Absolute noob; e-drum module and drum VST

[HugoW1975]

Hi,

[WARNING]: I am an absolute noob to this, and I actually don't really want to know how it all works. I just want it to do what I need, and that is it. [/WARNING]

I play an Alesis Nitro Max e-drum kit not to bother the neighbourhood (I have an acoustic kit, too, but that is just way too loud). The sounds of the e-drum kit are not very nice, so I decided I needed to use the Midi out on the Alesis, hook it up to my laptop and get 'real' sounds. For the last few months I messed around with free stuff and trail stuff, but I cannot get it to work. So, I decided to pay the bill, and get real software with licences from reputable sources. So I bought Ableton and SSD5.5 (Steven Slate Drums, a VST plugin). And it still does not work... Now I know I will have terrrible latency with the laptop-sound, I have an external audio interface with it's dedicated driver software and that solves the latenct issue. But, there is one major issue left... Which was also present in the freeware / trailware set-ups...

When I hook up the USB cable between the Alesis Module and the laptop and start Ableton, Ableton sees the module and recognises it as a MIDI in device. But no MIDI notes are coming in. I tried some free software on my son's gaming PC, there the MIDI notes do arrive. I have not changed any settings in Ableton, I only entered the right file location for the VSTs and loaded SSD5.5. When I hit a drum on the screen with the mouse, the sounds are there (and with no noticable latency over the external interface). BTW, I run all on a Lenovo laptop with Ryzen 5 sticker on it and Windoze 11.

So, what is happening and what should I change to have Ableton receive the MIDI notes? Please let me know what to do, I'm getting a bit frustrated after finally biting the bullit to get decent pay-for software and still not being able to play like this.

Cheers,

Hugo

[RobrechtV]

Two things:
- In Live's settings, find your Alesis module in the Link/MIDI tab and check the In: TRACK box.
- Make sure that the track that has your SSD5.5 VST loaded is either armed (the black circle recording button) with monitoring set to Auto, or has monitoring set to In.