Roland TR-8: A Guide to Live and Studio Use – Studio Integration

Cover Photo: Canadian artist Dan Fur‘s home studio – featuring the TR-8

The Roland TR-8 is a very different beast from its ancestors. It was engineered to be a live-performance machine. Still, it is equally at home in the studio. This week, we will examine connections and settings to seamlessly integrate the TR-8 into a home recording studio.

Key Settings

Before we plug everything in, let’s take a look at some key settings on the TR-8 itself that will help us more easily integrate it in a studio environment. Boot into the system settings menu by holding down PTN SELECT button as the machine starts up.

Set CLOCK SOURCE to AUTO

Ensure Pad 1 is lit to set the clock source to auto. This is to ensure TR-8 is listening to your DAW’s clock signal. Doing so will make every step in the production process infinitely easier, as you will only need to make minor adjustments in order to perfectly sync your drum audio to your DAW’s ruler.

Set MIDI Message Reception

This works in tandem with the clock source setting. You want TR-8 to not only adhere to your DAW’s clock, but to respond to START/STOP messages as well. With these two settings, TR-8 will be tightly synchronized to your DAW – providing you with a much less stressful recording experience.

Set MIDI Channel

Depending on your studio configuration and workflow, you may want to give TR-8 a channel on which it can receive and transmit MIDI data. Personally, I set this to off because in my configuration, TR-8 does one job – play its onboard drums.

Deactivate BOOST

Ensure Pad 3 is unlit to deactivate the volume boost option. This option is more for live settings when TR-8 may have to compete with hot-outputting devices like DJ media players. The studio calls for more headroom and less volume. You could keep the boost engaged (and some special cases may call for it), but you would be much more likely to clip your signal. You can reach an optimal volume within your DAW by deactivating the boost and properly gain-staging the signal.

Configure Output Assignments

The final key setting has to do with routing your sounds to the appropriate audio output. The TR series has historically had one ¼ inch output per sound, making it very well suited to studio work. TR-8, however, only has four outputs – two of which are a stereo pair. It’s a gripe the public has had since it was released, but really it’s not so bad (and TR-8 actually does have a 1-output-per-instrument option, but we’ll get to that momentarily).

The Philosophy Behind Grouping Sounds

Grouping sounds is nothing new – it is a fundamental part of the mixing process. As such, limiting your sounds to four outputs need not be the crippling design flaw the public claims it to be.

Grouping your sounds off the bat can force you to start making crucial mix decisions early on. It can also help you develop your own mix philosophy. Besides, you can always record individual sounds on from the same input in passes.

You can route sounds to your assignable A and B outputs from the system settings menu (see Part 3 of this series to learn how, step by step). Afterwards, you can route the remaining instruments to outputs L and R by hard-panning them.

But Which Sounds Go Together?

When grouping sounds, it is imperative to group them logically, according to the way you wish to work. Typically, you want to group them according to function or frequency range.

Functionally, the snare and clap often play very similar roles in a beat, as do the three toms. The kick also serves a very specific function and is often completely isolated.

In terms of frequency, you would want to group sounds like hi-hats and cymbals together. Toms and rimshots would also fit well together, but so would claps and rimshots.

Really, there is no “wrong way” to group your sounds. Again, it depends on your workflow.

Here are a few configurations for inspiration:

Mix L	Mix R	Assignable A	Assignable B
Kick	Snare, Clap	Toms, Rim	Hi-Hats, Cymbals
Kick	Clap, Rim	Snare, Toms	Hi-Hats, Cymbals
Kick, Clap	Snare, Toms,	Hi-Hats, Rim (as Shaker)	Cymbals
Kick, Clap, Hi-Hats	Snare, Rim	Toms	Cymbals

Latency

Latency is the time it takes to hear a sound you trigger. When properly handled, it is negligible. When it is a problem, it feels unnatural and is quite distracting. Even when it is decently mitigated, it can manifest as a strange color to your sound. Handling latency is a topic all on its own, but here are some things to check:

• Make sure your buffer settings are as low as possible without causing clicks, pops, or dropouts.
• Make sure you adjust your MIDI delay to compensate for the time it takes to reach your machines (Hint: MIDI is not instantaneous – it’s actually rather slow on the draw)

Audio Via USB

1	Mix Out L
2	Mix Out R
3	Kick
4	Snare
5	Low Tom
6	Mid Tom
7	Hi Tom
8	Rimshot
9	Clap
10	Closed Hi-Hat
11	Open Hi-Hat
12	Crash Cymbal
13	Ride Cymbal
14	External In

I mentioned earlier that TR-8 does, in fact, honor the TR tradition of one-output-per-instrument, albeit with a modern twist. As if it wasn’t capable of enough already, TR-8 can also function as a 14 channel, 24 bit audio interface. This means you can plug your TR-8 into your computer with a USB cable and stream each individual instrument into it’s own track in your DAW.

You may notice External In was only afforded a single channel – this means any stereo input will be combined to mono. Also, it’s important to note that any onboard effects utilized will be output on the Mix Out channels. These settings cannot be altered. See the breakdown of these channels to the left.

The Downside to USB Audio

Individual outputs per sound gives the serious producer tons of control over their drum mix, but such a boon comes at a cost. First, TR-8 is not a class-compliant device. This means that in order to utilize this type of functionality, you must first download and install the proper drivers.

Installing the drivers is not a difficult process, but it is a precarious one. A wrong move here and you could seriously mess up your computer. During my first attempt at installing the driver, I thought I had bricked my laptop. I had to pay someone to fix it for me. Thankfully, it was easily fixable. Take care when installing the drivers. You have been warned.

Secondly, utilizing the audio via USB feature means your computer will use TR-8 as an audio interface – to the exclusion of other interfaces. Not many would give up that much connectivity just to have the closed hi-hat on its own DAW channel. I know I wouldn’t.

Fortunately, there are ways around this limitation for PC and for Mac, but detailing the setup of an aggregate device so as to combine multiple audio interfaces into a single virtual interface is outside the scope of this article.

In brief, however, I will say that Mac users have it much easier – they can set up an aggregate audio device straight away from their computers’ audio settings menu. PC users cannot – they must download and install ASIO4ALL and configure their aggregate device there.

Conclusion

Roland’s TR-8 excels in the studio, when it’s properly integrated. Overall, four outputs is enough for me. Although a few extra outputs would be welcomed, configuring TR-8’s audio via USB is simply not worth the effort. Limitations inspire creativity in the studio. They also force us to make decisions that propel a project forward.

Stay tuned for the final article in the TR-8 series, where we explore TR-8’s place in its natural habitat – the club.

Until next week,
Audiomunk

Missed the previous parts in this series? Find them below!

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Layout and Overview
• Part 3: Basic Operation
• Part 4: “Hidden” Menu and Other Settings
• Part 5: Live Rig Integration