Good question. I use real-time only for designing instruments. I tweak the instrument code, play something on a keyboard, and tweak the code again. This does greatly speed up instrument design and improve instrument quality. Regarding mixing, I just re-render the pieces as you do. I do find that listening to a lot of music, in a lot of rooms, in a lot of styles, and also studying mastering (highly recommended: Bob Katz' book), helps with the mixing and mastering (which are not the same thing). I have a better understanding of what works and what does not, how to set things up, how to separate and combine sounds. I think you might benefit from reading Katz' book Mastering Audio, and also by reading a text on classical music orchestration. I discuss some of these issues briefly in an appendix to _A Csound Tutorial_ which is accessible from csounds.com. Hope this helps, Mike On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Michael Bechard wrote: > My work usually involves numerous CSound instruments (many that are rather > CPU intensive) and different timbres, so is a bit difficult to mix in > CSound, even with the help of blue. I'll track each layer in blue to it's > own wav file, import those as separate tracks in Cubase (moving to Ardour), > then mix and tweak to my heart's content. It's nice because it's all very > realtime at that point, since my CPU's not working at all, and I can take > advantage of all the goodies a sequencer has to offer (automation, spectrum > analysis, VST/LADSPA plugins, etc). Granted, blue offers many of those > goodies (and some unique to itself), but the main problem there is the > dependency on CSound. It just gets too slow and cumbersome once I reach a > certain point. > > Being able to loop over one section of audio, tweak the levels, EQ, panning, > selectively mute/unmute other tracks while tweaking to see how my changes > fit; it's essential. > > Michael Bechard > > ________________________________ > From: Jeff Taylor > To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk > Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2008 8:43:29 AM > Subject: [Csnd] Mixing with Csound > > A recent discussion on this list about a specific mixing situation with > csound got me thinking a bit about how I make music. > > When writing music I personally like working only with csound (sequencing > and synthesis) and Snd (for analysis and playback). I don't use any > real-time features of csound. I like the simplicity and minimalism this > provides but I find the final stages of mixing very frustrating in this > setup. > > I freely admit that I am not very experienced with mixing and this is likely > much of the problem, but it is, at very least, exacerbated by the fact that > it often takes very long periods of time to hear the results of any changes > made to the code. Small changes and tweaks became very time-prohibitive. > > The track I have on csounds.com ( http://www.csounds.com/node/38 ) is a good > example of the problem. I am not at all happy with the mix on this track. > I think it sounds kind of muffled, I guess, and certain parts are difficult > to hear. I eventually just decided to call it done because it was taking so > long to do anything (several hours for a compile wasn't unusual) and I > wasn't sure what I needed to do to make it sound better, exactly. I don't > think it is an issue with csound itself because I have heard nice sounding > mixes done in csound. > > So how exactly do you all all handle the work flow of doing the final mix > with csound when not working in real-time? Is it just a matter of having a > good idea of what needs to be done ahead of time (i.e. avoid the necessity > of tweaking) or perhaps putting the code together in a certain way to > facilitate the process? Do you just use another application, like a > multitrack with vst plugins? Or is everyone just working in real-time with > csound these days? If it is a matter of just knowing what you are doing, > how did you learn? > > Thanks. > > -- > Electronically, > Jeff Taylor > > -- Michael Gogins Irreducible Productions Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com