HarmonyCore
Senior Member
I want to know what is the common practice when it comes to mixing. Mixing in MIDI then export the audio stems or mixing in audio after I edit and apply cross fades.
This for me as well.I render all midi tracks to audio, but keep all the original midi tracks, without any vst instrument loaded.. in the event of having to change a passage, or find a better sounding instrument, I will activate the midi for that part and "render in place". To me, working with audio is much better, reliable and gives better results. Until midi isn't rendered there's always the chance of something going wrong, glitches or any of those incoherent things that computers like to do every now and then. With audio I can really take care of the mix, fx, xfades, dynamics etc. From that moment on it feels like painting to me, choosing colors, refining things... not that I'm paricularly good at mixing, but that's how I like to do it.
well I just want to reiterate, that you don't need to bounce to audio in order to mix the audio. That can still be the very last step before you archive the project frankly.
When you have midi tracks, they play through instrument plugins and the instrument plugins output audio that goes through audio channels in your DAW mixer where you can mix them exactly the same as is they were recorded audio regions. No difference.
no
that is midi region playback through instrument plugins
vs
audio region playback directly
Either way could be MIXING through the audio mixer.
..but that is an entirely separate question then the question about whether to "mix" with midi or "mix" with audio.
I agree with you about Point #2, but JunkieXL said he sets his CC7 to 90 so he can adjust volume when needed if he needs a little more in the mix from something, this made me think is he onto something?+1 to all the comments so far... I think even if you never render your audio tracks for whatever the reason, mix the audio through the mixer faders, not CC7. Partly for some of the reasons already mentioned, but a few more things to consider:
Regardless of whether you're playing back instrument tracks, or playing back a recorded audio track, the audio ends up in the DAW's mixer as audio. Mix it all there.
- Mixer faders have much more resolution then 0-127 as in the case of CC7
- CC7 is basically turning the volume of your instrument up and down. That effectively reduces the dynamic range of the instrument! You really want your instrument pretty much always set to CC7 volume all the way up...so that the full dynamic range of your instrument is available as the instrument intends it.
- Use CC11, Velocity crossfading, etc..to achieve instrument performance dynamics depending on how the instrument itself is programmed, but avoid using CC7 because of point#2 above.
- If you need to adjust the actual mix itself in some way..then use the mixer faders....higher resolution and it retains dynamic range of the instrument itself, the level is being adjusted by the DAW mixer.