Analogue Drums / DrumDrops (.wav samples do not play back on pedal or BBM)

Okay, I did a forum search and there has been a couple other BB users that have run into the same issue. The issue I’m encountering is that .wav samples purchased from “Analogue Drums” and “Drum Drops” will only play back when you are creating a new drum kit in BBM. But after you save the kit, update your project and update the SD card, the samples will not play back on the BB or in the BB Manager. This is not a Midi Note issue with the .DRM file, I fully understand how song, drum kits, and projects work and are created using BB Manager.

The purchased .wav samples are 16-bit and/or 24-bit 44.1k. Like I said, I was creating a drum kit in BB Manager and the purchased .wav samples all played back during the drum kit editing/creation process. I updated my project and also made sure to backup the new drum kit and the project. But just like others previously reported here in the forum, when you load the project on the pedal itself, none of the purchased samples play back. Then when you reopen the project in BB Manager, all the drum samples are still there but clicking on the audition button produces nothing but silence, the purchased .wav files do not play back. If you add some additional layers to an instrument and select the same .wav files (or different ones), audio audition works as expected for those newly added .wav samples…but those original samples that were used when you first created the new drum kit still do not play back in the BBM.

Now, where this issue gets more confusing is that “Dan’s Analogue Drums SplitSticks Drum Kit” uses samples purchased from Analogue Drums…so that indicates that those purchased samples are working as expected. I would be curious to know which system, PC or Mac and which version of the BB Manager the Dan’s SplitSticks kit was created on. I’m using my MacBook with Yosemite. So my next step is to try creating drum kits on my Windows 7 PC. It’s hard to determine what the actual issue is.

I have no idea what could be causing this issue. The samples are all 16/24-bit 44.1K .wav samples. Looking at the sample sizes, they are anywhere between 300kb to 800kb and several are 1mb and upwards towards 3mb. So is there actually a “strict” sample size limit for each .wav file and if so, what is it?

In addition, I also tried creating new drum kits using a combination of the original BB .wav files alongside the Analogue Drums and Drum Drops .wav samples. There is absolutely no issues with the original factory .wav samples, they play back on the pedal and in the BB Manager as expected…but the third party samples do not play back. Something is amiss somewhere, either in the purchased samples or in the BB Manager.

Well, I ran the BB Manager on my Windows 7 PC and I’m still seeing this issue on that platform. Very frustrating to say the least.

If the kit won’t play in the manager software or even the samples then it won’t work on the pedal,
@beckerdo who created the split sticks kit produced the following instructions - I suggest you try copying the sound samples to your BB workspace and addding them from there. I think I also explain this in my videos as well as in the drumset editor manual, available from the downloads area on the beatbuddy website.

The basic process to create a new BB drum kit is:
1. Collect a set of sounds samples. Place them in your Beat Buddy workspace.
2. Start BBManager. Create a new BB drum kit. Give it a name and save it.
3. Add instruments to your drum kit. This consists of adding MIDI notes, giving them a name, and associating the notes to one or more sounds sample files. Repeat until you have lots of notes, especially the ones in the standard MIDI drum map. Save frequently.
4. Be kind to other users. Test your drum kit with standard songs. Write a README documentation file with the kit. Write a drum map so people know which MIDI notes produce which sounds. ZIP it all up into one file so it is easy to share.
5. Share your drum kit. Make sure your kit extracts into the correct paths in the BB workspace. Post your kit where people can download it. Share your kit to the BeatBuddy User Forum.

Psalm40, I’ve already watched all your videos (some more than once) and many other videos. I’ve also read the drum set editor manual as well multiple times. In addition, I already had the sound samples located in my BB workspace. So there is something else here causing the problem. What would help is to have another BB user create a drum kit using the Analogue Drums and/or Drum Drops samples and see what their experience is. It might also help to use BB Manager v1.40 and see if this issue can be repro’d in that version as well.

Unfortunately, I do not see BB Manager v1.40 as an available download. So if someone still has that version and could post a download link, that could possibly help in narrowing down this issue.

