Trimming a song on the Model 12

[GlennM]

Hello all, here is my situation. I use a drum machine (Alesis SR18) to lay down a drum pattern for a song. I do my best to do it accurately, but sometimes, the beats go on longer than the song. At other times, I will program a countdown beat sequence before I start to play the rhythmic drum patterns for the song. The result is I may have more beats at the beginning or end of the song than I need. I want to trim the song to include just what I want.

I tried setting I/O points. In playback mode, it works as I expect. However, in a mix-down recording the recorder goes beyond the end of the song. Grrr!

I can take everything and trim it in Audacity, but myY goal is to learn what the Model 12 can and can not do.

How do I trim unwanted sounds? Please advise.
Glenn

 

[shredd]

I don't own a ModelXX - I prefer the PortaStudio's, specifically because they allow for extensive track editing WITHIN the unit...whereas the ModelXX's appear to be targeted at live use/recording, with the intention of requiring external editing via DAW.
I read the manual to see if it offered this function internally. It appears that it does NOT.
No Joy...

 

[Max Relic]

The Model series are FOH mixers with multitrack recording capability. The Model 12 in particular is designed to work with a DAW to get the best of it, in fact it has nearly no editing tools. To trim or edit tracks you may want to import them into your favorite audio editing software and get the job done easily. Simpler task like silencing a few measures at the end of a track can be done on the Model 12 with manual punch recording, but this would necessarily require some manual skills. An alternative may be bouncing the longer track onto an empty one, and fade out at the right moment. A little creativity is useful in these cases.

 

[GlennM]

Shredd and Max, Your explanation of the Model 12 being a Front of House mixer cleared up what that distinction means. Appreciated! Yes, the manual is very sketchy when it comes to editing mixdowns. Your recommendation to transfer the files to a DAW is exactly what I've been doing. Too, if this is to be a portent of my future, I will need to record each track on the 12 with the highest permissable gain because Audacity shows my instrumental waveforms as quite small. When I normalize my dozen imported files, the Audacity volume meter bangs in the red all the time, sigh!
There are only three reasons to do music (1) to learn (2) to make money (3) to have fun. I'm holding on (1) just now! LOL.
Thanks guys.

 

[Max Relic]

@GlennM, to be fair the Model 12 can do more than that: in fact when connected to a computer it is a 12 input / 10 output class-compliant audio interface, a MIDI interface and a DAW controller.
I didn't go in deep detail on the menu functions for semplicity of exposition, anyway the latest firmware introduced a Normalize function that can address your need of much "loud" output files. To be clear, the reference recording level of -12 dB (the thin horizontal line in the LCD meter screen) is more than enough for high quality S/N ratio and leaves plenty of headroom for further treatments. When you look at audio waveforms in Audacity or any other audio editing software be sure to set the proper graph scale, usually you may want to set it in deciBels (logarithmic), because it can change the waveform appearance dramatically.
If output level is a concern, just use the normalize menu function to your liking but remember to always leave some headroom (i.e. normalize to -3dB or -1dB, very loud) for the mastering process.