[Ardour-Users] MIDI recording workflow

[Brett Clark]

>
> My doubt comes when I assume that muting a track disables all processing
> and lighten the CPU load. It's not that crazy right?
>

I cant directly speak for v3, but on the 2.x versions muting a track does
not lighten CPU time.  It appears that it still ran all the plugins, just
didnt do anything with it after that.  I think its for improved response
time when you un-mute the track.  There's probably a more technical reason
too (eg. calculating latency, etc.).

--Brett


On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Nando <nandinga at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yup, well I preferred the audio track after the bus so you can record the
> effects and disable them when working with the "rendered" audio.
>
> My doubt comes when I assume that muting a track disables all processing
> and lighten the CPU load. It's not that crazy right?
>
> Thx!
>
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 11:32 PM, fred <f.rech at yahoo.fr> wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>> Le 20/07/2011 22:11, Nando a écrit :
>>
>> Hi!
>>
>>  I'm trying to establish a workflow that's useful for me. I have a MIDI
>> keyboard and jack soft synths like Yoshimi.
>>
>>  I want to be able to record MIDI and work with effects over the
>> generated audio. My idea is to have maximum "editability" (can you say that?
>> hehe), so I clearly prefer saving MIDI info to just saving the output to an
>> audio track. OTOH, when the project gets big, I like to "render" that MIDI
>> info, or in other words, save the output of the synth to an audio track so
>> its easier for the hardware to play. If I need to change something, I just
>> discard the rendered audio data and use the MIDI info again.
>>
>>  To achieve this (for each softsynth in the project) I was creating a
>> MIDI and an audio track, and routing them like this:
>>
>>  MIDI Kbd --> MIDI track --> Synth --> Audio track --> Master
>>
>>  But... I have a problem here. I just can't hear the output of the synth
>> when I need to.
>>
>>  When recording the MIDI notes from the keyboard, I can only hear my
>> playing record-enabling the audio track, and thus recording both MIDI and
>> audio. I can hear my playing when the transport is stopped though.
>>
>>  When playing already recorded notes, it is not possible to hear them.
>>
>>  The MIDI track it's doing its job well, because the output of the track
>> (recorded notes AND notes played on the kbd) are flowing towards the Synth,
>> which is generating the audio.
>>
>>  Then we get to the audio track, as if we where recording, say, a
>> guitar. The described behavior is when "Record monitoring handled by" is set
>> to "ardour" in the prefs. If set to "audio hardware", I just never get any
>> sound, except when playing audio data previously recorded in the audio
>> track. With "Tape Machine Mode" on (which I'm not sure to understand), the
>> behavior is the same, except that when the transport is stopped, I only hear
>> sound from the record armed tracks (which might be useful, so I've left it
>> like that).
>>
>>  So, I guess I understand the problem. When you're recording a guitar,
>> you don't want to hear the hum or anything from the guitar when playing the
>> recorded audio, so it makes sense that it mutes the input when playing. In
>> my case, when I'm recording MIDI notes, the audio track is playing so it
>> mutes the input and I can't monitor. When playing back it's the same.
>>
>>  The only solution I see is to put a bus in between the tracks, and route
>> it like follows:
>>
>>  *MIDI Kbd --> MIDI track --> Synth --> Audio Bus --> Audio track -->
>> Master...*
>> *                                                \_________________/*
>>
>>  Here we have the same routing as before, but with the bus in the middle,
>> and an extra connection from the bus to Master. In that way, if I want the
>> recorded audio I can mute the MIDI track and/or the bus, and If I want the
>> keyboard or the recorded MIDI data I can mute the audio track.
>>
>>  This solution also takes effects into account. They are set on the bus,
>> so they'll be "rendered" and recorded on the audio track, and they get
>> disabled (with the bus) when using the recorded audio.
>>
>>  Given that muting the bus and the MIDI track really lower processor
>> usage, this approach would work. The only problem would be that it starts to
>> get cumbersome... 2 tracks + a bus for every synth part you use can get
>> difficult to browse and manage. I was experimenting with grouping, narrow
>> tracks strips, track heights and hiding, but it's still cumbersome.
>>
>>  Any idea?
>>
>> Maybe Synth to Bus & Track and the two of them to master ?
>>
>> I'm on the same problem these last days...
>>
>> HTH, let me know please,
>> Fred
>>
>>
>>  Thanks!!
>>
>>
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