I am mixing two tracks together (one audio track & one midi track) and rendering them into one clip to free up the second track for additional sounds. The reason is it want to keep my set minimal & I don't want to keep adding audio tracks just to spice it up with sparse sounds here & there.
The first track is a 24/44.1 audio clip of drum machine beat. The second track is directly from impulse of programmed hihats & claps.
When I render the mix at 24/44.1, the volume and punch is the same, but it sounds slightly less crisp/deep, the snare has a tiny bit less "smack" & the stereo depth isn't quite the same. The difference in the sound between the new clip and live playback of the two tracks is barely noticeable but when I listen closely it's there so I am trying to figure out why.
There are separate compressor 2's on both of the tracks. There is a gate on the audio track. I want to commit to that sound, so I render w/effects activated, all faders & master @ 0db. Then I playback the new clip on another audio track with no effects. Should be the same...
I can only think of one possible explanation so far. Even though impulse's individual samples are 24/44.1 and 16/44.1, is it because I have lost some information in impulse going from 32 bit float playback down to 24 bit recorded audio? Is this one of those cases where the the live sum of the 2 tracks is greater than the whole mixed down to one track?