Like I stated previously, the third party sound .wav samples can be heard in BB Manager when creating a drum kit. But once you update your project with the newly created drum kit, then load that kit on the BB pedal, the samples are not heard. If you reopen that project in BB Manager, the samples are still seen in the drum kit editor but they are silent when you try to play them back pressing the audition icon/arrow or when pressing the foot pedal on the BB image located in the upper left corner of the manager.

Also worth noting, I can tell the samples are definitely within the .DRM file because when you go to load your newly created drum kit on the BB itself, you can watch the load/progress indicator on the BB and tell that samples are being loaded into playback memory because of the actual time it takes to load each drum kit. With that in mind, I created several new drum kits of different sizes using the third party samples and watched/timed the differences in load time on the BB pedal. We need to get additional verification from other users to see if this issue can occur for them as well. But like I stated previously, there already were a few (very few) forum posts from 2014 describing this exact issue. So I know I’m not alone in seeing this.

It would probably help if I contact those original users and see if the issue went away for them or if they discovered a work-around that eliminates the issue.

That is fair enough then - I have not messed around much with Drumset editing since making the tutorial videos, outside of changing the volume of the instruments to make them sit better with the other kits.

Okay, I did a little more testing today using “Dan’s Analogue Drums SplitSticks” .DRM kit. I purchased the drum samples from Analogue Drums (they’re only $15.00, which is a great price) and then I followed Dan’s instructions on how to setup the folders and samples in the BB Workspace. After all was said and done, the .DRM kit saved, the Project saved, and the Project Exported to the SD card (which I have inserted in the SD slot on my MacBook). Put the SD card into the BB pedal and guess what…the SplitSticks drum kit works as expected, the samples play back without any issues. Hmmm…???

So what I did next was to use Dan’s folder/sample structure within the BB Workspace for the Analogue Drums “Mapex” kit I had purchased. And guess what…no Mapex samples would play back on the BB pedal. So, the issue still exists that I reported previously. I’m more convinced that the issue is with the BB Manager app.

Does anyone here have v1.40 of the BB Manager that I could try using?

Ok I have tested this just in the Manager software with the latest version and it works fine and files don’t have to be in the BBworkspace - I thought that was the case at the time but wondered if something had changed again.
I can hear the sample when I click on the audition button, at first I used a sound sample from the accents hits then used a random wave sample that I found on my computer (Not in BBworkspace).
I used the existing Rock kit, saved it as Rock1 added another instrument called Bongo Hi, set the midi note to one supported by the song I was testing (And Fools Shine On), browsed to the Wave file and auditioned it. Saved the drum kit, made sure it was ticked and choose it when playing a song. I then changed the sample and tried it again with no issues.
I notice now that when you edit a Drum kit it copies the wav files to
BBWorkspace\default_lib\drum_sets\DRUMSETNAME\INSTRUMENTNAME
[ATTACH=full]1344[/ATTACH]

Try it in the manager software first, if it works in that it should work on the BB itself.

Thanks for looking into this issue. That was some good detective work discovering which location of folders and samples are copied to when editing a drum kit. I went ahead and did exactly as you did and was able to get the same results as yourself. But I took it a few steps further and tried out several different .wav files. I was using the Standard kit and saved the kit as Standard 1. I removed all the different layers from the snare instrument which left me with just one sample, then I would try out different .wav files, triggering the .wav sample from the audition button as well as song playback. Here’s what I discovered…some .wav files work as expected and others do not.

Any of the .wav files that come from any BB source work without issue. Some other .wav samples I had on my hard drive worked without issue as well. But when I used any of the .wav samples from the “Analogue Drums - BlackSmith Kit” or the “Drum Drops - Mapex Kit” then I ran into issues. Here’s what occurs when using one of those purchased samples. In the BB Drumkit Editor, when I replace the factory .wavs with the purchased .wavs. You can press the audition button in the editor and the replacement sample plays backs as expected. But when you press Play in the BB Manager to play a song, then there is nothing but loud white noise. Press the Stop button, then pressing the audition button again in the editor and the .wav audition/playback works fine…but hit the play song button again and you get nothing but the loud white noise (until you hit stop).

