Helpful ReplyX3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth?

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Earwax
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/20 21:04:28 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby swamptooth 2015/02/21 02:52:18
This is worth one last try –
 
In live audio recording, there are two events that occur that can, to a certain extent, be considered “stochastic” (random) in nature. One is the production of the sound that is being recorded. The other is the actual performance of the musicians involved as it evolves over time. The two are, of course, inexorably intertwined. While MIDI can deal with the first event (unless the sound generator itself produces sound stochastically like some synths) pretty well, it doesn’t deal with the second event very well at all. The issue is compounded when more than one musician wants to record at the same time.
 
The reason for this is quite simple. And, in another post, I used the live recording of Yes’ “Gates of Delirium” as an example to illustrate that reason. But really, you can use the recording of any piece that includes shifting tempi, complex time signatures, and polyrhythms. Maybe the MIDI implementation in Sonar has changed exponentially since 8.5.3. I don’t know. But 8.5.3's MIDI implementation does not handle those changes in musical time very well at all. And, based upon the searches I just did on the Sonar forum for user comments regarding the subject of MIDI time in Sonar, it would appear that not much (if anything) has changed. This doesn’t surprise me. MIDI is MIDI.
 
So yes, as a singular event, when a guitarist plays through his amp sim (the non-stochastic element in his playing), the capturing of his performance works because (1) the end result of his stochastic event (his audio signal) is being recorded as he plays, and (2) there is no MIDI time event, to speak of, that he has to worry about with regard to the non-stochastic element (his amp sim). Applying the amp sim to the recorded event is just like applying any other effect to his recorded “clean” guitar performance. He can play any amalgam of time signatures, tempi, and polyrhythms he wants, and that will all be captured faithfully, real time, in his audio recording. I get that. I’ve always gotten that part. I’ve done it.
 
My issue appears when a MIDI musician chooses to record live with the guitarist. Assume for the moment that the two VSTi the keyboardist chooses to use have NO stochastic sound-generating elements. He is only recording MIDI data from his controller. If whatever music they are recording uses shifting tempi, different time signatures, and/or polyrhythms, the resulting captured performance won’t work. Well, let me qualify that. You may be able to get it to sorta work if you MIDI-map the timeline (tempo changes, time signature changes, etc.) of the entire piece prior to the recording. I’ve tried that. The “feel” sucks. And, the immediacy, fluidity and spontaneous inspiration of the performance are lost.
 
Live audio recording has no such limitations.
 
It has been suggested that using another computer loaded up with VST/VSTi would solve the problem. Well, yes and no. As mentioned before, I actually have done this, as recently as last month. But, if the musician using the laptop wants to record two different synths at the same time, he can’t do it using the first synth in standalone mode unless his audio interface has multiclient ASIO drivers. So, in my example where the keyboard player wants to use two different VSTi  while performing, he has hit a brickwall. Chances are, his interface does not have multiclient ASIO drivers. In addition, the only way he can get his audio signal into the second computer is via digital-to-analog conversion, into the recording computer. Oh, just use his analog-to-digital out to the recorder you say? Okay, now we introduce clocking issues. Whoops, the digital drummer wants to join the fray with his laptop? Well, the digital clocking issue just went from bad to hell!
 
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the primary reason I want to see direct recording of VST/VSTi into Sonar. My guess is that most people reading this thread are one-person-in-studio-recording one-instrument-at-a-time individuals. I have already acknowledged that the suggested workarounds can work okay, depending on the elements involved. As an improvising musician who enjoys recording live with others, on the other hand, I find the current situation to be sorely lacking. If my computer can handle it, it makes sense I should be able to do it.
 
I would LOVE for someone to please tell me I am wrong in all of this, and show me the light
Sorry for the book, but I’m pretty passionate about this. Thanks for reading.

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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/20 21:11:13 (permalink)
swamptooth
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I wonder what sort of difficulties the Bakers would face to get this done.  If it isn't too much trouble,,,,,, it would be a nice addition.   

 
The biggest thing is to warn users when they accidentally configure and infinite loop and block sound output (our substitute some sound that tells the user why their audio is not being routed).



I'm pretty sure this is the primary reason many DAW's do not implement this feature. Nobody wants the responsibility of blowing speakers and eardrums when somebody that doesn't know what they are doing gets in over their head.


If nobody wants the responsibility then why do most daws offer it?




I'm not defending anything one way or the other... I was merely pointing out one reason why some companies may not want to implement it.

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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/20 22:23:31 (permalink)
How about this...
 
