Does anyone have any knowledge on if you should put a compressor on a VST midi track or if its better to put a compressor onto the raw audio rendered from the VST? Im running 16gb ram i7 x64 bit Ableton live 8 [partner is on live 9] so processing is not a big issue. I was more wondering if it has a more desirable effect on raw audio.. we are running 88.2k sample rate on each track and sometimes we think we notice a difference but then I wonder if its because we have been listening to the same 4 measures over and over again trying to get the compressor right. Any insight on this would be great! Thanks!!

Also 1st time poster..lurked for an hour before joining. Seems like a great community. Hello all!! o/

 

In theory there shouldn't be any difference (beside the processing power overhead required by the VST plugin) and in practice I haven't heard any difference in Ableton yet.

IMHO it just boils down to workflow preferences. If mixing/mastering is strictly decoupled from composing (read: all tracks rendered to audio tracks) it make sense to put the compressor on the raw audio so you still can tweak it.

 

Depending on the Vst, Yes.
I only notice this when i bounce a track and forgot to disarm the original track & they sounded different. (certain Kontakt libs, Nexxus, Play, Spire, predator & etc)

I always bounce all my midi or recorded audio, through my Console (Tape) chain and then i would do my corrective eQ & Compression. Then bounce again to start my effects, pan and creative eq.

I split my stages up and create a new project file using the same template.

 

In theory...
Arrangement/composition is when you deal with MIDI.
Mixing is when you deal with separate audio files and join them together.
Mastering is when you deal with an entire mix.
It's not possible to follow this rule in all cases and it's not practical. But now you know.

 

I allways bounce all midi to audio. Commitment - I found myself going back and work on the midi again ;)-

Midi is a part of the preproduction/songwriting for me. If i start to mix I allways only have (rendered) audio tracks.

 

Thanks for the input guys!! Much appreciated; helped quite a lot

 

Being a producer/mixer/and mastering engineer or at least that's what i'm aiming for, gives me a unique perspective, i always mix and compose at the same time, and and re mix as in all faders are in minus infinity, and re mix as i'm adding new instruments/sounds, i try to make it sound as i want it in my head from the start, so if i want to change anything midi wise or composition wise i don't have to re open the project do what i need to do, export and import into the mixing project, also i don't use freezing at all i just don't, i always prefer working on raw live audio, as from the source vsti, synth or sampler or Kontakt you name it, you might find it weird or even unpractical, i do run out of CPU horse power on some project, yes, but i still prefer that over freezing, it is rarely that i export the whole project and mix into another daw or project, only when the project is big, and i'm sure i wont be able to mix it inbox, but 90% of the situations i just compose mix inbox, and i'm happy with my results...


https://clyp.it/vilhludu?token=17ad3505f8bb19a0db764696012d9018

 

Word on the street is 1 out 10,000 PCs are musical, 1 for 1 on MAC
It's said that the right system hardware/Software components, produces electrical/embedding pulses that causes even & odd harmonics in perfect unison that makes applications & External sources modulate in a way that's not fully understand by Engineers & Scientists.

In plain English lol, it's Called Round-robin.

In Omnisphere you can control the Timbre & Sample-start with Random to create the same effect, Kontakt sample Libs every note/sustain & attack is different based off sampled versions of the same note each time you hit the same key (Well Depending on the Developer).

 

We almost share the same steps in common, except i same different versions as i go along but all of my material carry along the journey.
i don't freeze either i just save the mixer channel preset and save it in that song folder and bounce that channel, starting from my lead instruments.

This allows me to free up cpu/ram resources and maintain continuity of sound timbres & responses. I used to mix a song for two months now i can do it in 8hrs depending how big the project is, i'm aiming for 4hrs, any faster your either really good or just rushing.

Great track btw, very dark almost like a villain theme song

 

WTF does Mac have to do with quality audio? Mac has some majical quality ? Hmmm.. or were u joking, cause that made me lol

Do you understand how digital works? Your statement is ludicrous, care to back it up with evidence?

 

i was just Trolling at it's highest ludicrousness order
im not even sure if it made sense but i thoroughly enjoyed it

 

Omg I thought you were serious!

U Got me! LOL! Cause I despise apple corp!

 

Compressor with "look ahead" option can analyze chucks of rendered audio that weren't yet played and adjust it's settings accordingly. Which is, obviously, won't happen with audio, that's rendered from midi input by synth, in real time.

 

Sometimes, "VST + effects" sounds different than "rendered audio + effects" because there is a DIFFERENT setting for realtime OR offline rendering in the VST instrument itself.

Apart this point, i try to render audio first :
-to create a clear division between composition AND mixing
-reduce CPU/RAM
-create audio backup tracks, if a VST instrument bugs
...

 

@fundorin, lookahead compressors seeing into the future will still happen during realtime playback - because lookahead introduces a deliberate delay to the signal so that it can "see into the future" a little bit.
The delay will be automatically "compensated" (all other tracks get delayed too) by a modern DAW, so that can confuse somebody.

Another fan of bouncing everything to audio before mixing, here.

Some VSTi's and fx are sneaky, they know when you're playing realtime vs when you're bouncing, and they may automatically decide to engage upsampling or other CPU intensive measures for higher quality when bouncing. Upsampling produces a noticeable difference and I would even dare say improvement on many VST synths.

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2018