I agree with you that if all the drum samples play back in the BB Manager without any audio issues, then the Drumkit is going to also work when loaded into the BB. But BB Manager definitely has some playback issues with some .wav files. This is something that Singular Sound needs to look into. Like I said previously, something’s amiss here.

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I have the exact same problem as Nathan Shane and also have put a brief post on the issue in the drum kit section of the Forum when Edgar Hellwig reported it. In addition I have contacted Tech Support about the issue. Has anyone been able to resolve if this a path setting or wav formatting problem? Seem a few other users have reported it through the Forum in one guise or another over the past year or so.

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Do not know if this could be related but have just finished debugging why I could not import a Wav file I edited with Wavlab Pro 9 into BBM v 1.5.01. I discovered that BBM does not parse all the latest standards on Wave file headers. In my case it was the fact my Wav file editor (Wavelab Pro 9) was writing its Wav files to the latest Wav file standards which BBM can’t handle.

Here’s the link to the discussion on the Bug Reports. Basically not all Wav files are created equal as the file header information which describes the file contents to the program using it, is changing with new ideas and standards.

http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/index.php?threads/beat-buddy-manager-1-5-01-importing-wav.5878/

One solution which worked for me was using a program called Tag Stripper on the Mac which basically strips out all the Hex code in a Wav file header between the “WAVE” and "fmt " markers. You can also do this manually using any hex editor on Mac or PC to test a file. Just remove all the bytes between the “WAVE” and "fmt " markers in a Wave file. (Use a copy of the file). Then see if it solves your problem. Clearly it would be tedious to do this for large volumes of Wav files but if the test works at least you know where the problem may lie.

If you don’t want to edit or don’t have a Hex editor, you can still get a visual clue by copying your wave file and renaming it as a .txt file instead of a .wav. Then use a text editor to open the file. If you see a header marker which reads as WAVEJUNK (Example header extract “RIFF4¬WAVEJUNKfmt D¨±dataÏ¡ÈˇMˇ ÒˇïS-ø{˛J¯∞˛¯ûk Õˇ?”) then that format of file may not be readable by BBM software at present.

Note my test was only conducted on importing an Accent file into BBM, I did not try other aspects of importing as Im still learning about BBM. I note there are also file size restrictions which BBM has so that’s another possible problem area, however error messages should give clues.

Hope this assists debugging.

Cheers
David

Thanks to David and aashideacon for looking into this issue. I followed the link and ran my wav files through Tag stripper. The files now save correctly in BB Manager. Have not saved to actual pedal yet but presume that will be OK. I am not sure if the good folks at BB pick up on the fourm stuff so I’ll send a note to Jay, BB roadie , who was also looking into the issue for me. Thanks again guys.

I’ve sent an email to Singular sounds who are checking this out. Not really a bug just standard on going program patching when you use files where standards can change in their format. Pretty sure there will be a fix in a later version of BBM removing the need to manually massage files. Glad it appears to give you a fix.

Just had a quick google about why the RF64 header change. This was the short result.

"[I][B]The RF64 file format should fulfil the longer-term need for multichannel sound in broadcasting and archiving. The required effort for software implementers is very small. The changes that will be needed to update existing systems will be reasonable in cost.

An RF64 file has additions to the basic Microsoft RIFF/WAVE specification to allow for either, or both:
[/B][/I]
[LIST]
[]more than 4 Gbyte file sizes when needed

[
][I][B]A maximum of 18 surround channels, stereo downmix channel and bitstream signals with non-PCM coded data. This specification is based on the Microsoft Wave Format Extensible [1] for multichannel parameters.

The file format is designed to be a compatible extension to the Microsoft RIFF/WAVE format and to the BWF [2] [3] and its supplements and additional chunks. It extends the maximum size capabilities of the RIFF/WAVE and BWF thus allowing for multichannel sound in broadcasting and audio archiving.

RF64 can be used in the entire programme chain from capture to editing and play out and for short or long term archiving of multichannel files.

An RF64 file with a bext chunk becomes an MBWF (Multichannel BWF) file. The terms ‘RF64’ and ‘MBWF’ can then be considered synonymous. "[/B][/I]

[/LIST]
Cheers
David