For people who use Sonar to run sound for a band, it might be nice to record the mix as it happened during the show without having to record 5 million envelopes along with it. You just want to record the monitor and mains mix (which you do beautifully using the multi-point touch).
 
But you can't in Sonar without using loopback in your interface (hardware or software).
 
Bummer.

StudioCat > I use Windows 10 and Sonar Platinum. I have a touch screen.
I make some videos. This one shows how to do a physical loopback on the RME UCX to get many more equalizer nodes.
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Re: double. 2015/02/21 02:34:08 (permalink)
Earwax, you had already convinced me that live VST audio recording can be useful, but this is not a good example. If you have shifting tempos and time signature changes, you are presumably not recording with the metronome. So anything you record will just be a linear stream and let the bar indicators up top be damned. This is the same for midi and audio. You just can't quantize the midi but I don't see why you'd care to considering your original point. If I recorded one midi performance in full on a VST synth, and output that digitally to another computer, recording the audio simultaneously, there is no way that you'd ever be able to tell the difference during playback. They'd phase cancel completely.
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Re: double. 2015/02/21 02:50:29 (permalink)
Heh.  You don't want to know the number of times I've recorded midi and forgot to turn on Write Automation.  D'oh!

 
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Earwax
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X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 06:10:24 (permalink)
Sanderxpander
Earwax, you had already convinced me that live VST audio recording can be useful...  If you have shifting tempos and time signature changes, you are presumably not recording with the metronome.

Why not? For polyrhythms and time signatures, you certainly need to keep steady time. For shifting tempos, it can definitely help to get the players back to the original tempo after slowing down, or speeding up.
 
 
 
Edit to restore thread title.
post edited by Karyn - 2015/02/21 06:17:10

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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 09:37:01 (permalink)
One of the reasons why I like Sonar is because I have found that it keeps everything in sync better than other DAWs I've tried, better than my other DAW, that is Ableton live. With "everything" I mean audio, external midi and VST instruments. I am no audio software engineer, but I imagine that taking into acount plugin delay compensation, live audio recording and live midi recording in order to make eveything sync reasonably in a time oriented domain LIKE MUSIC IS, must be a pretty formidable task. When I think about now compounding those three at the same time in order to be able to record the output of a VSTi as I play it live, I certainly understand that compromises must be made, and I must ask myself whether I want those compromises made, or not, if they are going to tamper with the performance, somehow, and/or the general synchronization of the project. My personal answer to this is NO, and thus I am willing to accept certain routing rigidity as a trade off for better sync. More so if I have ways to work around this, be it routing audio back via audio card mixer, external hardware mixer or loopback cable and compensating only for that particular track delay, or even using an external recorder for that particular performance and importing it back later with the help of a recorded click track or whatever.

Maybe I am wrong, but I notice that Sonar keeps a separate buffer for midi, while other DAWs (Reaper, Live), will slave all midi timing to the audio buffer, and that creates inconsistencies that ar a pain to manage. I am all for having more routing flexibility, but I would like to know what trade offs are there, if any.
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 10:16:13 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby karhide 2015/02/21 11:28:42
Earwax
My issue appears when a MIDI musician chooses to record live with the guitarist. Assume for the moment that the two VSTi the keyboardist chooses to use have NO stochastic sound-generating elements. He is only recording MIDI data from his controller. If whatever music they are recording uses shifting tempi, different time signatures, and/or polyrhythms, the resulting captured performance won’t work. Well, let me qualify that. You may be able to get it to sorta work if you MIDI-map the timeline (tempo changes, time signature changes, etc.) of the entire piece prior to the recording. I’ve tried that. The “feel” sucks. And, the immediacy, fluidity and spontaneous inspiration of the performance are lost.

 
If you recorded audio, whatever you recorded would be "frozen" and you would not be able to alter tempo changes or time signature changes. The feel you captured with audio would be the feel you captured and there is nothing you can do about it, except for intricate time-stretching, cutting, pasting, etc.
 
Just like audio, if you record MIDI in real time and it has the right feel, it will play back with the right feel. If you record MIDI in real time with the wrong feel, it will play back with the wrong feel. You do not have to conform MIDI to a tempo or grid, you can record it simply as free-flowing data.
 
Live audio recording has no such limitations.

 
Neither does MIDI, if all you want to do is capture a live performance of someone playing an instrument with MIDI.
 
