Midi vs Audio

[mididiot]

Maybe a dumb question, but I just had to get it out of the way. I run a Live project for my regular gig with 250 tunes. I use Live as my band while I play solo piano. I have a Macbook Pro 2.2 quad core with 8 gig of ram and a 750gig 7200rpm Hard drive. I have some strictly dedicated midi songs, some audio,and some mixed audio & midi. Is there any reason I should run exclusively in either of these options? Is one more cpu friendly than the other? I'm not having any problems and I don't want to start having any.

[beatmunga]

Is there any reason I should run exclusively in either of these options?

Not really.

[savyurrecords]

I would say you are probably ok too given todays machines. However, if you wanted to be a bit more safe I would convert any backing tracks that warrant it to audio.

Another + for converting to audio
I get annoyed when I open projects from long ago only to find out that I can't play a certain track because the plug in doesn't exist on my system anymore.

I still keep all the Midi tracks though and by saving different versions of songs before and after conversion. That way the current project stays clean and I can still go back to the MIDI if I needed to. Which BTW I barely ever have.

[antarktika]

Is one more cpu friendly than the other?

midi is far more cpu friendly than audio...

but the specific vsts you are running via midi have the potential to suck up way more cpu resources than your audio tracks.

[Rinsemeister]

"plug in doesn't exist on my system anymore."

So true. Another +1 for converting to audio.

[doghouse]

I have some strictly dedicated midi songs, some audio,and some mixed audio & midi. Is one more cpu friendly than the other?

When you write "midi" I think "software instruments". In general a computer can handle many more audio tracks than midi tracks driving software instruments in real time, that's why track freezing exists. My computer is not particularly powerful and some of the soft instruments I own can eat 10-20% of the CPU playing a single note.

As an experiment to prove this to yourself: take a song that uses software instruments, make a copy of it, freeze all the midi tracks and compare the CPU loads between the original and the copy.

[Tone Deft]

Is one more cpu friendly than the other?

midi is far more cpu friendly than audio...

you have that backwards. midi includes audio, audio does not require midi processing.

one thing to consider is the issue of automation delays not being tracked by Live. if you go mess with your set, move plug ins around, add some new ones and there's automation in the existing plug ins, that automation can be thrown off.

bouncing it all to audio will ensure that your set will always sound the same.

to that end, save off revisions of your set. if you screw it up or if it gets wonky you can go back to what you have today. pretty important when you rely on this stuff for money.

[Rinsemeister]

"audio does not require midi processing".

Indeed not, as long as you're happy with all your automation then commit to audio.

Why waste CPU?

As Tone says (was it Tone) always keep a backup of your original MIDI.

[3dot...]

audio wins !

[Syncretia]

midi is far more cpu friendly than audio...

Wrong

audio wins !

Definitely. Just bounce all your backing tracks to audio. There are several reasons for this - one of those being CPU usage savings. However, CPU usage is probably the least of your worries.

The main reason you should bounce your backing track to audio is that you can then work with a "mastered" backing track. If you have some midi and some audio, you are essentially going to be mixing/mastering on the fly. There's nothing really wrong with that and several musicians do that as part of their performance. However, it sounds to me that you want the focus to be on your playing and not on the other music. In fact, if you do this, you won't even really need Ableton at all. You could just play the backing tracks as MP3s or WAVs. In my opinion this is much better because you're removing about 100 things that could go wrong - i.e. Ableton crashing or whatever.

A mastered backing track will sound better on stage. You can get a professional to master the track for you.