@porkloin good look! I’ve encountered some that are -8.00 recently
My workflow has been shifting recently and wanted to share some of my thoughts.
The change: My Peak is in storage and on the Craigslist… picked up a Nord Drum 3p which has been sitting it its place as the audio in to the Dellie. I’ve been doing less recording to MIDI and more just printing to audio clips in the Dellie: really loving the authenticity this provides (I like loose music). Also recently turned off the recording quantization on the D.
The “good”: So the past week, I’ve been using the Dellie more and more as 1. an audio recorder that stops/starts on the beat and 2. a dusty synth engine (+ multisamples!). I’m digging the new workflow and have been enjoying making music more than I have in awhile.
The “bad”: I mapped some faders on my MIDI controller to the D’s audio tracks hoping to mix the final output live … but it didn’t work as hoped for. I struggled with the gain staging: there was one or two sweet spots that I liked, but couldn’t ride the faders like I intended without running into headroom issues.
I find myself being inspired by the Deluge in ways that other hardware have not provided. At the same time, I’m running into some roadblocks that seem to call for some higher fidelity hardware and I’m not sure how the Dellie will find it’s place in that. The more I explore this instrument, the more I see the logic in your setup @circuitghost
Anyways, that’s my ramble here’s a track I made recently ~ it was true relief to play, I’ve had it on loop for several hours over the past week. The producing was not ideal but I’ve stamped it “done” for now. Would love any feedback and happy to share more of my process
A little summary of my soundcloud: There are 4 very ambient tracks from this past summer, made mostly with a Digitakt. And then I got back into posting/creating for Jamuary with the Deluge - those tracks are a little all over the place. More recently, I’m working on things that I want to (like the track I just posted) and different creative challenges (e.g. disquiet)
This sounds great. Being into free form myself more and more, also running the Deluge without quantize, I’m curious how you worked this track and where the Deluge came into play. Are these all live recordings into audio clips, and then you launched them from the clip view or the Arranger? Or something else neat?
From time to time, I’m coming back to using only the Deluge for everything, but the output always bites me in the end. I’m just gonna stop trying and use it where it really excels.
I’m curious about your comments on the output/mixing on the Deluge @circuitghost because I have not really noticed it yet - obviously I have less “flying time” with it than you do and I have not tried anything too ambitious yet WRT to track count for recordings. But I’m wondering if it is related to track count and headroom, or if it is just a general thing?
One of the things that crosses my mind is that because it streams from card and essentially it has “unlimited” tracks do you think it is running out of horsepower and lowering sample rate to keep everything running? Or do you think it is more to do with I/O circuitry not being as good as it could be?
Did you try lowering all track levels to see if it improved the output quality? I also wonder if bouncing tracks down would improve things on projects with lots going on - eg if you had 8 audio tracks playing muting half of them and bouncing down to 1 track, then muting the other half and bouncing down to another track? I realise this isn’t always practical but curious if you think it would be a workaround to maybe improve the quality at the time of recording?
Well, I don’t have the proper lingo to describe what I think is actually going on, so I can only speak from ear and personal experience. But I usually stay around 25-35 in Level when I work with the Deluge, and I’m pushing it if I’m beyond 40 (50 being the max here, for reference to those who don’t know). It seems to me, it doesn’t take many tracks before things get a bit crowded, but the raw input and output from a singular source, seems to work just fine. I’ve recorded stuff into the Deluge which I’ve used elsewhere for commercial stuff, and I’ve recorded separate tracks from the Deluge for the same purpose, also good. It’s when you blend it all, you don’t get all that far.
Say I put four identical loops into the Deluge and into the Blackbox, and only thing I did was panning and work the levels. I can tell the difference right away, and to my ears, it’s not subtle. I hold the Blackbox and Toraiz on the same level as far as raw sound quality goes, and the Deluge plays in a league below.
But I’m open to the concept that I might be wrong in fact, I’d welcome it.
