The mixer on the Ren sucks

JAH wrote:I agree. But we keep having these types of threads....

Whts wrong with these types of threads? This type of thread only mks our purchased product potentially better.

DJ Hellfire wrote:

peteblues wrote:

DJ Hellfire wrote:The mixed signal should just go to both tracks!

if we did that, there would be all sorts of complaints of pad signals leaking onto other tracks. (e.g. if you have an 8th HH on track 1 and 16th HH on track 2, you'd then see 16th HH on both tracks).

Another thing I thought of. If I have a HH or snare sample that's about 2 seconds look, maybe was sampled with reverb or something and it's set to POLY, and I play it 8TH on one track and 16th on another, how does the MPC determine which track to route sound to and avoid signal leaks to other tracks?

Sorry, but I'm still just having a hard time accepting this! I just feel like a pad insert should be treating as if there is no insert, or as if the effect is part of the actual sample.

pete, "just" add this:

- pad inserts & treat insert as part of the sample, route to same output
- pad sends to busses and then ability to return to aux
- full pad routing, ie. route 1 or more pads to mixer tracks
- aux and busses in the mixer
- audio tracks with sends/inserts - (bus and aux type architecture)
- plugin delay compensation
- route pgm to mixer
- full plugin delay compensation , allow to turn it off though for anyone that wants to perform live

that covers all grounds, don't think you will need to bundle PT express after that LOL

If when you add a pad effect it goes to a sub mix with the ability to set which sub mix which shows up in the mixer like any other track and then you can set the sub mix out to the main out wouldn't this get round the current issues then the user can set which pad to send where

This way from pgm track I could send them to the subs i want ie kick sub snare sub
they would go to the main out and i could seq them all from one track which is what you might want to do with say your drums if your jamming them out


This is pretty much how Bfd2 with the mixer routing and its very useful and give you the control you need and for drums


added note

As bfd has names for each kit piece it knows what to name the sub based on your selection that you have sent to a sub so it will call it kicksub the ability to name your sub mixes would get around this and leave it all to the user

Nope there wouldn't be need for PT at all not for the things you would want to do in the creative process which engineering your drums to attain a certain sound can be part of that process and not the mixing stage

A lot of producers today mix as they create and to do that flexibility is very important

Yep yep

The Ren mixer routing system (no exaggeration) is one of the worst I've ever used.

Any design that routes a sound where you dont want it to go and gives you no way of changing it quite frankly sucks.

it seems like by turning 'tracks', which have historically (on mpcs) been midi only sequence data, into combined sequence AND audio data has created a lot of design problems.

i would have opted for something similar to the indiv feature in hardware mpcs, and use those individual buses as the only 'tracks' that could be bounced / mixed / whatever.

tapedeck wrote:it seems like by turning 'tracks', which have historically (on mpcs) been midi only sequence data, into combined sequence AND audio data has created a lot of design problems.

i would have opted for something similar to the indiv feature in hardware mpcs, and use those individual buses as the only 'tracks' that could be bounced / mixed / whatever.

Right, which is why I only use tracks for MIDI data. With the implementation coming in 1.3 you will be able to show only "used" tracks so quickly adjust the level of things in different programs shouldn't be a problem. Now we just need metering and inserts on the submixes

The only time I would use track inserts would be if when I completed an entire song I want to apply different processing to only one sequence, or differently between sequences.

tapedeck wrote:it seems like by turning 'tracks', which have historically (on mpcs) been midi only sequence data, into combined sequence AND audio data has created a lot of design problems.

i would have opted for something similar to the indiv feature in hardware mpcs, and use those individual buses as the only 'tracks' that could be bounced / mixed / whatever.

Been wondering what all the fuss about this was. If I understand, looks like Akai really tried to reinvent the wheel with this design. There should be no "track mixer" or inserts. Just causes more confusion. None of this worrying about track routing, duplicating tracks duplicates plug instances etc.. Really an odd design.

For backward compatibility the track mixer has to stay but they should rebuild the signal flow. They need to build a proper pad mixer with inserts and meters between the samples and the program inserts. The way it's designed on Maschine is the way they should have done it.

b-righteous wrote:

tapedeck wrote:it seems like by turning 'tracks', which have historically (on mpcs) been midi only sequence data, into combined sequence AND audio data has created a lot of design problems.

i would have opted for something similar to the indiv feature in hardware mpcs, and use those individual buses as the only 'tracks' that could be bounced / mixed / whatever.

Been wondering what all the fuss about this was. If I understand, looks like Akai really tried to reinvent the wheel with this design. There should be no "track mixer" or inserts. Just causes more confusion. None of this worrying about track routing, duplicating tracks duplicates plug instances etc.. Really an odd design.