It has been suggested that using another computer loaded up with VST/VSTi would solve the problem. Well, yes and no. As mentioned before, I actually have done this, as recently as last month. But, if the musician using the laptop wants to record two different synths at the same time, he can’t do it using the first synth in standalone mode unless his audio interface has multiclient ASIO drivers.

 
You don't have to use stand-alone. You could host multiple instruments within a program like SONAR or anything else capable of hosting VSTs, or use Reason's instruments and grab their separate outputs. Or if you have to use multiple stand-alone instruments, you could use Windows audio drivers, or Mac laptops with Core Audio. Apple's MainStage is designed specifically to host instruments for live performance because Logic, like SONAR, is designed for production and not live performance.
 
I have already acknowledged that the suggested workarounds can work okay, depending on the elements involved. As an improvising musician who enjoys recording live with others, on the other hand, I find the current situation to be sorely lacking. If my computer can handle it, it makes sense I should be able to do it.


What I Italicized in your quote is where "the rubber meets the road." I understand what you want, and why you want it. But I just don't think today's computers running sophisticated DAWs and power-hungry VSTis are capable of doing what you want with sufficiently low latency to match the experience of recording instruments into something like a stand-alone hard disk recorder. Sure, you could record the audio from a few instruments at a time in to the computer, but if you load the computer up with VSTis, all bets are off. You could record at 96 or 192 kHz to reduce latency, but then you're limited to the number of available real-time audio streams. As I mentioned, Thunderbolt II might be the answer but its widespread adoption is still a ways off. 
 
If you really want to do this and don't want to use a stand-alone recorder, I would suggest Ableton Live. Probably even a "lite" version would do what you need. Unlike SONAR and other DAWs, which are designed for production, Live is designed and optimized specifically for live performance. There are lots of things it can't do (like comping), but it's a very agile program and it's what I use for live performance because it does that better than any other computer-based program. Programs like SONAR and Pro Tools, regardless of whether or not they can physically record an audio output with the computer, were never designed for live performance. You'll still have latency issues with Live, but if Live can't do what you want, then there's probably no computer-based solution at this time that will do what you want.
 
Think of it this way: You have a van so that you can take your family places, pick up groceries, take vacations, transport your gear to the gig, etc. If you want to be able to take curves at 70 mph on the Amalfi drive, you need a sports car.

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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 10:43:16 (permalink)
Paul P
 
I just communicated with Vincent Burel of the above software and he recommends using his
Voicemeeter Audio Device Mixer for this application.
 
To me, that looks like overkill for just a loopback...
 




I'm going to try this one out as a USB device aggregator ...

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Earwax
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 13:10:09 (permalink)
JoseC.
One of the reasons why I like Sonar is because I have found that it keeps everything in sync better than other DAWs I've tried, better than my other DAW, that is Ableton live. With "everything" I mean audio, external midi and VST instruments. I am no audio software engineer, but I imagine that taking into acount plugin delay compensation, live audio recording and live midi recording in order to make eveything sync reasonably in a time oriented domain LIKE MUSIC IS, must be a pretty formidable task. When I think about now compounding those three at the same time in order to be able to record the output of a VSTi as I play it live, I certainly understand that compromises must be made, and I must ask myself whether I want those compromises made, or not, if they are going to tamper with the performance, somehow, and/or the general synchronization of the project. My personal answer to this is NO, and thus I am willing to accept certain routing rigidity as a trade off for better sync. More so if I have ways to work around this, be it routing audio back via audio card mixer, external hardware mixer or loopback cable and compensating only for that particular track delay, or even using an external recorder for that particular performance and importing it back later with the help of a recorded click track or whatever.

Maybe I am wrong, but I notice that Sonar keeps a separate buffer for midi, while other DAWs (Reaper, Live), will slave all midi timing to the audio buffer, and that creates inconsistencies that ar a pain to manage. I am all for having more routing flexibility, but I would like to know what trade offs are there, if any.

Jose, believe it or not, I think everyone involved in this thread would agree with you. There is no way that I, or I would venture to guess, anyone else, would want Sonar's programmers to reduce performance or synching capabilities just so VST/VSTi audio output can be recorded live. But, I'm wondering if you may have hit upon at least one reason that other DAWs have the capability to record VST/VSTi audio live, while Sonar doesn't. Maybe slaving MIDI timing to the audio buffer makes it easier to accomplish the task of VST/VSTi live audio recording. I don't know. It would be interesting indeed to find out what the trade offs are.

