Why render MIDI?

[cway]

Hello everyone,

I am currently trying to get involved in some House productions and I'm still quite new to it all and still learning a lot. I downloaded the Minus label live pack the other day and couldn't help but notice there is no MIDI involved in their tracks, and it all seems to be rendered MIDI? Why do people do this? Please enlighten me on this matter!!

Thanks

[elxicano]

To save on CPU!

I haven't downloaded this, so I can only speculate if being specific, but otherwise this, possibly latency issues and more...

I know that when I work on sets, my projects get pretty ridiculous with number of tracks, so freezing/bouncing/rendering helps keep the project manageable.

It also forces me to commit to a change as opposed to constantly going back to tweak, and then tweak again.

THEN... lastly another reason is that working with audio files can be a lot more fun sometimes than working with midi, because you can stretch, reverse, cut/paste, resynthesize, and so much more. At least I find it more fun

[2be]

The problem I have with MIDI is that I can't stop tweaking it. Move that note there, try out some different velocities, etc...
If I render to audio, it's final and I stop changing stuff that doesn't need to be changed. Helps to get a track finished

[Radio Arcade]

It may not have been ableton instruments used to create the sounds, thats why its audio but I suspect most electronic acts like the minus crew use mainly audio for the cpu reason....

[leedsquietman]

Both the fact that vstis can be heavy on processing/CPU load AND if they used non Ableton devices, they'd have to render that to audio in a Live pack, otherwise it would be no good unless the end user had those same plugins.

One thing you can do is save the midi file before rendering to audio or freeze then flatten in Live, this way the MIDI is preserved if you need o go back and change (by simply loading the midi file onto a MIDI track). You can use the notepad to make a note of the vsti/au instrument patch name and settings if you so desire too for recalling.

John Hopkins only uses audio too, he renders any MIDI to audio and just processes everything as audio, something he mentioned in the July 2009 Sound On Sound.

[cway]

thank you to everyone for the replies, its really cleared things up.

ableton forum service second to none as per!