For backward compatibility the track mixer has to stay but they should rebuild the signal flow. They need to build a proper pad mixer with inserts and meters between the samples and the program inserts. The way it's designed on Maschine is the way they should have done it.

why shouldn't there be no track mixer?? how would you mix plugin tracks?
If you don't like the track mixer, just don't use it.

The MPC has a unique design in that you have two kinds of mixers (program and track) and you can share programs/pads with different tracks.
On previous MPCs, you can't even have inserts on tracks. We had to compromise to support legacy MPCs, while also offering track specific mixing options.

Maybe they'll get it right in 1.4...

peteblues wrote:

b-righteous wrote:

tapedeck wrote:it seems like by turning 'tracks', which have historically (on mpcs) been midi only sequence data, into combined sequence AND audio data has created a lot of design problems.

i would have opted for something similar to the indiv feature in hardware mpcs, and use those individual buses as the only 'tracks' that could be bounced / mixed / whatever.

Been wondering what all the fuss about this was. If I understand, looks like Akai really tried to reinvent the wheel with this design. There should be no "track mixer" or inserts. Just causes more confusion. None of this worrying about track routing, duplicating tracks duplicates plug instances etc.. Really an odd design.

For backward compatibility the track mixer has to stay but they should rebuild the signal flow. They need to build a proper pad mixer with inserts and meters between the samples and the program inserts. The way it's designed on Maschine is the way they should have done it.

why shouldn't there be no track mixer?? how would you mix plugin tracks?
If you don't like the track mixer, just don't use it.

The MPC has a unique design in that you have two kinds of mixers (program and track) and you can share programs/pads with different tracks.
On previous MPCs, you can't even have inserts on tracks. We had to compromise to support legacy MPCs, while also offering track specific mixing options.

To be honest I think we're nit picking a little bit because the program mixer and I think what needs to be focused on is making the mixer more flexible (i.e. side-chaining, parallel processing, re-ordering tracks,ect.). We keep bringing Maschine into the discussion but Maschine is less flexible than the Renaissance in terms of its mixer because it doesn't have a track mixer it only has basically a program mixer ( you can't route the same sound across multiple track) although it has a flexible routing system for effects. I think at version 1.2/1.3 we are doing very good, but just a little more flexibility in the future.

Jonespnice1 wrote:We keep bringing Maschine into the discussion but Maschine is less flexible than the Renaissance in terms of its mixer because it doesn't have a track mixer it only has basically a program mixer ( you can't route the same sound across multiple track) although it has a flexible running system for effects.

Maschine has a much more intuitive mixer and the audio signal routing in Maschine is very flexible. You get 4 module slots per pad (track/sound) and 4 per group to add fx, as well as sends. You can chain the audio signal from a pad to another pad to another to another... etc. So you could have just one instrument loaded but have it run through all other pads and groups and the master.

EmptySea

As much as you dislike the company and the products, I'd think you'd hate being here.

I'm trying to imagine myself on a Beat Thang forum. I can't understand why I'd be there. Your posts don't bother me. I don't think a post on an internet forum from a stranger can bother me. I'm just curious. Perhaps I'm missing something.

P.S. I'm not saying that all of your posts are wrong, or I disagree with them, etc. They just all seem to be anti-mpc...and this is an mpc forum lol.

JAH wrote:Probably should have not included any Pad Insert FXs and just included Pad Send FXs. Ren users would use it like they have any other MPC (No Pad Inserts)

But we don't want to use it like an old MPC. This is why many of us have moved on from them to newer technology!

peteblues wrote:why shouldn't there be no track mixer?? how would you mix plugin tracks?
If you don't like the track mixer, just don't use it.

The MPC has a unique design in that you have two kinds of mixers (program and track) and you can share programs/pads with different tracks.
On previous MPCs, you can't even have inserts on tracks. We had to compromise to support legacy MPCs, while also offering track specific mixing options.

I just don't see any point in tracks which are really just midi being presented as a type of hybrid audio mixer. It's just weird and unnecessary and thus all the complaints. Why not just use the program mixer paradigm and have a more complete pad mixer for MPC programs without sending the pads to separate busses etc.? The pads should go sample->pad insert->pad volume/fader->program insert->program volume/fader. Plugin tracks should have always just followed the same design as normal programs and be presented in the program mixer. Simplistic and it would just work without all the fuss or plug-in duplication. Even with the track mixer there, the program mixer still needs a more straight forward pad mixer for MPC programs and the pad mixer should feed to the program mixer.