Q: Have you heard distortion/crackle in a midi playback?

Cubase
1

I’m asking this because I just ran into this. While playing back a short midi track of a B3 type voice, as I increased the channel fader of the midi track, I could hear crackles in the audio playback. Is this typical behavior? I was not peaking the track meter by any stretch. Since I needed more volume from the track, I did a track mixdown of the midi voice and imported it into the project as audio. After adding adding some 4db of gain to the wave file and then setting my channel fader to 0db, I was good to go.

I am not that versed in midi use, but it did occur to me that this behavior would make for some very quiet recordings. Well, unless the midi tracks were turned into audio files and then remixed as I just did.

So are you midi users able to create midi tracks that can be mixed down to typical audio track mix levels? Is there another way to add gain to the midi track that I missed perhaps? Or are you doing what I did, doing a mixdown and then adding gain to the resulting audio tracks?

2

Are you sure the “crackles” weren’t due to ASIO buffer setting being to small?

Usually I find VSTi’s to be too loud but I suppose it depends on the VSTi the velocity of the recorded midi notes and any midi volume settings.

3

Thanks, Split. Here’s the thing, I run at 256 samples and have no problems with audio or VST load or anything. But are you suggesting that folks working in midi are running at a higher sample rate? Is this my problem maybe? I do more live recording than midi for sure, and typically I use the keyboard to add a vocal or guitar part that will be recorded later.