Sensory Percussion 2.8 – Upgrade Now
Sensory Percussion 2.8 is our biggest update yet. You can now run a second EVANS Portal to double the number of sensors in your kit, and every session has a global tempo with a built-in metronome. Under the hood, the audio engine is now up to 3x more efficient than in 2.7. On top of that, there are new eKit and drum trigger inputs, a MIDI Kit module for driving drum software like Superior Drummer 3, and new ways to build kits and keep your work safe. Read on for the full details.
To upgrade, open the software and look for the pop-up window. Otherwise, you can grab the latest version on the downloads page.
Two Portals, 14 sensors
A single Portal has seven sensor inputs. That covers a lot of kits, but not all of them. A second rack tom, an extra floor tom, a pair of auxiliary snares, a cocktail kit next to your main kit... it adds up fast.
With 2.8, you can plug in a second Portal as a sensor expansion and get seven more sensor inputs, for up to 14 sensors in one kit. The second Portal handles only sensors, while your main interface keeps handling all of your audio, so your outputs and routing stay exactly where they are. The expansion Portal runs at the same sample rate and buffer size as your main one, so there's nothing extra to configure. It also works with any interface; your main interface doesn't need to be a Portal. You can run a single Portal as a sensor expansion next to the audio interface already in your studio or live rig.
Learn more about sensor expansion in the manual.
Global tempo and a built-in metronome
Every session now has a single tempo that everything runs on: Metros, tempo-synced delays, the new built-in metronome, and MIDI clock. You set it in the new tempo bar at the top of the window, by typing it in, dragging, or tapping it in with Tap (which is assignable, so you can tap from a footswitch or a zone on your drum).
The clock keeps running when you switch sets, and Metros in the new set pick up exactly where the bar already is, so changing sets mid-groove doesn't restart anything. If a set needs to come in on the downbeat, you can tell it to restart the clock when it's selected.
A few more tempo features:
- A built-in metronome on every session. It only plays through your monitoring outputs, so the click stays in your headphones and out of the main mix and your recordings.
- MIDI clock in and out, so you can follow a drum machine or sequencer, or have other gear follow you.
- Follow your DAW. In the Ableton plugin, the session follows the host: pressing play starts the clock, stop stops it, and tempo changes come right through.
- Tempo sync for delays, with a swing offset, on the Stereo Delay and Modeled Delays.
Learn more about tempo and the metronome.
A more efficient audio engine
A bigger kit means more sensors to listen to and more sounds to play, so we spent a lot of this release making the audio engine more efficient, and the results are big.
We benchmarked 2.8 against 2.7.3 on macOS and Windows by measuring how much processing it takes to run a big session. The first test sends hits through the full audio chain, the way you'd play it. The second hammers the session with an extremely high hit rate to see how it holds up under load.
| Test | macOS | Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Big session, full audio chain | 2.8x more efficient | 3.2x more efficient |
| Big session, extreme hit rate | 1.8x more efficient | 1.7x more efficient |
To be clear, this isn't latency: how quickly you hear a hit is still set by your audio buffer size. What changes is how hard your computer has to work to keep up. In practice, that means lower CPU use and more headroom: room for bigger kits and more layers, and fewer dropouts at low buffer sizes.
Performance isn't just about speed, either:
- Sample-accurate timing for hits, Metro ticks, and MIDI, which reduces jitter
- Saving large sessions no longer freezes the app
- A redesigned CPU meter in the footer, with a dropout indicator and a live peak tooltip, so you can see exactly how much headroom you have
eKits and drum triggers
There are now two more ways to play Sensory Percussion, and both make it easy to grow your kit even further.
The new eKit input lets you play Sensory Percussion from an electronic drum kit from Roland, Alesis, Yamaha, EFNOTE, and others. It turns your eKit's MIDI notes into native Sensory Percussion messages for drums and zones so the Core Library, your sound packs, and your own sets all play from it with no changes. It comes with 22 factory kit presets.
The new drum trigger input lets you use single- and dual-zone drum triggers as inputs.
Learn how to use your eKit or use a drum trigger.
The MIDI Kit
The new MIDI Kit module turns your whole kit into MIDI notes for drum software in one step. It comes with ready-made kits for Superior Drummer 3, Addictive Drums 2, Steven Slate Drums 5.5, DW Soundworks, Logic Drum Designer, Ableton Drum Rack, and General MIDI. Pick the one for your drum software, route the MIDI, and play.
Learn how to play drum software with a MIDI Kit.
Keeping your work safe
Session folders keep a session, its samples, and its version history together in one folder you can copy to another drive or computer. Inside a session folder, you can save checkpoints: dated snapshots of your session that you can go back to at any time. Create one before you try something you might want to back out of.
There's also a new Revert to Saved in the session name menu, the Workspace session now lives in the Library's Sessions tab, and settings are kept per version so you can safely go back to an earlier one.
Learn more about session folders and checkpoints.
Other Changes
As usual, this update is packed with other improvements and fixes. Here are some highlights, but you can check out the full release notes for all the details.
- An updated hi-hat hit detection model and better handling of semi-open hits
- Module power buttons now fully bypass processing instead of just muting
- Save any module as a hot-swappable instrument under a drum role
- Favorites: heart anything in the library and find it again in the new Favorites tab
- I/O environments: save and switch between named hardware, MIDI, and OSC setups, like "Studio" and "Live"
- Hardware remap helper: reconnect inputs and outputs after changing audio devices or moving to another computer
- Left-handed drum layout: a new setting mirrors the Play View kit for left-handed setups
- Info panel: every module now has an info panel with an image and notes
- Block all input: a new button in the module header stops a module from responding to hits
- 61 instrument presets have been retuned, and there are 10 new effect presets
- Hit and Note controllers can now use all modulator types for input control
