midi to audio pan settings

[malgovert]

it seems pan settings are not preserved when recording midi tracks to audio - is that right? I thought they were...

And re. volume - is it better to record at high volume (ie good signal) and without pan, then set the vol and pan of the recorded audio track to desired position? It seems to work better - seems like it should work better...

Just i'm sure I read somewhere that you were supposed to get all your midi tracks sorted- volume and pan settings and everything - THEN record to audio 'as is' - and all the settings would be preserved.

Cheers - Malg.

[DS_Sultan]

The pan settings would be preserved if all the midi tracks are seperate. You can't expect different pan setting's for the drum parts if all those parts are on the same track.

Volume, yes, record as hot as needed to get the proper sound at record time. Panning can always happen afterward. But beware if you do that, the way the track sits in the mix may be different than what you heard with the pan set differently.

[crosstudio]

before i got the 8-out expander for my ensoniq asr-x pro, i used to mix all my midi drum parts onto one stereo track. i never had any problem preserving the panning. one good thing about midi, is that you can 'compress' the drum parts by keeping the velocity of the notes in the sought after dynamic range before recording to audio.

[DS_Sultan]

Yes, you can set the individual pans on a per note basis but it would be very tedious or at least time consuming. It would be easier to just make different tracks for each piece wouldn't it?

How do you do that now crosstudio?

[crosstudio]

now that i've got 8 1/4" outs coming out of the asr-x it makes it easy. i usually have:
mono kick
mono snare
stereo hats-n-cymbals
stereo toms and congas
stereo misc. percussion

since i don't like to print fx anyway, it's no big deal, but let me just add for the record that the asr-x pro has some really good sounding effects on it; however, the aux (1-8) outs are dry.

i've always been a big fan of keeping my drum parts (ie.. kick, snare, hats, etc..) on seperate midi channels so that they can each have their own pan and volume settings, in addition to the fact that i like to play around with the midi attack, decay, timbre, and portamento from time to time.