Mixer levels for virtual synth track and midi track

[brandon]

 I would appreciate some advice re the following.

I am mixing the tracks in a song which includes some soft synths and their associated midi tracks. Given that both types of  track have  volume faders and pan knobs which track should I actually be controlling; the midi track or the synth track? And if it is the one track I should be controlling what do I do with the other fader and pan knob?

Thanks

[Nigel Mackay]

Use the synth track. Ignore the knobs on the MIDI track.

[brandon]

Thanks Nigel - it would therefore appear that the midi 'knobs' are superfluous to requirements in this instance. Maybe they should ideally be 'greyed' out (food for thought).

[Lord Tim]

Not necessarily. If you're just using a single instrument synth, then sure - the MIDI volume and the softsynth volume can be more or less interchangeable (this isn't including things like pre-fader sends and things like that - you'd adjust your workflow if you're doing something a little more advanced  like that), but you might have a multi-instrument synth with a single output that requires a bunch of MIDI tracks to feed it, eg: an orchestral player or a General MIDI player, where you'd have a different instrument on each MIDI track playing through a single softsynth output. In that case, the softsynth out would act as the master for everything and you'd adust the levels of each instrument on the MIDI tracks.

[brandon]

Lord Tim - although I was referring to the instance where there is only one midi track feeding into one soft synth that's a very good point (and I wont forget it).