Depends on the style of music. This year I made techno. I created the kick sound(s) I had in my head. Selected the other drum sounds and mapped out a really rough arrangement on pro tools. Then I applied all the reverb and compression to get it sounding at least reasonable. Added the non drum layers based on the initial idea in my head and then started to shape the sounds to what I actually wanted (fx etc). After I started to tweak to glue it together. The important thing for this process is to get to this stage as quick as possible before I forget the original idea. Sometimes I’ll leave it for a while and come back with fresh ears to finish it off and other times I get it done in a day or two.
Thanks for the detailed response. Aside from the genre, a lot of what you said there applies to me. But I am trying a different tack recently. I want to be able to "jam out" on some weird sound that I found in my virtual audio stack. Even if that includes some weird mastering effect artefact. I want it all live.
This led me to focus on excellent but simple triggers, and the lowest possible latency. I can't overstate the impact of low latency on making the entire DAW/Virtual Instrument stack feel "real."
My quest for low latency with robust DSP lasted for 3 months of orders and returns. I ended up getting a Focusrite 4Pre which has a Thunderbolt 2 interface. I got the Apple Tbolt 3<->2 adapter and I can get robust ~2-3ms audio playback latency even on Ableton/Windows running on a 2017 XPS 9560. When you plug a drum trigger into something like that, it's whole different beast. I had no idea. I ended up with the NI Maschine Mikro Mk3 for the drum trigger. I can't believe how these NI pads feel with low latency audio.
Has anyone else gotten further down the latency rabbit hole than me? Please share!
I do jam out ideas on the ipad sometimes. Using iMS-20 or iMPC. I then record it into the DAW as is and replace the sounds on new tracks on the grid bit by bit.
FWIW your attempt to get the latency really low could be misplaced. If you play in a band for example and you are standing 5 metres away from the drummer the sound is already taking ~15ms to reach you. We're really good at adjusting to these timing differences and can handle much more latency seamlessly than you are designing for.
Micro-timing (otherwise known as groove) is much more important imo and you can train yourself to groove to your setup even if you have huge latency (though this is of course undesirable).
> FWIW your attempt to get the latency really low could be misplaced.
I totally understand your point, but it turns out I can have my cake and eat it too at an affordable price if I eBay and take chances on the fractured PC thunderbolt implementation landscape.
What near-zero latency gives me is the ability to use the immense power of my DAW’s dsp controls, to modify the sound of my voice and guitar, and record nearly that exact sound.
I’m middle aged, and to me this is the promise of real-time pc-based DAW, finally delivered for a few hundred dollars.
The crazy thing is that it seems Focusrite gave up on providing non-Mac computers with thunderbolt interfaces. The support costs were just too high. This is due to things like crappy Thunderbolt implementation by Dell and others.
My research led me to find that to get the best $ per low latency, you have to buy a used 4 Pre or 8 Pre, as Focusrite moved thunderbolt support up to their 10x priced Red line.
According to an official Focusrite support response on Reddit, thunderbolt support only adds around 1 ms of latency advantage. While I believe that specific metric from that source, isn’t it true that thunderbolt might allow for more simultaneous CPU <-> outboard DSP bandwidth? It certainly feels like that over USB. It feels like I can have a lot more cpu-intensive stuff like reverb and delays over thunderbolt.
In any case, for my crappy playing chops, having near-zero latency gives me the ability to record my stream of consciousness audio outbursts with newfound accuracy and steadiness.
