which should be created on a MIDI channel). This step varies from DAW to DAW, but it should be possible to route at least one sensor into the plugin*.
Play the drums to see if you are getting signal out of the Plugin.
You most likely will want to create at least one audio track that captures the output of the Sensory Percussion 2 plugin. Again, the process for this varies from DAW to DAW, but you want to route the audio output of the Sensory Percussion MIDI channel to an input of an audio channel. Generally – so you don’t double your Sensory Percussion output – you’ll want to mute this channel during tracking, and only unmute it when you are done tracking and are mixing/finalizing your tracks.
*You can also try plugging two sensors into sensor inputs 1 & 2 (which will show up as 5 & 6 in your DAW), and then pan those audio/aux tracks hard left/hard right before routing them to Sensory Percussion VST, which will likely allow you to use two sensors in most DAWs.
For your additional issue of not hearing the sound in your headphones, you’ll want to select 3/4 for main outputs of your DAW session. The main outputs are routed to 1/2 of the Portal, and the headphone outputs are routed to 3/4.
Do all of the Ableton versions support recording 5-7x Sensory Percussion sensors? I’m hoping I can purchase the cheapest version. I use Reaper and am getting no sound at all.
Yes! Ableton Intro has a 16 track limit, and because our standard template has 22 tracks, there are some separate versions of the template for Intro posted and discussed here.
Here is a version that has 7 sensor input channels, the plugin channel, and 8 submix out channels:
I think you would be able to experiment and test it by using a free trial version of Live (that won’t allow you to save, but you could at least get a feel for it).
Thank you for your reply, I do appreciate it, even if the rest of my message may make it seem otherwise. I was NOT able to get this working and it is without a doubt, user error. I’ll have to contact your support with details, which will take me some time to do
I don’t want this to offend, but it seems Sunhouse or maybe it’s Evans (?), has not or is still working to address an issue. The users like me, are having issues because we are drummers, not audio engineers. Though I’ve recorded for years, used Ableton and electronic instruments etc. Are having to pull from multiple examples/tutorials/support emails to match our exact setup: mac vs PC, Evans as the interface vs 3rd party interface, Ableton full vs lite vs Reaper etc. So what happens is, we get to a point in whichever tutorial we are using, were it stops being directly relevant to our exact setup and then we are having to ad lib. What is needed maybe, in addition to the TERRIFIC support, the existing tutorial, just needs to be expanded to cover the MANY possible setups OR maybe this new beta IS this solution? It’s a new and amazing tech and this is probably mostly on me, but I’m pretty sure I have a legit point, just the same.
I was able to record sound last night on Ableton lite, with the 7x sensor template. I believe I now understand what happened. You had posted this response to @axelino, which I’m pretty sure covers it:
I believe I had deleted the plug in from the track, messing around. I re downloaded thinking I likely changed something. Even though I re downloaded the template, I did have to mess with some aspects of routing. In the attached screenshot, you have a GREEN square around the “Sensory Per” drop down. Not sure if the Tutorial covered what to select in this drop down. It might be helpful to those viewing to know which to select from this drop down and more importantly, how the routing can disappear (as you mentioned somewhere in here), if you delete the plug in.
