Acoustica User Forums

This sounds ridiculous I know (and could possibly lead to feedback loops if one isn't careful), but let me explain:

Let's say you want to use parallel compression on an instrument track. You set up a send track, route the instrument to the send track, slap on heavy compression, and then you put both the instrument track and thethe send track within a submix so that the parallel compressed instrument can now be mixed with a single fader - the submix fader.

Not ridiculous.

In fact I have to respond by telling you this post is a bit of a relief to me. I brought this up, oh, I think we were beta testing v7, and again at least once since I think, and got the response of crickets chirping and I felt like I was the only one who saw it as I twisted in the wind.

I have felt ever since that either I was missing something obvious, or it was some kind of highly unusual routing, but in this digital age I couldn't see why we couldn't easily have a solution. Then I researched and found out other people do this.

Here's the bottom line as I see it, currently you have no choice, the send return is routed back to the main bus. (again, unless I have missed something.)

This means, you have two general options:
One is a post fader send, which means that when you change the fader you change the input level to your send and upset your mix.
The other allows for a pre fader signal to the send but, but when you change the level of a sub-mix, the send level doesn't change and you upset the mix........

Am I missing something?
Is it too soon to make MX8.5 or MX9 suggestions?

Just need to be able to route send returns to a sub-mix, post inserts/pre-fader and problem solved.
Difficulty level unknown, but hopes for future inclusion run high.

I don't quite see the point of this way of routing.
The task you described (parallel compression of a drumtrack inside a submix) is easy to achieve by just duplicating the audio in another track inside the submix, compress one of the tracks and leave the other alone. You have full control over the amount of compressed or uncompressed sound and can change the volume of both together with the submix volume slider.
Send tracks are destined to use one effect for several tracks at once - in analogue days because you could afford only few hardware effects, in the digital environment to lower CPU-usage. So it makes sense that the send tracks are routed back to the main bus, and only to the main bus.
I too would like to have free routing in Mixcraft, which means the output of every (!) track (midi,audio,send,submix) could be routed to every (!) other track (and recorded on that track) like with a hardware patchbay. Mixcraft 8 is not far away - the routing of audio to midi and the sidechaining are first steps, but not the real thing.
But lets face it - routing is a difficult and complicated task especially for beginners and can leave you with deafening feedbacks. We killed more than one loudspeaker because of wrong routing in our ancient hardware studio back in the 80s.

Hi,

Mixcraft 8 also does allow you to route MIDI from one track to another MIDI track. Just choose another track instead of a virtual instrument or external device.

Greg

But it can not route the midi output (!) of a track to another one. The output of effects which generate midi events like several arpeggiators or the Jam Origin MIDI Guitar can not be routed to miditracks to record them - or am I getting something wrong?

Manfred wrote:But it can not route the midi output (!) of a track to another one. The output of effects which generate midi events like several arpeggiators or the Jam Origin MIDI Guitar can not be routed to miditracks to record them - or am I getting something wrong?

Hi,

Mixcraft 7 can work with arpeggiators. Just add the arpeggiator to the track before the virtual instrument you want to arpeggiate. The MIDI will pass through the arpeggiator and come out arpeggiated before it reaches the next synth.

The new feature in Mixcraft 8 allows you to send all MIDI from a track to another MIDI track or tracks. You can have MIDI on one track being sent to three MIDI tracks, controlling the virtual instruments on those tracks. You can also use this with multi-out virtual instruments, setting MIDI tracks to different MIDI channels, and having each MIDI channel control a different instrument in the multi-out virtual instrument (like Kontakt).

Greg

The arpeggiator will only work in this way if it installs as VSti (aka Virtual instrument). Even then you can not grab the outcoming events for further editing. If it installs as VST (aka effect) I see no way to route it to a synth.
Jam Origin Midi Guitar installs as effect and needs audio input from an armed audio-track. It then produces midi-events. Again I see no way to grab these midi events for editing purposes inside Mixcraft. Jam Origin can be used as a standalone together with loop-midi outside Mixcraft, but not as VST inside Mixcraft.

Manfred wrote:The arpeggiator will only work in this way if it installs as VSti (aka Virtual instrument). Even then you can not grab the outcoming events for further editing. If it installs as VST (aka effect) I see no way to route it to a synth.
Jam Origin Midi Guitar installs as effect and needs audio input from an armed audio-track. It then produces midi-events. Again I see no way to grab these midi events for editing purposes inside Mixcraft. Jam Origin can be used as a standalone together with loop-midi outside Mixcraft, but not as VST inside Mixcraft.

Hi,

Most arpeggiators are virtual instruments, but you're right about Jam Origin's MIDI Guitar. As you probably know, you can use that with a MIDI loopback utility like Loopbe for now. You could also record the output of an arpeggiator that way as well. You'd route the MIDI out to the MIDI loopback utility and arm a track in Mixcraft to receive MIDI from the loopback utility.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion for a more direct routing options!

Greg

Greg, wanted to say that I much appreciate your bugzilla entry about being able to route MIDI from plug-ins.

I read a tutorial about drum replacement last night that talked about how you can blip out a MIDI note from your noise gate plug-in (which is what I want to do) to trigger a MIDI drum note on another track. They were using Logic (if not logic).

Love to be able to do that with Mixcraft....