Thanks for the info, I will definitely keep this in mind, I will run some tests comparing OT, Deluge and MC-707 with 4 identical loops and share any observations here.
I don’t have BB or SP16 any more, but I think these kind of comparisons are useful.
I am hoping to eventually use Deluge as an audio arranger primarily, recording stems from the other gear and dropping it in the timeline of the Deluge, but your comments about the audio quality have stuck in my mind - of course I know that it might be different under different use cases and with different sources etc, so that is something I’ll take into account, but regardless it is always good to know, so thanks again.
No worries. And again, I’m not educated in these things and look forward to be proven wrong. I’d love to be in a place where I’m comfortable with a complete stereo mix in the Deluge.
Having owned a deluge, though I loved its workflow and looping. I can confirm an obvious difference between it and MPC Live with same samples. Crowed is a perfect way to explain it. Ultimately why I parted ways with it.
Nope. It doesn’t do anything for me. If I trim the frequencies at all, I use the filters.
EDIT: Actually, especially the 12db filter is pretty good in that regard, as is the high pass filter. For shaping the sound in terms of character, they’re not all that useful. But if you approach them for eq duties, they’re good.
Yes, that’s exactly it. The tools are in place for sure. There’s eq, filter, fx and even options to apply master on all of these. And the sidechain isn’t bad for just making stuff move around a bit.
But it’s not just quite there, you know? It sounds okay. But then you throw the same stuff into the Toraiz and even if all you do is adjust volume and pan, you already got something that just sticks together more.
I’m not sure how fair a comparison is in this regard, but it’s an observation worth making if this stuff matters. I can totally see that it doesn’t for many, like you build your song in the Deluge, record each track from the arranger into another context and do the mix there. When I reviewed the Bluebox, I recorded some stuff track by track from the Deluge for that purpose, and each single track does well on its own.
I don’t know what decides these things, but whatever it is that Roland and Pioneer put into their stuff that just makes shit sound like they get along just great, I don’t find that in the Deluge.
It has the somewhat indirect side effect also that you can tend to keep layering stuff then, cause you’re wondering why the magic isn’t quite there yet, thinking the track’s maybe just missing something. So you got one arp too many, two pads instead of one, kick and bass fighting for the low end space, two or three field recordings of ambience instead of just the one, stuff like that, cause you’re still searching.
The merciless output of the SSL SiX taught me the very hard way that you don’t need all that many tracks in your song to make it sound worthwhile, if you got the right kind of tracks going on. And when you layer too much and run it through a console of that kind, your ears will bleed and your brain short circuit.
Hey circuit thanks for the kind works. Bear with me as I explain this …
A lot of the “free form” comes from the way that I played the Nord. First take was the hang drum sound, improvised to a click (I use the maracas on the 808 kit ) and recorded direct to an audio clip. In some order, I recorded the pad sound and the “rhodes” (multisampled) sound (see 1:00 in) to two synth clips and then two more tracks of loose percussion from the ND to audio clips.
Processing was pretty light. One of the perc tracks got sliced, put on a kit clip with probability and a little FX. None of the tracks have the same length, so there’s a dual sense of familiarity and freshness (I didn’t really let it loop through when I recorded but it sounds great on repeat!). My goal was to then use the Dellie as a mixer and manually fade in/out the tracks as I recorded. The lack of headroom and a perceived very small sweet spot squashed that idea. I ended up just hitting play and adding a fade in/out on the master in post (GarageBand for me )
So yeah, everything happened in clip view but I actually never triggered any clips. The spaciousness comes from how I played the tracks, accentuated by the Dellie’s default very velocity-sensitive settings. One thing that really bugged me when trying to bounce the final track, was that I would end up recording automation to the clips (that would then loop as the clip would)… when what I wanted was an overarching change in volume. I know arranger mode can solve this but for some reason it was not meshing with me.
