am i doing this the hard way?
Hi again fellas…
I’m finishing up production on an album i am working on and now I have to send the individual tracks to be mastered.
I have so far been mixing down each section from the zero point by selecting which tracks to mixdown in the mixdown advanced options menu.
this works sometimes, but on some songs - especially the effect heavy ones, or those with 20+ tracks - when i import the mixdown files into a new song, they do not line up.
am i doing this the painful way?
Does ntrack v.5 export multiple mixdowns at once for export to other applications, such as protools?
Has anyone heard of “exporting to OMF”? Is that an option?
thanks,
bud
Hi skyrider:
I’m involved with this operation, quite a bit…
I have a friend, I call my RADAR Buddy…
He has a RADAR Turnkey operation/studio… He hates me to death… when it comes to my system/set-up… I have .wav files. He has at minimum… Broadcast Wave File extensions… The best I can transport to his set-up from my setup is .wav file extension files…
I believe, I am able to import and use those files extensions… but not the other way, around…
At one time, Flavio provided support for Broadcast wave files… (Import Only) But, I’ve never been able to transport that extension from my setup to his… The best I can produce on a CD is, raw .WAV Files…
SO… having said that I now need to be careful how I produce those files for him to be able to import into his RADAR Turnkey setup…
We, as windows/n-Track Cubase/whatever we use to create these files need to pay particular attention to how these files are written to this CD that we use to transport these .wav files…
In my experience we end up with these files that are created by our windows based/n-Track editor… That’s fine… but there are two ways to arrive at this “END” product…
When we get to the “Mixdown” window in n-Track we have a choice as to how to render this .wav file… If you look at the selection of how to render/mixdown the file/files (this is in the mixdown screen) we’ll see a list in the more options… “USE THE SOUNDCARD’s SETTINGS” along with several other options…
I never use the “Soundcard’s” setting… I use either the 16 - or 24 bit selection… to mixdown/render .WAV files… I haven’t tried the 32 - or- 64 bit float yet. but maybe I /we should… when we transfer our files to another format/setup… It wouldn’t hurt to give that a try…
The reason for not using the soundcard’s settings when rendering the tracks, is… That involves the term I call IT… Processing Latency (By the Audio Card) … Using the other selections, in that area/window involves using the DAWs processing format… That… in my opinion is the best we can hope for, when it involves File Latency…
Learjeff could probably describe this in much better terms than I can… Maybe he’ll come on here and put this to better understanding…
Bill…
PROTOOLS is a nothingness, some people BOW and PREY before it - it is just a hard drive editing system - the hard dives are outboard (in those fancy boxs) the actual DAW part of it is no better than Cubase, it has a MYSTIQUE that is unfounded - and they (digidesign) make a fortune out of selling not very efficient control surfaces to tart the thing up -
it also runs on a MAC (nuf said)
BROADCST WAVE FILES - 48000khz 24bit wave file with a couple of extra header boxs, SONAR LE produces BWF files (and thats free) BWF is a nothingness unless you engineer for a Radio station - not withstanding N SHOULD PRODUCE BWF WAVE FILES -
MASTERING - there is nothing in PROTOOLS that does not have its equilelent VST that you can plugin to N - you can master in N, Reaper or Audacity - nobody can tell the difference - a review in Sound on Sound magazine (last year) on mastering where they sent 6 songs to 6 mastering houses concluded that the difference between the unmastered and mastered tracks was MINIMAL -
BEFORE YOU SEND your tracks away ATTACH A TYPED SHEET giving details on how you want the mastered tracks to sound, this may sound silly bUT IT IS IMPERATIVE if you dont tell the person doing the mastering as they can ruin your tracks by addind their interpretation to your work - something like TRACK 1 treat as ROCK - TRACK 2 treat as instrumental etc -
Get the mastering person/house to give a contract saying if the mastering is not to your liking they will do ia again for free and get the phone number/e-mail address of the mastering engineer - if they wont give you that GO SOMEWHERE ELSE -
IN THE END just send them the best you can do - its no good worrying about it - let them sort it out THATS WHAT YOU ARE PAYING FOR -
Dr J
DISCLAIMER -