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Earwax
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 14:03:57 (permalink)
Anderton
Earwax

 
If you recorded audio, whatever you recorded would be "frozen" and you would not be able to alter tempo changes or time signature changes. The feel you captured with audio would be the feel you captured and there is nothing you can do about it, except for intricate time-stretching, cutting, pasting, etc.
 
Just like audio, if you record MIDI in real time and it has the right feel, it will play back with the right feel. If you record MIDI in real time with the wrong feel, it will play back with the wrong feel. You do not have to conform MIDI to a tempo or grid, you can record it simply as free-flowing data.
 

 
Neither does MIDI, if all you want to do is capture a live performance of someone playing an instrument with MIDI.
 

 
You don't have to use stand-alone. You could host multiple instruments within a program like SONAR or anything else capable of hosting VSTs, or use Reason's instruments and grab their separate outputs. Or if you have to use multiple stand-alone instruments, you could use Windows audio drivers, or Mac laptops with Core Audio. Apple's MainStage is designed specifically to host instruments for live performance because Logic, like SONAR, is designed for production and not live performance.
 
I have already acknowledged that the suggested workarounds can work okay, depending on the elements involved. As an improvising musician who enjoys recording live with others, on the other hand, I find the current situation to be sorely lacking. If my computer can handle it, it makes sense I should be able to do it.


What I Italicized in your quote is where "the rubber meets the road." I understand what you want, and why you want it. But I just don't think today's computers running sophisticated DAWs and power-hungry VSTis are capable of doing what you want with sufficiently low latency to match the experience of recording instruments into something like a stand-alone hard disk recorder. Sure, you could record the audio from a few instruments at a time in to the computer, but if you load the computer up with VSTis, all bets are off. You could record at 96 or 192 kHz to reduce latency, but then you're limited to the number of available real-time audio streams. As I mentioned, Thunderbolt II might be the answer but its widespread adoption is still a ways off. 
 
If you really want to do this and don't want to use a stand-alone recorder, I would suggest Ableton Live. Probably even a "lite" version would do what you need. Unlike SONAR and other DAWs, which are designed for production, Live is designed and optimized specifically for live performance. There are lots of things it can't do (like comping), but it's a very agile program and it's what I use for live performance because it does that better than any other computer-based program. Programs like SONAR and Pro Tools, regardless of whether or not they can physically record an audio output with the computer, were never designed for live performance. You'll still have latency issues with Live, but if Live can't do what you want, then there's probably no computer-based solution at this time that will do what you want.
 
Think of it this way: You have a van so that you can take your family places, pick up groceries, take vacations, transport your gear to the gig, etc. If you want to be able to take curves at 70 mph on the Amalfi drive, you need a sports car.




Craig,
 
Thanks for that! It was very helpful. A few thoughts -
Sanderxpander’s comment above regarding use of Sonar’s metronome sparked further thought about something I had just taken for granted.
 
It seemed that whenever I tried using Sonar’s metronome for “pulse” BPM while recording live, it always messed up my MIDI performance. The MIDI playback was not what I originally played. For example, if I set the metronome to play one-one-one-one  at 115bpm, I can play whatever I want (subdividing time, changing time signatures, playing behind the beat, playing polyrhythms, changing tempo, etc.) with the 115bpm pulse as a reference to keep me in time and to come back to after intentionally speeding up or slowing down. However, when playing back my MIDI performance, it does not match my audio performance. Based on what you say, I have obviously been doing something wrong?
 
Clearly, having the metronome in place helping to record all things MIDI  “in time” while recording all audio data makes it easier for musicians to stay in time with any musical moves made. Can a musician play a VSTi with non-MIDI recordable elements, use those elements in conjunction with one VST’s MIDI (not audio) output (let’s say a multi-tap delay), and another VST’s audio output (let’s say an amp sim), and use Sonar’s metronome to stay in time?
 
What I’m after (and it appears you understand this) is the musician having the best of all worlds. If I, with 1 or 2 other musicians, can record
 
(1) Any VSTi’s output live -allowing me to manipulate non-MIDI recordable elements and capture “free-wheeling” sonic elements
(2) Use MIDI’s time keeping capabilities where needed
(3) Record MIDI VST automation
(4) Route the recording of all of that to any and as many tracks as I want
all in real time, I’d be a happy guy.
 
Is it doable now? Except for the metronome problem (maybe not a problem, or maybe a problem that can be easily solved), we can come close with the workarounds we have now.
 
As always Craig, thanks for your time!
 
 And yeah, I do LOVE Ferraris!!

