The modern World of VST and ASIO.

[simmo123]

Hi John,Wow!!! you are certainly giving "Ole Simmo" plenty to think about with your recent posts & i am sure that a lot of it is relevant to myself so i will keep studying the details until i come to grips with it,the other thing i was wondering about was whether my Sonic Cell module is capable of getting similar results as far as the midi editing side of things is concerned,as you know i am working with Sonar le but i am probably in the very basic stages with it but i am happy with the results i am getting at the moment but there is always room for improvements,i keep experimenting with different settings etc.One more quickie question,when i have altered & set up the various settings in the different midi instrument tracks eg,bass,drums keyboard etc to my satisfaction,that is also including volume,tempo etc,is it better to record the single midi instrument tracks into Wav tracks seperately for each instrument which would give me possibly as many as 8 different Wav tracks ( one for each instrument) or do as i am doing at the moment where i have been recording all of the midi tracks together into one Wav track,second query.... is it better to put any midi effects eg, reverb,chorus while it is in the midi stage or add the audio effects after when it is in Wav format.( each wav track seperately or all of the tracks together after i record them into one wav track)I hope i have explained it so that you can understand it....Simmo
ps ...no urgency on this one as you must be really stretched to the limit with all of the other stuff you have got going on...pps will give you a call later this week for a chat

[JohnG]

Now that's a big question Terry,

My own POV is that for gigging to stick within mixing it all within the MIDI area until the final stereo track. If you were making a recording for a CD then I'd probably go with recording each track completely dry apart from distortion and that kind of thing, then adding reverb to the final mix.

The professionals divide these into two classes 'insert' and 'send' (or system) effects. Insert is a processor that effects just one instrument usually. They're called inserts because they get inserted into the audio channel in the mixer before the signal goes to the main fader. An amount of the signal from that channel, and the others, is then sent to the main reverb processor. There is a 'send' pot usually just above the channel fader.

Why? My feeling is that you want a more dynamic, live sound in a backing track and MIDI seems to give that. Can I justify my preferences? Not at all easily, and I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions.

It's not an area in which I'm highly experienced, and I may just prefer staying and mixing within MIDI as I'm comfortable with it! I'm not a recording engineer, although I've had my hands on a big studio mixing desk once or twice, but I can't pretend that I knew what I was doing.

Having said that I do see others taking a similar approach, MIDI for backing tracks, audio for recordings.

Not sure if that helps much. But I've always tried to learn one technology quite thoroughly before moving on to another. It works for me.

Look forward to speaking, but I think it's my turn to phone.
All the best,
Yer mate, John.