Roland TR6S x Reason 11

Want to talk about music hardware or software that doesn't include Reason?
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Beebeedeedop
Posts: 1
Joined: 02 May 2022

02 May 2022

Hey, I want to fuck around in Reason with my new drum machine, but have no idea where to begin.

My ideal scenario is that I can record each of the 6 tracks on my TR6s individually into Reason's sequencer, and it'd record the performance tweaks I'd be doing too.

I've gotten as far as creating a MIDI Out Device in Reason, and it recognises the TR6s, but no idea where to go from here...

Synthopathe
Posts: 120
Joined: 17 Feb 2020

03 May 2022

I sold mine but if I remember correctly...

Make sure you have the latest firmware and drivers from Roland.

Like you said, use the midi out instrument to send midi to the tr6s.

Then select the tr6s as your audio interface in preferences.

Now when you create an audio lane you should be able to set one of the six tr6s channels as the audio source.

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chimp_spanner
Posts: 2908
Joined: 06 Mar 2015

09 May 2022

You shouldn't need to create a MIDI out device. That's only for sending MIDI notes *to* the unit and sequencing from inside Reason (which is also fine if that's what you wanna do but you lose out on the performance tweaks). What you need to do is go to your preferences, and make sure that the MIDI Clock Out is going to the TR-6S. This means that when you press play in Reason, it'll send a message to the TR to also play, and it will lock to the tempo of your project.

On the audio side, the answer depends on a lot of things. If you *just* have the TR and no other hardware (like audio interfaces etc) then yeah as Synthopathe says you just need to set your audio driver to the TR, and make sure you enable all the channels in Reason's input configuration. I'm 99% sure you'll be able to hear all sound coming through Reason from the headphone out of the TR.

If you have other equipment you need to incorporate like an audio interface, other synths, etc. then you need to create an aggregate device (lots of tutorials online about how to do this). It's Mac only, and it allows you to create an audio driver that uses all the ins and outs of any connected USB devices, so you'd get to keep your main interface audio outs, but also bring the TR's USB audio streams into play as well.

If you're on PC, as I am, then you cannot do this. You either have to record to a stereo channel and live with the drums being combined into a single track, or you can temporarily use the TR as your audio interface while you record the drum streams (but lose access to all other I/O in the system). OR I believe it may be possible to make an aggregate device using ASIO4ALL, which is a free audio driver you can use in place of your interface's official driver but...every time I've tried to set this up, I just get no audio at all and Reason crashes.

Hope this helps, and hope you're enjoying the TR-6S. I got one not long ago, then got an MC-101 and though I didn't need the TR any more. Turns out they work really nicely together!

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