Dr J is a known hater of ProTools and the users of MAC computers, expensive DSP cards and and anything that sets people apart where ther are no grounds for it - he is especially renouned for smashing the EGOs of those who think that because they have such and such they are superior - he is an anarchist, athiest and retrobate - and only Bill (WOXNERW) is older than him on this board - you take his word or not, that is your choice, as like everything else ITS STILL A FREE WORLD (well in England anyway) and you have the right to be free and not be told that any one thing or any one way is better than yours, by doing so you are only pandering to the EGO and be-littleing yourself before a false icon, the EGO is nothing but a sham cover that hides a faltering person as a shell covers a bad egg -
WOW:
I like that disclaimer…
That’ll stand up on and land or territory in the world… Hammered-in-Stone… maybe, Marble…
Except, There’s this island/country off the shore, over here… I can see it from my back yard… Ecom Secom Island…
The guy who lives on it calls IT his neck-of-the-Woods… I think he’s lived there sense TIME…
He told me once on a clear day, when he sent me a message with a smoke signal… I saw IT… He said he didn’t like my P-111 DAW… or Billy Gates… and that I should toss it out… 
Bill…
BiLL - you should have replied with “MACman speak with forked tongue” -
Dr J
dr j,
Great job of not answering the fucking question.
you rule.
Hi bud,
No unfortunately, n-Track does not export OMF files OR Broadcast Wave. The best way I have found to get usable tracks out of n for import into other applications is to render each track separately, one at a time from the beginning of the song (or project) to the end. This way, any comp’ed tracks, edited tracks or tracks that do not start at 00:00.000 will be rendered to a new wave file with a 00:00.000 start. That way when you drop the tracks in another app, you don’t have to nudge them around to line 'em up. Make sense?
Remember to bypass effects if you don’t want them “printed” on your export tracks!
HTH,
D
Hi Again:
I stand corrected on this…
It appears that the best track/time resolution that n-Track can resolve is down to 1/100th of a second…
I don’t know how to express what a RADAR System can resolve, except to say that it resolves down to Sample Frames… if that is the correct term… I don’t know how to compare/express that term in 1/100ths of a second… Maybe, someone with a calculator can do the math and come up with what 1/100th frames a second represents…
Lets say a standard .wav file at a bit depth rate is expressed as 24-bit @ 48khz. sample rate… How many “Frames” are contained at that file resolution? As well… How many frames are contained in a .wav file that has a 24-bit @ 96khz. sample rate?
Anyway, that’s the type of file RADAR Wayne would like me to transport to him for editing on his Turnkey System… When he sees me comming into his studio with my CD under my arm, he looks down his nose, at me… lol…
If I have expressed the terms incorrectly, I’d like someone up here to point me in a way that might correct me in my way of thinking…
In the end, … being “Sample Accurate” is somewhat different than expressing a file with an accuracy of 1/100th of a second resolution… That doesn’t mean to say that a “Sample Accurate” file is any better than a 24-bit @ 48 khz. is any better quality than a .wav file that comes from a Sound/Blaster Audio Card…
I’d like to think I done “Tracked-My-Tracks” the best way I know how… So there RADAR Wayne… poof…
Where’s learjeff??
Bill…
You already have the information to figure that out Bill. 24/48 will have 48,000, 24 bit samples per second of digital audio. 24/96 will have 96,000, 24 bit samples per second of digital audio. What causes the grief and misery is when people comp tracks together or punch-in to record a part on a new track… anything that means that good ol’ Windows PCM wave file may not start at exactly 0 on the project timeline. When you import those into another package, it is gonna assume you want that file placed at 0 on the timeline thus you have to drag it around to the proper location in time for it to playback correctly with the other tracks. BWF and a few other file formats help with this by time stamping the correct position of the file. When you import it, the program reads this additional information and says “Hey Bill wants this file to start at 23:34:.234!” or whatever and it places the file on the timeline accordingly. Presently in n-Track you can’t avoid the drag and tweak dance unless you render each track(s) wave file from ZERO. This means if you have a timeline 3 minutes 37 seconds long and have one lousy track with a shaker on it from 3.23 until 3.37 your rendered wave file (starting at 0) will have 3 minutes and 23 seconds of silence until your shaker comes in… but it will come in on time!
