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"Realtime" plugins are non-destructive because they can be removed and remixed. Or changed and remixed.
Effects in the 'Edit' pulldown (for audio) are destructive. They get hard wrote and replace the original data.

Realtime effects play through the effect every time it plays (or mixes down)
But RB does contain some destructive FX out of the bos in the Edit-Audio Effcts menu.

you replied to me and quoted someone else there ROG

Popping in here again.

I can't speak for RB's internal audio mix engine, but as far as I know, with most DAW software, when one renders the project to .wav, the output faders are very often automated and by golly they have an effect on how much a particular track contributes to the overall mix level.

I record at 24 bit because it lets me be lazy. I used to sweat the details when all I had available was 16 bit. I would almost always record as close to zero dB on the meters as possible, because on each and every track, that gave me the best signal to noise ratio. With 24 bit A/D, there's an additional 48 dB (6 dB for every bit) of quantization signal to noise ratio available over recording in 16 bit. If I can't make good use of somewhere in that 48 dB then I kind of shouldn't be in the hobby.

The output mix VU meter in any DAW software should tell you if you are into digital output clipping territory. Go red=bad. Stay out of the red=good. It's really that simple. If the render to .wav option inside of RB doesn't simply map this to whatever bit depth and sample rate you choose, then there's a problem.

You should be able to mix to your heart's content inside the PG software. If you have to mix in a different software than what you record, either one of three things is happening: the record software needs some work, or you need to learn how to mix properly inside of it, or there is some feature in your other DAW you should be pounding on PG to include inside RB.

RB, as far as I can tell, is pretty capable to handle the mixing task. Mixing is one of the simplest functions of any DAW software. Why one should have to go outside of it is a bit beyond my comprehension, to be honest.

I think I'm really missing something here. Also, for nearly all intents and purposes with computing power and capability of the last 5 years, you should be able to mix entirely without destructive editing. All of this discussion about the destructive edit aspect of things is one of those things that should quickly fade to the past in your toolbox - that is my experience. It's faded into memory as computing power has increased and DAW software takes advantage of multiple computing cores.

Used to be I did alot of rendering of individual tracks and effects to audio to keep the CPU load down in a project while mixing. However, with my track counts of normally under 12 or so, it's rare that I'm killing the CPU on my lappy which has a quad-core processor, with several VSTi and VST all saying to the CPU "Hey, I need to use you for a second" simultaneously. Keep in mind the effects that are nearly always most CPU hungry are time-based modulation effects like reverb and delay. This is because they require CPU calculation not only on the current sample, but all of those previous samples that are still in the 'tail'. Very CPU hungry. Learn how to bus them to keep CPU happy. Fader changes are just about the least amount of CPU churn that's possible. If I remember my rudimentary digital arithmetic from way back in about 1987 or so, fader changes are simply a gain change which is simply a multiply or divide operation. Bit shifting, I believe. Way simple for the CPU. Guess why multiply and divide were on some of the first digital calculators? It's simple for the calculator. Doing a destructive gain change is just not a good spending of your time and it's destructive. You can't ever change it back - not saying that going back and changing one's mind is always productive - usually it's not.

I read on here lots of folks that say something like: I use RB to record and compose, then I take all my tracks over to XYZ for mixing (insert your 2nd DAW of choice here for XYZ). What a pain in the bum! What is it about program XYZ that is so much better than RB, or PTPA?

I haunt KVRaudio quite a bit and there there are folks using everything from tracker type sequencers to ginormous ProTools rigs and all manner of stuff in between. It's a VERY rare occurrence to read anything there about people regularly transferring projects from one DAW to another just for mixing purposes. Here, it's talked about often. There you'll read more arguments about folks doing tape transfers into ProTools or Logic or something, or mixing using purely outboard busses like the Dangerous audio summing boxes and such, but rarely are there project transfers from one DAW to another simply to mix and render to either 2 track or whatnot.

