Recording MD to DAW

I’ve been finishing tracks on Song Mode, but then having to record each part and restructuring them in Ableton seem redundant and time consuming. Also I do like the hardware-mixed sound. (sorry, not sure how to describe it…)
But then separated tracks on DAW seem to sound louder and more clear.

Maybe a silly question, but I am curious, do you prefer to record each part (BD, snare, hat etc) separately to DAW? Or as whole?

Stereo outs for me too.
Sampled in OT.

1 Like

As much as I love the stereo outs, for mixing I much prefered to use a-f outs to my mixer, earning more headroom, more control DAW/audio wise. Btw, i bought a mixer, patchbay, and dedicated 8 i/o audio interface beacuse/for the MD a-f outs :slight_smile:
Love the MD!

3 Likes

at least one tip how to improve the sound quality of your records in Ableton, deactivate “warp” in every clip after recording. the warp feature can affect the sound quality of audio clips immense. when you have them in the arrange window, you don’t need that. many folks don’t know it or simply forget it.

3 Likes

Thanks for replies! I guess it’s up to personal choices. I am so used to DAW way of working and sound quality, but trying to move away also from using too much computer.
Yesterday I tried two identical tracks, one mixed in Ableton and one mixed in Elektron, but haven’t really found too much difference in sound. But then again, I am no sound engineer.

1 Like

yep good point. Disable auto-warp in the record prefs until you want it again

so true - some kit combinations you lose the glue of the shared buss when you separate the instruments. Especially I find when kicks & low toms interacting are the guts of the feel

Play with grouping instruments as you record? & maybe trying to reproduce the interactions with treatments further down the recording chain, ie. on grouped tracks.

In Ableton there’s also plenty of ‘off-line’ mixing you can do within a clip after you’ve recorded a full kit into a stereo channel - ie. shading up or down individual instruments with careful use of EQ or compression plugs for instance. Depends how much posting work you want to do - arranging as patterns rather than full-length tracks helps here :slight_smile:

The Dynamix compressor on the MD can change the overall sound drastically. If you record everything separately you’ll lose that. But it depends on whether you want that sound or not.

If you want to do sidechaining in the DAW, or just deal with the kick on its own in the mix, then it can be useful to track the BD separately but again, sometimes you want the kick interacting with the compressor.

4 Likes

You are right, I even prefer the MD as master clock.ableton as the master and the MD not syncing too tight on my pc sometimes :slight_smile:

Oh, good idea about the sidechain.
For now, I think I am just going to record stereo outs of MD then separating/ reassembling them as MD sound is still new to me.

1 Like

Am I right in thinking that output A-F do not pass thru the FX master section? If so retaining the effects you would record one machine at a time

Would be good to clarify

Thank you

You are correct. This is nicely illustrated on page 13 of the manual.

If you wanted to separately record each track of the MD, with some of the MD’s master effects applied to each track, then you could record one track at a time to your DAW.

You might also consider using the outputs A to F and using the effects available in your DAW.

Thank you very much for clarifying this.
I have recorded my first Sketch - 14 machines 16 bar loop as a test but have noticed some noise floor especially in the higher frequency machines hats, etc.
Is there a different noise floor ratio tracking out of the A-F outputs?
p.s I have the SPS MKII outputs which were improved from earlier models right?

:alien: :elmd:

1 Like