NDLR Distorted recording of soft synth in Ableton

[Jadelane]

Hi Guys,

Received my NDLR this morning and managed to spend a few hours with it. Before I set it up with my hardware synths I thought I’d test it with some soft synths within Ableton. 

Got it working and triggering some lovely droney ambient & chord changes with Waldorf Nave. After recording a 15 min jam via ‘Resampling’ as I usually do, upon listening back to the recording it has loads of noise like a really low gain stage but was fine while recording and the noise wasn’t there, is this in fact midi information and I’ve not set up The NDLR correctly. Does anyone have a softsynth VST set-up guide within LIVE’s environment? 

Thanks in advance.

[Jesse Johannesen]

Hi Jadelane, I'm sorry to hear you're having this issue. I'll ask the other guys about this as well, but I'm going to guess that since the original output sounded great, but sounded poor after recording that the issue probably lies in that recording stage of the process. My recommendation is to try doing some test recordings and take an element out at a time (including NDLR) and see if you can isolate the problem that way. Give me an update of your test results, as well as a detailed description of your setup, hows it all plugged in, etc. I'll do some digging and let you know if I find out anyone else is experiencing an issue like that, as well as any other troubleshooting ideas that come up.
Jesse

[Jadelane]

Appreciate the reply, I’ve got a feeling it’s not set up correctly. Do you have a set-up DAW guide especially Ableton Live? I’ve got a feeling a lot of people will be using the NDLR to control a mixture of hardware and software from within a DAW environment.

[Jesse Johannesen]

Appreciate the reply, I’ve got a feeling it’s not set up correctly. Do you have a set-up DAW guide especially Ableton Live? I’ve got a feeling a lot of people will be using the NDLR to control a mixture of hardware and software from within a DAW environment.

The manual has a PC soft synth / DAW setup guide on pages 28-29. There is a diagram there as a reference but here's the text from that section:
PC Soft Synths
        The NDLR supports four MIDI ports over USB. This makes it easy to connect The NDLR to
        individual (stand-alone) synths on the PC without needing a DAW or virtual MIDI channel
        splitting.

        1.  Plug The NDLR to the PC.
        2.  Open the soft synth.
        3.  Choose a MIDI Port and Channel:        NDLR PORT 1, NDLR PORT 2, NDLR PORT 3, or NDLR PORT
              4, channels 1-16.
        4.  Choose the same MIDI Port and Channel on The NDLR (Settings 1 menu).

        DAWs (VST, AU, etc.)
        Follow the steps above for soft synths and setup the DAW’s instrument channels for MIDI Port
        and Channel and choose the same MIDI Port and Channel on The NDLR (Settings 1 menu).
       
        Configuring each DAW and synth plug-in is different, refer to your DAW’s manual for setting up  
        MIDI instrument tracks.

The full manual is available at https://conductivelabs.com/wp-content/up...l-v1.6.pdf

[Jadelane]

Ok, so in the midi settings of Ableton live do I select all the NDLR Midi ins and outs (1, 2, 3, 4) or just 1 midi in & out and change the midi channels of each hard & soft synth accordingly?

Still seems quite confusing in a DAW soft/hard multi synth set up.

I’m getting some interesting Drone & Pad sequences but it’s all still quite random at the moment.

[Jesse Johannesen]

Ok, so in the midi settings of Ableton live do I select all the NDLR Midi ins and outs (1, 2, 3, 4) or just 1 midi in & out and change the midi channels of each hard & soft synth accordingly?

Still seems quite confusing in a DAW soft/hard multi synth set up.

I’m getting some interesting Drone & Pad sequences but it’s all still quite random at the moment.

Hey sorry for the delay, I missed your reply. NDLR has multiple USB MIDI Ports but it is only necessary to use one with ableton I believe. So you could set up motif 1 to channel 2 USB1 and it will be sent to NDLR 1 in the DAW on channel 2. Each MIDI Port has 16 channels so that's more than enough to send all parts on one Port. The purpose of the extras is that some stand alone soft synths don't do well with sharing a MIDI Port so it was a pretty easy thing to add more Ports in the software to accommodate that.
To get a bit more control of the patterns, start out by making the pattern short and even numbered in length. Set the Clock Div to an even number and then try expanding from that. To start exploring the modulation menu a good place to start is sending an triangle lfo to the pad and adjust the modulation amount and range to your liking, (be sure to have the pad playing a sound with a long attack so the notes fade in slowly.)  
Let me know if you have anymore questions,
Jesse