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Sanderxpander
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 14:15:18 (permalink)
Perhaps you had record quantization on or something? I've never noticed this and unless something is wrong it really shouldn't happen. Midi records the note when you press the key. Unless something is set to change its position in time it will play back exactly where you originally played it.
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 14:24:01 (permalink)
Could be your preferences/project/clock ticks per quarter note isn't maxed out.  Sonar only goes up to 960, so there may be some timing issues based on that as well.

 
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 14:32:17 (permalink)
My workaround is to freeze the track and then Shift+Control drag the audio to another audio track.  Then I can unfreeze.
 
The result is an audio track as though it were recorded by routing the VI to another track.

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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 14:34:43 (permalink)
That was pointed out before too but we're talking specifically about LIVE recording.
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 14:56:02 (permalink)
Earwax

Maybe slaving MIDI timing to the audio buffer makes it easier to accomplish the task of VST/VSTi live audio recording. I don't know. It would be interesting indeed to find out what the trade offs are.


I agree about finding out what the trade offs are. Personally I am under the impression that slaving the midi stream to the audio buffer leads to midi jitter and timing inconsistencies, but this is only based on my own intuition, and comparing the way Sonar behaves when recording live midi from other synced hardware sequencers and arpeggiators with other DAWs on which midi sequencing was a late addition to the feature set.
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 15:30:09 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby tlw 2015/02/21 19:57:01
I would suggest that any MIDI/Audio/Metronome timing issues be taken to a new thread for troubleshooting. That's not typical, and shouldn't be used as a justification for needing real-time soft-synth recording.

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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 15:56:38 (permalink)
I find the ability to record VST instruments and tracks and buses etc in real time very handy. Yes the feedback loop can sometimes be an issue but you just get into the habit of recording without monitoring. Simple really.  I have got a few VST's synths that never repeat themselves and this is must during experimentation.  Great to capture moments of greatness when it happens.  It is faster and easier to be able to switch this on inside your DAW software.
 
I also work with a digital mixer and can send stems from my DAW software to it enabling real time control.  It is still fatser to put a track into record, record your main mix while you make moves in real time.  Sometimes the nicest things happen that way too.  It is good to be able to record them when it does happen.  There is something magical in having the human touch over some aspect of a mix while it is being printed.
post edited by Jeff Evans - 2015/02/21 16:20:05

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Anderton
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 17:01:25 (permalink)
swamptooth
Could be your preferences/project/clock ticks per quarter note isn't maxed out.  Sonar only goes up to 960, so there may be some timing issues based on that as well.



960 ppq provides 500 microsecond resolution at 120 BPM, and I doubt keyboard players can play with that degree of accuracy. And even if they could, I think other variables in the computer (and the MIDI controller, assuming it has a scanned keyboard) would have greater impacts on resolution. With a hardware MIDI devices going through the 5-pin DIN connector, each note is about a millisecond apart so you'll get a minimum 10 ms spread among a chord played with both hands (plus more from the keyboard scanning times). Doing MIDI-over-USB gives much better results.
 
I did an interesting experiment on the Mac many, many years ago for Keyboard magazine. Computer jitter increased linearly with higher resolution, so you had the same resolution whether you were recording at 48 ppqn or 1,024 ppqn! I'm sure things have improved since then...at least I hope so...

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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 17:08:34 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby tlw 2015/02/21 19:57:57
Just throwing it out there because a post in the pf a couple of months ago was from a user trying to import midi from reason which records and exports at something like 15000 ppqn... He claimed the lower resolution downgrade caused significant timing issues.

 
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 18:55:58 (permalink)
Possibly the conversion did. But moving even an inch from the speaker would create a greater timing difference, at that resolution.
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 19:19:20 (permalink)
swamptooth
Just throwing it out there because a post in the pf a couple of months ago was from a user trying to import midi from reason which records and exports at something like 15000 ppqn...



Reason's Song Position Pointer can resolve positioning to the subtick level (15,360), which can place notes at subticks when recording. However Reason, like SONAR and Logic, has a PPQ of 960 for MIDI editing and automation. So subtick resolution is maintained only if no editing is done.

The first 3 books in "The Musician's Guide to Home Recording" series are available from Hal Leonard and http://www.reverb.com. Listen to my music on http://www.YouTube.com/thecraiganderton, and visit http://www.craiganderton.com. Thanks!
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 19:35:30 (permalink)
Yeah i was curious about that so i looked at the header of a midi file i exported from reason and the delta time division was set to 15360. Likely to facilitate re-importing it back into reason smoothly.

