Glitchy MIDI!

JohnnyAmato

New member
This isn't a huge problem, but sometimes can be a pain in the butt. Sometimes during playback in Pro Tools, my MIDI will glitch, and a cymbal might not hit, or hit but be way louder than it's supposed to be, or a snare might miss the transient, etc...

While mixing it isn't that big of a deal, it doesn't happen constantly, but it does happen. The biggest issue is when bouncing or printing a finished mix, and it happens. Obviously the "glitch" gets recorded also. Sometimes it might take 3 or 4 tries (sometimes more) to get through the whole 3 minute song clean.

It is a PC thing, buffer size thing, playback engine thing? I don't want to start messing with settings in fear I'll screw something up.

I'll almost always record MIDI synths and pianos to audio, but I like to keep my Superior Drummer in MIDI for as long as I can, for last minute edits that always pop up (velocity, timing edits, crash changes, etc...) And usually these glitches can still happen with Superior Drummer being the only MIDI running. My computer is pretty decent, I can grab the actual specs if someone wants to know.

Suggestions?
 
Turn off all other MIDI instruments, then pre-render the MIDI drums to audio prior to mixing. If you can't get a glitch-free render of the whole drum kit, then try rendering them a track or two at a time.
 
Just to add, there should be an option to route the output of the individual MIDI drums to different audio tracks. Then you can render those tracks individually if necessarily. Many of the volume adjustments can be made to the audio tracks after you have rendered from MIDI. I render the drums fairly early in the process of tracking and building out an arrangement to avoid just those glitches and small timing errors that seem to go with MIDI. If I want to make changes to the drums after that, no big deal. Just delete the old audio tracks and render again. Takes two minutes.
 
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