You must have your reasons for keeping your head wrapped around two different DAW softwares. I have a hard enough time learning one deeply. I'd like to hear what your reasons are because that transfer of a recording project from DAW to a different DAW as at the very heart of this discussion.

For what it's worth, I've collaborated with folks sending me rendered audio from these DAW softwares in the past and used them with zero issue with me providing tracks back to them:

PowerTracks Pro Audio
Mastertracks (I think that's what it was called - it's the other DAW Mac uses also)
ProTools
Cubase
Reason
FL Studio
Tracktion
Garageband
Logic

there may be others, I just don't know. It's never been an issue. Never been a signal to noise ratio issue importing or exporting.

You must have your reasons for doing this. If one is simply just using RB to generate the band tracks, then I can understand the appeal of this specific use, and then using the workflow of a different DAW software. But if you are doing ANY mixing in RB, and then moving to a different DAW, then I don't get it.

Just curious to hear reasoning from anyone who has bothered to read this rather long sermon.

-Scott

Didn't someone write a song "dithering the day away"?

I'm finding this discussion fascinating. I still wonder then why all the advice from all these pros about recording at such low levels? I completely believe you guys that it's fine to record as hot as is appropriate for a particular part and simply adjust the faders for mixing. I threw out my comment about resampling or whatever just as a guess but apparently that's not it either.

I just did an experiment in RB. Starting with a new blank project I put in one chord on bar one then in track view highlighted the first 12 bars. I then generated a rock Real Drum part and it generated very low, I got one bar at the bottom of the VU meter about -24db. Then I generated a strong RT guitar track, a Brent Mason solo and it came in at -18, much louder on the meter. Now here's where a problem can be, the edit window shows individual peaks at 0 for the drums and -3 for the guitar but that is not reflected in the VU meters. They never went above -18 or -24 and that's where the recording person has to know what they're doing because I saw the exact same thing on my live remote band sessions using my Akai HD recorder. These meters are not sensitive enough. Another example of getting bit by consumer level gear and not pro level gear. I'm sure there's remote equipment with good meters that cost triple what I paid.

These levels that RB generated for guitar and drums are exactly correct per these websites so RB is doing it right. For drums RB is making sure the peaks are not going above zero even though that makes the overall track almost inaudible because the dynamic range on live drums is so high. This is also why a lot of live recordists put a compressor on the drum inputs. I never did, I just applied compression later. RB "knows" that as far as raw tracks are concerned an engineer doesn't want any manipulation going on the he didn't specifically ask for.

In conclusion to all this for Eddie, if you've already laid down some live tracks like your vocals, keyboards and sax and then have RB generate new tracks don't get upset that RB is generating them too low, understand it's actually doing it right. You need to first turn up your monitoring system and then use the mixer faders to pull down your prerecorded tracks, not manipulate the new ones up. At least not yet. A good engineer is going to want to hear what those new tracks sound like in the mix with no changes at first, just raw. Then he'll decide what to do, apply compression, EQ, all of that stuff. And for the future record your live tracks lower to avoid this. In other words follow RB's lead, it turns out Jeff knows what he's doing. And, it looks like I just answered my question at the beginning of this post.

I have to say these discussion with me throwing in some correct stuff and getting others wrong, I've learned a lot.

Bob

Okay so now I get to the climax.....

Let's say for sake of saying that I have recorded drums, bass, guitar, piano, organ, strings, vocals, 2 tracks of BGV, and a guitar solo. As I solo those tracks, they are all this hot on the VU meter.

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When I play them back together, will that level stay right there or will the level with all tracks summed become X x 10 and go off the charts?

Bob. I think we're getting there!

Just to expand on your comments about VU meters, all music contains what are called instantaneous peaks which can last for milliseconds, but will effect the overall level. The VU meter is designed to give a more average view of the perceived volume and has a damping factor which ignores these peaks. In effect, anything which lasts for less than about 300 milliseconds won't register on the meter. Some "posh" desks have meters which will switch between VU mode and PPM mode (Peak Program Mode) to enable the engineer to get a more comprehensive view of what's going on.