Towards the general discussion:
I made lots of short tracks for Jamuary on the Deluge and didn’t really mind the lack of headroom. I found a sweet spot (most tracks less than 60% volume) and ran with it. But now I’m looking to make more polished tracks and feel like I’m starting to bump into some limitations.
I’ve been trying to use the Deluge for everything and it’s worked to some extent but looking to see what else it out there. I just downloaded the Drambo app and want to try that out in a Blackbox/Octatrack role. Grateful for the iPad (from work) to be able to experiment with a different workflow
Very cool. Thank you for the explanation. Goes to show how flexible and powerful the Deluge is, though in the hands of an artist with craft to boost, of course. All kudos to you, mate.
All this talk of the Deluge’s lack of headroom and stuff, reminded me of a track I wrote on it some time ago, where I feel I came as far as I could with the onboard mixing abilities, and the Heat added at the master bus. You be the judge of what you’re hearing here. It’s samples only, from a Tempest and a Prophet 6 -
One thing I did here, which I don’t usually do, is I did nothing
I was very careful to make sure each sound and loop sounded good on its own, before I recorded it into the Deluge. So once I glued it all together within the Deluge, I did little more than adjust volume, some slight panning, no eq or reverb, a liiitle bit of delay to add space, and that was it.
I’m no mastering expert but we can put it through the spectral analyzer and compare it to a Ferry Corsten banger. Just listening on my speakers it sounds like it has no bass. Pretty much anything I listen to right now rumbles my sub but this doesn’t at all.
Looking at the spectrum it starts to take a dive around 6k and goes downhill from there. It’s also lacking on the low end, which is probably why my sub is quiet.
Compared to the reference song which uses the whole range and is high on both ends.
The result of this could be due to my lacking in mixing skills, though
Having said that, I did my best and I believe I’ve done better on other instruments. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between? In the hands of someone who really knows what they’re doing, the end result might’ve been better but perhaps not still where it ought to be, due to the fact the Deluge just can’t push it enough.
Feel a little sheepish writing this but I think I’ve finally concluded that the Deluge isn’t going to be for me so have dipped my toes in the water and tentatively put it up for sale. I’ve only had it a few weeks so this does have a premature air to it but for me, it isn’t a device I gravitate towards using. So in my warped minimalist approach to music hardware the default in this scenario is to move gear on when not being used enough after the honeymoon period.
It truly is a wonderful device though and I’ve enjoyed learning it a great deal. It’s a box that does wonders for the “getting away from a DAW” crowd. I’ll continue to use it though and you never know, I may change my mind!
The lesson learned? I really am a lazy bastard when it comes to OTB and been thoroughly spoiled by ITB options!!!
@circuitghost Fun track! I’m far from an expert either, but I agree that it’s lacking in the bass dept (depending on what your goal is)… and also think that’s probably more due to the source material than the Deluge.
Maybe relevant to this discussion is this jam? To offer some contrast, this track is probably the one with the most (sub) bass out of any of my jamuary entries. But I also didn’t take much time to mix it on the Deluge, so … take it as you will.
For me, it’s not that everything sounds bad through the Deluge, it’s just doesn’t feel like there’s much room for sounds to go. A sweet spot for each sound … which may or may not be how you want your whole track to sound.
@J0n35y thanks for sharing your thoughts here I can see where you’re coming from. As someone who doesn’t use a DAW (nothing against them, wish I did sometimes), the Deluge offers a lot but it sure has its limitations
Added: okay, also going to share this track from the Mars challenge here. The opening bass rumble is an unedited sample from a quake on Mars:
here’s a track I made recently ~ it was true relief to play, I’ve had it on loop for several hours over the past week. The producing was not ideal but I’ve stamped it “done” for now. Would love any feedback and happy to share more of my process 
) and recorded direct to an audio clip. In some order, I recorded the pad sound and the “rhodes” (multisampled) sound (see 1:00 in) to two synth clips and then two more tracks of loose percussion from the ND to audio clips.
)