 
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 22:14:52 (permalink)
swamptooth
Yeah i was curious about that so i looked at the header of a midi file i exported from reason and the delta time division was set to 15360. Likely to facilitate re-importing it back into reason smoothly.



The things I learn from this forum...

The first 3 books in "The Musician's Guide to Home Recording" series are available from Hal Leonard and http://www.reverb.com. Listen to my music on http://www.YouTube.com/thecraiganderton, and visit http://www.craiganderton.com. Thanks!
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 22:49:41 (permalink)
codamedia
swamptooth
codamedia
gswitz
harmony gardens
I wonder what sort of difficulties the Bakers would face to get this done.  If it isn't too much trouble,,,,,, it would be a nice addition.   

 
The biggest thing is to warn users when they accidentally configure and infinite loop and block sound output (our substitute some sound that tells the user why their audio is not being routed).



I'm pretty sure this is the primary reason many DAW's do not implement this feature. Nobody wants the responsibility of blowing speakers and eardrums when somebody that doesn't know what they are doing gets in over their head.


If nobody wants the responsibility then why do most daws offer it?



I'm not defending anything one way or the other... I was merely pointing out one reason why some companies may not want to implement it.



It isn't that hard to detect loops and prevent the user from making such a routing in the 1st place. It basically boils down to the typical software engineer interview question of writing a function to detect if there is a loop in a linked list.
 
And from what I can tell, Sonar already supports this. With the sidechain mixer, you can feed a bus back into a track with a bus send. However if a track has sidechain mixer in its FX bin and feeds into a bus, you cannot add a send from that bus back to that track's sidechain mixer. But all other sidechain mixers whose tracks don't feed into that particular bus are still presented as targets for its sends. So it works correctly.
post edited by SilkTone - 2015/02/21 23:01:05
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/21 23:43:45 (permalink)
Anderton
swamptooth
Yeah i was curious about that so i looked at the header of a midi file i exported from reason and the delta time division was set to 15360. Likely to facilitate re-importing it back into reason smoothly.



The things I learn from this forum...

The things I learned in university when we were taught how to write sysex messages in hex. O.o

 
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Home-brewed VSTs 
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/28 17:12:35 (permalink)
brundlefly
rcklln
Recently I froze a Rapture synth track but the resulting stereo audio track didn't include the panning effect.



Right-click the freeze button and make sure "Track FX" is checked.


Thanks for the reply - that looks like the default and I didn't change that setting (but I did verify it was checked just in case).

The what you hear bounce option is allowing me to capture to audio as it sounds on midi playback so I'll just continue to use that or start a new thread if I run into any issues with that process.
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/02/28 17:56:14 (permalink)
What I would do is use the sidechain gate method, where you setup another audio track, insert sonitus gate, set its output mode to sidechain, send the output of the softsynth audio track to the sidechain input of the gate, and record that track. However, it doesn't work. To be able to hear the output of the Gate, I need to set the track's Input to None. However, as soon as I hit Record Enable, the input field switches to the first available input, which is my sound card's input. We'd need to be able to record with the input set to None. Then we'd be able to record soft synths in real time effortlessly. I suspect this would be easy to fix for Cakewalk, or at least, make it available as an option if it could potentially cause problems.
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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/03/01 04:04:27 (permalink)
this +1!
 
Resonant Serpent
Actually, there are scenarios where you want to record things live. There are several Reaktor ensembles, especially the glitch sample manipulators, that don't respond to automation that are meant to be tweaked by hand. You could use the stand-alone recorder in Reaktor, but then you don't have the benefit of the other tracks that you're trying to play along with. Also, no way to load up effects for the recording. It's a function I'd love to see in Sonar. In Reaper, you can choose your outputs as your inputs, depending on your soundcard, and record what you hear. Allows me to import a guide track, then tweak away and record. It's the only reason I keep that program installed.





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Re: X3 Producer: Why is it so difficult to record audio from a soft synth? 2015/03/02 19:40:05 (permalink)
My sound card died last week. I will be sad for many more weeks, no doubt.
 
I used the virtual mixer to send audio from sonar tracks/buses to tracks for real time recording, not just for synths, but whatever I wanted a copy of.  Sometimes this would be the metronome.
 
So I went looking and found JACK and VB-audio.
 
Jack is like way too complicated for little old user me.
 
I cannot get vb cable and voice meter to be selectable in SPLAT.
 
Anybody have any luck?
 
 
That sonar does not have loop back for audio and midi is just so last century.
 
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