A small amount of upward limiting can be applied to most tracks to get rid of the instantaneous peaks and increase volume without overly effecting the sound. As you correctly say, RealTracks are recorded to give the engineer the option of treating the track, or not.

ROG.

Eddie.

It's good to have the tracks recorded hot, but yes, if you push all the faders up full you'll have the main VUs off the scale. Just ride the faders and keep an eye on the meters. Alternatively, use the main subgroup fader (A1) to bring down the overall level of the mix before it hits the main output buss.

ROG.

Ouch, me brain are sore from reading dat! Glad it twere only bay-sick! Me use Dithering but only because it is a default setting in Logic Pro 9. What me know won't hurt I! I go nappy now. Peas Oot!

Page 11 in December issue of Electronic Musician magazine addresses this in a concise answer to a reader question. Assumes 24 bit recording, says record at around -6 dB peak on your DAW's input meters. Also says to mix to -6 dB on the output bus meter to leave a little headroom for changes in mastering.

To address your question Scott about why would someone move a project from RB to another DAW for mixing.

It's workflow for me. Audition does edits much faster than RB does. Example, cutting, pasting or sliding audio tracks. RB does that just fine but does it slowly while Audition does it almost instantly. I could not figure that out until I realized Audition creates some kind of temp files and is working with those initially. When you're finished with your project in Audition and save it that's when you discover it. Audition will ask you what do you want to do with all those edited temp files. You could save each and every one of them into a separate directory if you wanted to. If you don't and just want to save your result as your primary project then you click "no to all" and it will go through a very elaborate "flushing temp files" thing that can take 10-15 minutes depending on how many edits you did. For me working with live band recording tracks it was a ton of edits and one song would take maybe 20 minutes to save. RB apparantly does not do that, it handles the edits in real time so it "appears" to work much slower but then saves the project in a few seconds. In reality when you include the save time in Audition, I think both programs are about the same in the total time it takes to edit, mix and save the same project. It's just that the initial workflow is much, much faster in Audition and I like that.

There's other things like the audio edit window is full screen in Audition, you have much more control over it with the mouse than you do in RB, stuff like that. So, bottom line I stopped importing those projects into PT/RB and started with Audition several years ago.

Bob

Bob, that makes sense. Feature requests submitted?

I think I may have stumbled on to something that has been at the root of a lot of this conversation. We have different schools of thought, but I think there has been a lot of "cross conception" going on here.

I believe we need to differentiate between RECORDING hot and MIXING hot. It seems like different responses are using those two terms interchangeably and that is not what the original question was about.

My past practice (and present practice for that matter) is to RECORD tracks with a good deal of gain on them, so they reach a top level of about -3db. So the gain stage when recording is rather hot, but not reaching 0 or clipping at all.

However, when I MIX those tracks, I pull them down until the channel slider is totally off and then bring them up to where they rarely go beyond -6db or -4db. I record them hotter so there is some meat there if I would want to go any higher when I mix.

Once again I restate this thought and maybe it hasn't been presented in proper context. When mixing down, I can always cut a hotter track, but I can't boost a weaker one. When the slider is as far up as it can go, it's done and then I have to start looking to pull down the other 9, or 12, or 16. Why pull down 9 or 12 or 16 channels because one is weak when, recording that one hotter would prevent that? Digital, analog, digilog or anatal (I made those up!!)... whatever. As long as there is no clip anywhere it is fine.

Thing is, if I mix something down and dump it into a merged stereo wav file, as soon as I get it into Audition I am going to use the gain feature anyway and make it swell up to the full size of the window and see if the VU meters clip or not. I can handle some yellow. Orange is pushing it, but I never go so far where I see any red.

Is that just restating what has been said here or has there actually be a terminology gap about recording hot vs mixing hot?