Whats the best way to handle Midi Tracks for mixing purposes

intruder369 · Post by **intruder369** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 9:40 pm

I am coming up to the process where I will be getting down to some mixing as my new album is nearly finished, and I was wondering about whats the best way to handle midi tracks for the general purpose of mixing.

Most of my material is very much done in midi from my midi controller keyboard, and only really the vocals and drums are in audio. I use both Cubase 5 and Ableton Live 8 as my (DAW) though most of this particular album as been recorded in Ableton Live.

I have just been pondering through the midi effect rack in Ableton and it does not look very impressive at all, in comparison to audio effect rack, and to be perfectly honest I much prefer Cubase for mixing as I think it as far more to offer in professional plugins than whats in Ableton by far.

So what I was thinking of doing is converting all the midi tracks into audio, so that I have a lot better tools to play about with regarding to the final mixing.

Now what is confusing me is just what is the best way of going about this. Is it just a case of of exporting every midi track into an audio wave, or is it better to route the midi track to an audio track and record it. Which one would give me the better quality to work with.

Post by **meatballfulton** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 10:36 pm

Both methods should sound the same.

Only way to tell for sure is try a few tracks as an experiment.

Post by **Stab Frenzy** » Sat Jul 23, 2011 2:11 am

intruder369 wrote:I have just been pondering through the midi effect rack in Ableton and it does not look very impressive at all, in comparison to audio effect rack, and to be perfectly honest I much prefer Cubase for mixing as I think it as far more to offer in professional plugins than whats in Ableton by far.

You can put the Ableton audio effects on the midi track after the instrument, if you're mixing you wouldn't want to use midi effects, that doesn't make any sense. Do the lessons in Live before you dismiss it, it sounds like you don't really know how to use the program.

Now what is confusing me is just what is the best way of going about this. Is it just a case of of exporting every midi track into an audio wave, or is it better to route the midi track to an audio track and record it. Which one would give me the better quality to work with.

They're both exactly the same. The quickest and easiest way is to Render the output and choose All Tracks. Regardless, do the built in lessons that come with Live and all this will become apparent.

krushing · Post by **krushing** » Sun Jul 24, 2011 6:39 pm

I'm not sure I understand what the "midi rack not looking very impressive" actually means. That said, Live's own plugins are mostly pretty good. Utilitarian, but good.

intruder369 · Post by **intruder369** » Mon Jul 25, 2011 2:41 am

Thanks very much for the replies and advice, especially from Stab Frenzy. I really thought the audio effects where for audio only, I was not aware they could be used on the midi tracks.

I am aware that you can mix down both the midi and the audio tracks at the same time, it's something I generally always do in Cubase as a rule. It's just that the other day I was surfing the net for some tips on getting a better mix, and I came across an article about that it was better to record the midi tracks you have done onto an audio tracks first, rather than export both.

This had me rather confused and really is the main purpose of placing my post on here in the first place. I have been studying some of the tutorials in Ableton and playing around with the audio effects, and I must say that they are very good indeed. They are in fact that good that I have decided to do all the mixing for this album in Ableton rather than Cubase. And in doing so it will get me more accustomed to it's features.

Once again thanks very much for the replies all.

pajacke · Post by **pajacke** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 3:41 am

>I am aware that you can mix down both the midi and the audio tracks at the same time, it's something I generally >always do in Cubase as a rule. It's just that the other day I was surfing the net for some tips on getting a better mix, >and I came across an article about that it was better to record the midi tracks you have done onto an audio tracks >first, rather than export both.

Mixwise it might be useful to record "MIDItracks" onto an audiotrack if the MIDItrack is dealing with an external MIDIinstrument. BTW that's what MIDItracks were made for twenty odd years ago

Nowadays they are used for the Plugin-Synths as well and then it's just a matter of computerpower (or the lack of it), if you need to turn a MIDI(VSTinstrument)track into audiofile. They use up far less processorpower than having the sound calculated in realtime as it happens when you use pluginsynths.. (for fast an easy handling in Cubase/Nuendo you could 'freeze' a plugintrack, but every DAW has such a function, I guess)

cu
Malte

Whats the best way to handle Midi Tracks for mixing purposes

Whats the best way to handle Midi Tracks for mixing purposes

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