Recording Digital Keyboard Solos — Best Practices?

TulipAcid · 2026-08-16T22:53:18+00:00

Seeking input from those more experienced than me! I’ve read/heard a few things. And I have no desire to become a recording engineer. Ideally, my situation would be to “set and forget” and there are so many places to set volume/levels/gain … whatever the correct terminology is. Let’s save the topic of mixing for another day. As a newbie, seems the best avenue is to leave the out of the box app/plug-in settings as is (as the sound engineers at Moddart/VSL intended.) Then we get to the channel level settings on the DAW and the next opportunity, the settings on the audio interface. And what’s considered the audio interface? The audio output on the Mac? My Duet audio interface? when I eventually run the digital/audio back through the USB interface and plug my headphones/speakers into the RD 2000? (My studio monitor levels are set at the halfway mark.) Is the 2000 taking the DAW output over USB as digital information and changing it to audio via its own DA converter or passing through audio to the outputs (I’m guessing the former.) Where can I control the volume that I hear apart from what’s recorded? What should I change at the DAW, if anything? Confession: I did change the levels of the PIanoteq plug in on the MainStage patch. (I’ve loaded a Pianoteq and VSLs as individual “patches” so I don’t have to bother opening and closing “concerts.” Also the RD2000, but I’m still figuring that one out.) Pianoteq's are just so much louder out of the box than the VSL’s! I recorded without headphones so I could hear over speakers. I controlled that volume via the Duet digital interface speaker out settings (not the playback or the mixer master.) I believe (and could be wrong) that means what went into Quicktime was what I would have heard if I maxed the speaker out settings… I do think soon-ish, I’ll sidestep the Duet (necessary for my midi controller setup, not so much for the RD-2000) and have the output of the DAW go to the RD 2000 with speakers/headphones attached to it… I got the Duet back when I thought I might be recording mandolin duets on my laptop/iPad and needed a simple mixer for microphone input…and used it as a theoretically better channel for laptop output…I suppose many people just get a splitter for the audio jack out of the laptop/Mac...

KevinM

Sampled virtual pianos do seem to be quiet. From my experience (though now quite old) this is common, my VSL pianos are close to max volume output but even so there is amplification using AudioHiJack before saving the recorded audio to disk and yet my recordings remain a bit soft.

If I do a video I am often adjust the volume up again.

So you are not alone with dealing with this issue.

TC3

I'm not quite sure what the question(s) is/are, I admit to getting a little lost while reading your post. I'll start with something simple and then we can go from there.

In the past, when I have wanted to record a solo piano piece using Pianoteq, I simply plugged my piano into my computer with a USB cable to send the MIDI notes from the piano to the computer. I also plugged some headphones in so I could listen while I played. I recorded a MIDI file of my performance right on Pianoteq, using the piano sound I wanted, and when I was satisfied with my performance, I took my best take and exported it as an audio file. That seems simplest and also best in terms of audio quality. If I still wanted to mess around with the audio file (normalize, compression, eq, reverb, whatever), then I used something like Audacity or GarageBand for that.

The stuff you're talking about seems to add a lot of other steps. I'm guessing that for some specific purposes that can't be achieved by the method I describe above, but I'm not clear on what those purposes are. Can you elaborate for me?

Rob

TulipAcid If you are just recording audio, why not simply record in the DAW, where you can easily monitor the output level? If the volume of the output file is still low, you could use the DAW's 'normalize' function to adjust to taste.

TulipAcid

Rob

I was recording audio and video as I wanted the output from the app/DAW into Quicktime.

I just did a sound check video following the same process. Video via iphone continuity camera. Audio via Pianoteq app. I looked before doing this and the output via the plugin in the DAW is the same. To my ear, the youtube and the quicktime file and the imovie file all sound the same.

I played back and checked the output of viewing the youtube. The quicktime version, the imovie version and the youtube version sound the same. As mentioned before, I viewed/listened to the levels from the DAW … same.

And here’s a screenshot of the levels at the last pass which is where I turned the headphones down. Thus, turning headphones down only impact the output of the phones, not the output to the a/v recording. In listening to the recording I heard NO DIFFERENCE in the recording before or after turning headphones down.

TulipAcid

Thanks everyone…I think we can stop.

In the post above, I think I proved to myself that there is no issue with recording.

What may have happened is that I listened over SPEAKERS (which I don’t like) with unmitigated volume.

As a result I likely played more quietly than otherwise so as not to be too loud for the audience (or the sense of the tune.)

New day, different keyboard. Should be otherwise same setup except the “touch” of the keyboard will be different.

I’ll do a new AV recording WITH HEADPHONES this time and adjust the volume so it’s bearable for me (not the levels, which I didn’t do last time either…)

If the result is the same as the experiment above, I think I know the cause!!!