OT: many people - me too - are happy with inputs going orange. Generally it sounds good, you can see it on the waveform without magnifying, and probably no need to boost it to match whatever else you have going on. It’s just worth knowing that if you want your recording as clean as possible, you’ll need to stay in green and maybe do one or two +3db edits in the editor. That’s what works for me.
Blofeld: because I don’t know how loud I’m going to go with it when I start out, I like to set things up to allow for everything up to ‘very loud’. I even made a multi that outputs something ‘very loud’ when I send it lowish notes coming in on 3 channels. I calibrate the rest of the chain to that.
I recently found that some patches will distort within my Blofeld if it’s volume is above about 95-100. Then it doesn’t matter how much you attenuate after the signal leaves the Blofeld it’ll still be distorted. So now I set the volume around 99 before I start.
All that said, I’m now trying the Blofeld going through a RNC! Early days with that though. I haven’t found a setting I like and will probably go back to keeping it simple.
I like the idea of creating as much a possible straight out of the Blofeld. The biggest problem there though, is the eq. There’s often too much sub end on patches, and when using multis it builds up way too much. But usually the filters are in use and I can’t high pass within it, so that has to come later.
Another issue is using samples ‘straight’ - like I have some favourite one-shot drum samples on mine but they sound really muffled compared to any other device playing back the exact same files. I found that to match the way they sound on the OT I have to use both filters on the Blofeld. The first one is HP -12db, cutoff somewhere low. The other one is bypassed. The oscillator routing has to be set somewhere between the two, to make up for the too-steep slope of the HP filter. Can’t eq the whole output externally because that would affect the non-sample material…
Wondering if any of the Blofeld effects could be used to eq somehow… I don’t use them much…
Warning: all this just gets in the way of making music, and my most productive sessions are when I ignore this stuff