I'm now on a PC, I used to use Logic to do this and it is easy. I am looking to trigger the kick, snare, and toms separately. Ableton does this but with a whole drum recording. Does anyone know a VST or M4L device that can help me do that?

 

Are you thinking of separating an audio drum loop into stems here?

There are applications that claim that they can do this, although I've not used one for this amount of control, I've only experience with separating things like vocals, which seems like an easy thing to do now.

This software can do this sort of thing in theory

https://rebeatapp.com/#:~:text=Unlike generic stem separation tools,toms, ride, and crash.

Best of luck with it

 

I use samplab a lot. But here is a good list of them for you

https://www.audiocipher.com/post/audio-to-midi#viewer-umkjr356106

 

You have not included enough detail about the workflow to actually answer this question with the best solution for you. The same thing as @Nefarai is asking in reply above, basically.

You say this was easy to do in Logic, but the way the original post reads, I'm not sure what feature you are talking about using in Logic. And Logic is my main DAW.

If you tell me which Logic feature or more about that workflow, I can very likely figure out a way to replicate it via other plugins and ones you can probably find on sister site. Drum Machine Designer or Flex Pitch conversion to midi data, etc.

 

Samplab is good, but sucks on drum loops, I got better luck with toontrack´s audio tracker. I have heard really good things about this rebeat, but I haven´t got opportunity to try it

 

I was asking about the Logic workflow, because the original post makes it sounds like he wants some kind of realtime way to separate an audio source which is being monitored or recorded into the DAW, and. then have it being converted to individual midi hits, which then trigger whatever drum machine.

So your problem would be a decent amount of latency and no real way to use a processors lookahead or latency compensation. Logic's latency compensation works great generally. I almost never use the nudge options.

If this is just a question about stem separation, followed up by conversion to midi hit data in Logic; that would be simple like he stated the feature in Logic was. You would enable Flex in that track in Logic's audio track editor, switch it to Flex Pitch instead of Flex Time; and then do Create new Midi track from Flex Pitch Data. Takes about 6 mouse clicks in total.

Since it is for drums, you'd still want polyphonic detection; so maybe Toontracks option would be ok; but then you would just load that plugin in the other DAW (in this case Ableton).

If you need to realtime separate an audio track into individual audio tracks in realtime, Acon Remix Drums is good. Or Fuse Audio Labs DrumsSSX. I've never done a shootout between the two. DrumsSSX is the older of the two, and seems more frequency-based separation like any Multiband processor; while Acon Remix Drums is supposedly AI based. Of course, Acon also have their Digital Remix plugin, which is realtime and supposedly AI based separation for the rest of the track like you see in RX or RipX. They are not focused on creating stems of individual drums as a second later process. There is also Zynaptiq Unmix Drums, which I have not used much yet.

Then you could probably use something like XLN Addictive Trigger, Slate Trigger, or Apulsoft Aptrigga to retrigger something else.

The only one of these options which is Logic specific is using Flex Pitch to midi conversion, which is extremely easy. If that's what he needed, you could probably just use Melodyne or Recycle.

The rest would be no different if you were using them in Ableton.

 

The feature in Logic is Replace or Double Drum Track (ˆD). I just need to convert the kick, snare, and toms to MIDI after recording real, multi-mic'd drums; I don't need real-time triggering. I’ve already sampled the same kit I used for the performance and built a custom instrument in Ableton's Sampler which I will use for the doubling. Addictive trigger seems good but after reading the comments in the sister site, it sounds like I need to install Addictive Drums for it to work... and a bunch of stuff I can't really deal with at the moment; being careful not to break my PC...

 

Last edited: Jun 4, 2025

Dude, thank you! Reason recycle, blast from the past! FREE?? No way... I gotta check that out... Thanks! Never thought about slicing actually. I did the Ableton feature, convert drums to new tracks, but it converts everything, including the bleed captured by the mic, and, although I can clean it up, I was hoping there's an easier way since it will take a long time especially if you're editing a bunch of songs. I'll check the UVI out, too... Thanks again!

 

@spoonman
filter or eq before converting audio to midi, it helps with tackling with bleeds

 

That's true. I think I worry too much about missing the start point accurately and/or causing phase issues if I do any sort of processing. But I really should not be too lazy and just do the work and automate the volume.

 

Hey, thanks for this link! This is great, I do not know or use a lot of third-party plugins

 

This is interesting! Thank you, I'll check it out

 

Linear phase EQ is your friend ;)

 

This is what UVI drum replacer does, basically. It is threshold based like a compressor, and when it detects the transient it triggers any of the samples you have loaded to respond to those events. The problem with using a sample to thicken like this example, is if it is a human played drums part, you will have a difficult time manually aligning them. You could have to deal with phase alignment using nudge or something like PHA-979 from voxengo. All these tricks have their pros and cons, usually effecting how much time you might spend to get the result you are after.

For kicks on their own audio channel, I like to use the old trick of inserting a noise gate plugin and a test oscillator side chained to it. you sweep the test osc tone until it's the exact frequency you want it "beeping" at, and it becomes the perfect pure sine wave exactly in time with your kick drum.

 

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that! I completely stopped using linear phase EQs after learning about pre-ringing and post-ringing a long time ago...

 

Cool thing is its a stand alone app too. So you can put your audio in there first and drag the midi to your daw. But i dont use it for drums and as @Legotron said he wouldn't recommend it for that. Ill also Plus 1 rip X for drums.

 

rip X just blew my mind -