Deluge workflow for finalizing track (mixing / mastering)
Hello everyone,
I'm new to this forum and just acquired the deluge about 2 months ago. Lucky me, just before the containment situation began.
Honestly, the deluge is an amazing piece of gear. I manage to learn to use it and produce a retrowave EP (it's very basic but i'm happy with my progression).
However, I'm a beginner in music production. I read the forum, reddit and search for youtube tutorial looking for workflow and tips for mixing deluge output, but i'm still confuse about the most convenient way to finalize the mixing and mastering. I understand that a lot of user consider that deluge as not very powerful for mixing and mastering (maibe in a next firmware update this feature will be improved). Do you think it's true or it's possible to produce a decent track mastering?
From what I read I could record each channel of my track in the sd card and import it in a DAW. Maibe use an audio interface to record directly into a DAW?
I currently do not have any DAW (or other software maibe) on my computer, which one do you recommand that work well with the deluge and for mixing and mastering? (Which would not be to expensive) Or maibe some hardware to record and mixe?
Thank you very much if you have some tips or advises for my issue
Stay safe and have a nice day
Comments
Hey there,
Firstly I'm sorry that no one had responded to you yet, these forums can be disappointingly quiet at times. There are better experts than myself here but I will at least give you a response and try and help.
You are correct that mastering is not possible on the Deluge however you can do a degree of mixing by ensuring you are happy with your levels, effect automation and use of the Treble and Bass parameters. I almost always end up increasing the bass levels on my basses and kick drums.
Now you are at a cross roads, if you want to mix tracks individually and then master, you can either solo them and play them direct into a DAW using an Audio Interface or do the same but resample and transfer from your SD card. It is time consuming and not ideal.
Alternatively, if you are happy with how your song sounds, you can play in Arranger mode and resample the entire song. Doing this provides you with a completed song you can move into your DAW. I use this method, one things are in the DAW there is usually enough headroom to support additional EQing tweaks and mastering.
In terms of DAWS, personally I use Reason as it is something I am comfortable with and it provides a huge range of synths which if I wanted, I could overly on my Deluge track. I'm also happy with what it can do from a mixing and mastering perspective. Reason isn't terribly expensive but it isn't free.
Many people use Ableton and I know there is hardware which is compatible with it, others may be able to advise if there is a workflow for exporting from Deluge into Ableton.
I hope some of that helps, have fun creating.
Yeah, as PixelKicker says you might want to export tracks individually, it doesnt really matter how you record them. For a "professional" mastering having individual tracks in your DAW makes a huge difference.
There are a few tutorial vids around for the Deluge export function. I cant recommend any of them, they all fail to explain sidechain properly. This was a major caveat for me when exporting single tracks with the Deluge. I heavily use sidechain modulation in my songs and just recording track by track removes sidechain effects. It is possible to record every track with sidechain modulation, I did that, if you want to know how, I can explain. It is a lot of manual work though. Hopefully Synthstrom comes up with an auto export feature sometimes.
About the quiet forum, Synthstrom staff is almost only on Facebook, much more activity there. FB is of course better to promote stuff, IMHO the discussion quality is better in this forum though.
Sorry for answering so late (I did not connect on the forum since a long time). And Thank you very much for your answers.
I chose to record all my tracks into a DAW. I use Reaper to this and I get Izotope Neutron and Ozone for mixing and mastering. I m quite happy with this workflow.The main disadvantage is the time it takes to record each track. However, this forces me to listen to each track separately, which is not so bad to mix the track.
Wav export / mixdown is on the list for a future update and maybe daw integration, so maybe in the 4.0 update. Also, check tracktion waveform free if still looking for a daw, its free
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Hello.
I am thinking of buying Deluge. Currently, apart from my small private studio, synthesizers and "DAW", I work mainly on the TE OP-1. Overall, my time is short and I hardly ever use my computer or hardware. On "DAW" I do final mastering. I am currently looking for another small device that I can use to create a song from start to finish without any other devices? Is the Flood for me? From what I've read, the big problem for me is the inability to export individual audio tracks to WAV and I can't imagine analog re-sampling. I have read that it can succeed with the release of a new version of software 4.0. The question is when will it happen and will it even happen?
Will there be someone nice enough to answer my frustrating questions?
Not known afaik, but cant wait to see what will 4.0 bring.
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I understand,
that there is no target software update time. However, could someone please confirm to me that the audio tracks cannot be rendered in the current software?
They can, via resampling them individually.
Gives you clean WAV stems on the SD card, just takes a bit of time to do.
how do you export with sidechain intact?
While exporting youβll likely have one track soloed. In addition to the soloed track, also solo the drums. Youβll have to have the kick unmuted (mute other kit rows as needed) then turn down its volume, either kick volume or affect entire kit volume should work. Do this for all clips on the drum track if using the arranger.
That said, if youβre moving it into your DAW itβs a bit easier to just do the sidechain in the DAW. Youβll likely have more control there anyway.
Hm. One option is to turn down the volume on all sidechain sources, but leave the track unmuted. And then unmute a single track and resample that.
Now if your sidechain depends on probability then I think you're out of luck..