I’ve been finishing tracks on Song Mode, but then having to record each part and restructuring them in Ableton seem redundant and time consuming. Also I do like the hardware-mixed sound. (sorry, not sure how to describe it…)
But then separated tracks on DAW seem to sound louder and more clear.
Maybe a silly question, but I am curious, do you prefer to record each part (BD, snare, hat etc) separately to DAW? Or as whole?
As much as I love the stereo outs, for mixing I much prefered to use a-f outs to my mixer, earning more headroom, more control DAW/audio wise. Btw, i bought a mixer, patchbay, and dedicated 8 i/o audio interface beacuse/for the MD a-f outs
Love the MD!
at least one tip how to improve the sound quality of your records in Ableton, deactivate “warp” in every clip after recording. the warp feature can affect the sound quality of audio clips immense. when you have them in the arrange window, you don’t need that. many folks don’t know it or simply forget it.
Thanks for replies! I guess it’s up to personal choices. I am so used to DAW way of working and sound quality, but trying to move away also from using too much computer.
Yesterday I tried two identical tracks, one mixed in Ableton and one mixed in Elektron, but haven’t really found too much difference in sound. But then again, I am no sound engineer.
so true - some kit combinations you lose the glue of the shared buss when you separate the instruments. Especially I find when kicks & low toms interacting are the guts of the feel
Play with grouping instruments as you record? & maybe trying to reproduce the interactions with treatments further down the recording chain, ie. on grouped tracks.
In Ableton there’s also plenty of ‘off-line’ mixing you can do within a clip after you’ve recorded a full kit into a stereo channel - ie. shading up or down individual instruments with careful use of EQ or compression plugs for instance. Depends how much posting work you want to do - arranging as patterns rather than full-length tracks helps here
The Dynamix compressor on the MD can change the overall sound drastically. If you record everything separately you’ll lose that. But it depends on whether you want that sound or not.
If you want to do sidechaining in the DAW, or just deal with the kick on its own in the mix, then it can be useful to track the BD separately but again, sometimes you want the kick interacting with the compressor.
Oh, good idea about the sidechain.
For now, I think I am just going to record stereo outs of MD then separating/ reassembling them as MD sound is still new to me.