Taking MIDI Tracks to Audio in PTLE

[daemond]

Finally having everything running and working, I was able to create several MIDI tracks of drum beats spanning several minutes. Do I need to turn these into an audio track before bouncing them to disk and if so, is there a particular way to do this?

I was able to bounce the MIDI immediately to disk and play the stuff in Media Player, but the sound quality went way downhill... Any advice?

 

[RhythmRmixd]

I'm not completely familiar with Pro Tools, but the general process for recording a MIDI track to audio would be to assign the output of the MIDI track, or the virtual instrument that the MIDI track is playing, to a bus. Then create a mono or stereo audio track and assign the input of that track to the same bus and record enable it.

Once you've created a number of audio tracks, you can process them independently with effects, compression, eq. Then you can bounce several audio tracks down to a single stereo mix.

 

[daemond]

I'm not completely familiar with Pro Tools, but the general process for recording a MIDI track to audio would be to assign the output of the MIDI track, or the virtual instrument that the MIDI track is playing, to a bus. Then create a mono or stereo audio track and assign the input of that track to the same bus and record enable it.

Ahh, ok, I saw those options last night and it was clicking. Will try that. Thanks!

 

[ssscientist]

Finally having everything running and working, I was able to create several MIDI tracks of drum beats spanning several minutes. Do I need to turn these into an audio track before bouncing them to disk and if so, is there a particular way to do this?

Leave them as nice, flexible midi tracks.

By doing so you won't lose anything and you'll be able to change many things about them including the sounds of the drums, freely modify the patterns the drums play and add fills, paradiddles or flams. I can't see why you'd want to lock the sounds in at this point --- when it comes to the final mix there's no difference between tracks coming off the hard drive as audio and those coming off as midi notes.

 

[RhythmRmixd]

I can't see why you'd want to lock the sounds in at this point --- when it comes to the final mix there's no difference between tracks coming off the hard drive as audio and those coming off as midi notes.

True, but to get everything down to a final stereo mix to burn to cd, everything still has to be rendered to audio, either by recording tracks to audio individually and bouncing or sending everything being mixed to the same bus or output for recording. I think he wasn't sure of the general process of recording MIDI to audio and needed the basics.

 

[daemond]

Leave them as nice, flexible midi tracks.

By doing so you won't lose anything and you'll be able to change many things about them including the sounds of the drums, freely modify the patterns the drums play and add fills, paradiddles or flams. I can't see why you'd want to lock the sounds in at this point --- when it comes to the final mix there's no difference between tracks coming off the hard drive as audio and those coming off as midi notes.

I'm not wanting to lock them in, I've got these MIDI tracks all saved and ready to go for future editing - just wanting to have it outside of PT as well to burn on CD and take with me. I do mostly backing tracks for guitar playing so I need to have this stuff in ready format.

As far as the sound quality is concerned once it was bounced, it was drastically noticable. Before I got DFHS I used an old Zoom Rhythm Trac drum machine and just recorded it directly through the MBox. Anything bounced from there (old recordings) are *much* clearer than what I got last night from the bounced MIDI.

Somebody else mentioned applying dithering when bouncing too...

 

[RhythmRmixd]

Dithering is used when you have to change your bit depth (also known as sample format). The standard for compact discs is 16 bit.

 

[ssscientist]

I need to have this stuff in ready format.

Somebody else mentioned applying dithering when bouncing too...

First, if you can hear the midi tracks in sync with the audio tracks when you decide to 'render to stereo' or 'export to .wav' or whatever 'protools' calls it, the resulting stereo file will be just as you last heard it when you last hit the play command in 'protools'. That means the midi tracks will be exported side by side with the audio tracks - the audio tracks directly and the midi tracks thru whatever midi instrument you're playing them with.

And you're a long way away from needing to worry about dithering. That's the step taken last in the CD manufacturing process after final mastering.

 

[daemond]

For search abilities, etc. I received an answer to the problem - it's not in PTLE.

DFHS has it's own bounce feature which records the MIDI data by playing it in your recording software, then you choose to bounce the samples to disk within DFHS. DFHS creates audio tracks for each mic that can then be imported into PTLE and mastered that way.

It is a HUGE difference, the drums sound great. I finished off a few backing tracks last night for warm-up practicing and I can honestly say in the last 15 years or so that I've worked with drum machines for writing/rehearsing, I haven't heard it sound this good before.

 

[ssscientist]

DFHS has it's own bounce feature which records the MIDI data by playing it in your recording software, then you choose to bounce the samples to disk within DFHS. DFHS creates audio tracks for each mic that can then be imported into PTLE and mastered that way.

That's exactly what I recommended you do, with the addition of the jargon of the DFHS program. They like to plump their manuals with terms like 'mics' where others would say 'samples' and 'audio track' where others would say 'kick' or 'snare'.

You have discovered your own solution, and that's the ideal result of coming to HR with a question --- combining our advice with your own observations.