Drum arrangement and cpu load and control of parameters

[superk]

I have searched and cannot find a topic directly on this and its something that has been causing me some consideration lately.

This is particularly directed towards ableton users but I suppose it is applicable to all.

When arranging drums and percussion do people generally rack everything into one impulse device for example or is it better to rack each element into a separate channel and separate impulse (or whatever you are using for that matter)

Then is it normal to export each channel/sample/basic loop to audio and work with it in this format to put tracks together? Or do most people just work with full midi for drums. My cpu is getting nailed so quickly with few effects chains etc not leaving much for other elements of the song. One solution is for me to splash out on a new computer but cannot affort to quite yet.

To me it feels like its much more versitile to have everything in midi? Is this my lack of knowledge or is this the case??

At what point if this is done do you decide to move to audio?? Once the basic beat is laid? once lots of automations have been applied? Obviously once the automations have been applied and the exported in audio its hard to fix errors and make changes when putting all the layers together.

I know a lot of people on here are very much into making their own rules (there are no rules) but what is the general feeling on 'standard' for this?

Ta

[Artificial]

i rack each element into a separate channel (impulses)
it gives you much more flexibility and creativity
sometimes, if im happy with all the percs and drums, i route all the separate channels to 1 channel and use a compressor on that to make a more cohesent sound (is this the right word ?) so that they fit better together..
but like you said, there are no rules and there is more than 1 way to do it..

[Koppnicker]

I mostly do everything in MIDI.
For the drums IMO its better to have a seperate channel for each sound (I'm using Drumatic3 for the drums). But sometimes I do the whole drum patterns in just one channel.
The track I'm working on right now is written in one channel (talking just about the drums) and I had less problems with variation of the drums and letting the several sounds "play" together. But now i want to add some FX here and there bur it would have an effect on every sound. So I now have to seperate all the sounds. This pretty sucks and I'm too damn lazy to do this which is the reason why I'll leave everything like it is now.

[nospin]

usually a drum rack with different simplers and samplers on each channel and some effect chains and sends within the drum rack.
keeps everything in "one channel" but still able to apply EQ and all the normal mixdown things on each individual sound...
then you can freeze the whole drum track when you have it in the right place and need to work on other channels. then unfreeze drum channel to make any changes

at some point print to audio and maybe some small edits here and there

[boudo]

I use ableton live and mosty samples for my drums. Each drum sound has it's own channel so i can play around with effects on every sound. I use simpler for some sounds to automate pitch easier

[superk]

Thanks for your input.