USB-C 'real time' tracking; pros and cons?

So Live 3 has the option of using USB-C to 'real time' track out your song direct to a DAW. It's a lot more time and effort than just using the offline 'separate tracks' option and dragging the WAVs into your DAW.

What is the advantage of using this? I've seen plenty of stuff about how offline can be less prone to glitches, but others reckon real time is best, although most of these tie it in with being able to add external processing, which isn't possible with USB routing. So is it just 'preference'?

I dont own the live 3 .. for me tracking out into a daw I can mixing,eq and add all the goodies in my daw control all fades from my mixer and record direct instead of exporting and importing.. having a template in your daw speeds up mixing..

You can do external processing over USB-C. I've done it with my iPad and Loopy Pro. Other apps/computer options may vary in how well it works... but you can get it to work.

NearTao wrote:You can do external processing over USB-C. I've done it with my iPad and Loopy Pro. Other apps/computer options may vary in how well it works... but you can get it to work.

Sorry by external processing I meant running it through outboard hardware, e.g. with a physical compressor or analogue mixer etc.

MPC-Tutor wrote:

NearTao wrote:You can do external processing over USB-C. I've done it with my iPad and Loopy Pro. Other apps/computer options may vary in how well it works... but you can get it to work.

Sorry by external processing I meant running it through outboard hardware, e.g. with a physical compressor or analogue mixer etc.

Ah got you, yeah... that's different

My main thing about tracking out would be if you don't trust whatever offline processing the MPC is doing, or if you *are* using outboard effects over audio and/or usb-c (or heck why not both)... at some point you could get yourself into a situation where you cannot feasibly render out as stems.

So a few things that come to mind
1) You're using external synths that won't work well with rendering down to stems
2) You're sending audio to Ableton Live (or Reason/etc...) to use as your main mixer/fx board
3) You want your 32 audio and 24 usb tracks to all be kept in time

In the mixer you can do some *very* complicated routing between audio tracks and usb tracks, which allows you to pretty freely get audio from one place and send it someplace else. I could imagine this kind of setup would allow you to process various tracks through outboard effects like guitar pedals then passed onto computer/tablet effects, and back. I feel like to stay sane I personally would want to render this down to audio tracks, but I could see people wanting this level of flexibility for live performances where you want a setup to work with, but have some ability to sculpt the sound as it plays.

Regardless, you're probably right, it *is* time consuming to track out, line things up, and warp it all into place from the MPC into a DAW. You're likely better off (and Akai seems to want you to) save everything as separate stems.

Naive question, why would you want to use usb-c and not the "controller mode"? To use the DAC/ADC of the live3?

I don't have a live3, didn't read the entire manual either...

lamarcph wrote:Naive question, why would you want to use usb-c and not the "controller mode"? To use the DAC/ADC of the live3?

I don't have a live3, didn't read the entire manual either...

Controller mode is to convoluted.. routing from daw to daw makes little to no sense with thr added latency. Also if you want to add vsts in your daw now you have 2 days with vst and more headaches.. I dont have the live 3 but I believe you can go from 44.1k to 96k over usb c which will then route to your daws audio interface..