I condensed and possibly forgot a few points but maybe you get the idea.
D
here is the link to the official BWF format standards - and there is useful app there to download for viewing the data header (chunks) of a BWF file -
http://www.sr.se/utveckling/tu/bwf/
Dr J
Hi D:
I think I condensed a few points to/with my understanding as well… I get my files looked down at even if I render the tracks individually or not… Cause I took each file/tracks, both ways… Rendered and not rendered… He gave me a set of files in return so that I could import them into n-Track… I could do that with no issues of any kind… Except that somehow he doesn’t really deal with .wav files… I’m not sure exactly what the extension is… But in order to get the files he gave me, he had to format/render/prepare those files so they ended up as .wav files… That process, he didn’t like to do with his files… I think, in his mind they wern’t pristene, after processing them…
I seem to remember that the build of n-track at the time… I can’t recall… but n-track can not recognize files unless they were .wav extensions… Once on the timeline they behaved very well, and with all the energy that I heard when they were on a RADAR timeline…
He called me and asked how they behaved in my set-up… He sounded rather surprised when I told him I had them imported and aligned and playing and I could record with them… But he ended up with a bunch of issues he couldn’t/didn’t want to explain to me… In fact, I did a couple of Bass tracks with them and then the second issue arose… Importing the files I created in n-Track and re-importing all the resultant tracks back to RADAR…
If I had “No Issues” I couldn’t imagine him having “Issues”… However, that seemed to be the case…
I was quite willing to investigate the quandary and continue on with the project… But he became condescending to the files I created and we both lost interest and moved on… I think IT had something TO-DO with re-importing the files back into RADAR and the tracks not appearing on the designated original track positions… ?? Something like that… That was the first thing… As he says, A cross-platform editor is supposed to preserve many of it’s configurations, including a number of other things that n-Track was unable to control/recognize…
You see… when you have a negative attitude to begin with… It’s difficult to adjust that way of thinking and to take something positive from the experience…
Bill…
Diogenes -
at first sight it looks a simple matter just to add a couple of new headers to what is already attached to a wave file, and it becomes a BWF, but when you delve into the standards the whole thing becomes very involved, i have looked at the BWF headers that Sonar produces and they just seem to cover the vary basic requirements -
up to now i have not been able to get my hands on a full spec BWF file - just GOOGLED for BWF download, but no luck - if you know where i can get one from i would be more than obliged - however i did come across a BWF file manager, free to download (right at the bottom of the page) on the Fostex website link below, that may be quite a good app, but as i am downloading build 2200 now will have to wait a while before i can get at it -
http://www.fostexdvd.net/fxdvd_route/docs/product/pd6/pd6_specs.htm
Dr J
| Quote (DR Jackrabbit @ Jan. 12 2007,07:42) |
| BROADCST WAVE FILES - 48000khz 24bit wave file with a couple of extra header boxs, SONAR LE produces BWF files (and thats free) BWF is a nothingness unless you engineer for a Radio station - not withstanding N SHOULD PRODUCE BWF WAVE FILES - |
BWF can actually be any frequency, and bit rate and is a little more use than for just radio. One of the most important features is the ability to contain sync info in the wav file that ultimately improves portability between systems.
| Quote (DR Jackrabbit @ Jan. 12 2007,23:49) |
| up to now i have not been able to get my hands on a full spec BWF file - just GOOGLED for BWF download, but no luck - |
Try this...
http://www.ebu.ch/CMSimages/en/tec_doc_t3285_tcm6-10544.pdf
| Quote (skyrider @ Jan. 12 2007,00:19) |
| Hi again fellas... I'm finishing up production on an album i am working on and now I have to send the individual tracks to be mastered. |
I'm not totally sure I understand what you are trying to do. Perhaps I misunderstand your post. When you send tracks for mastering you usually send the mixdown of the song, not the individual tracks (instruments) within the project. Therefore all you have to do is mixdown each song to a separate wav file.
Some mastering houses will work with two tracks per song - a vocal track and everything else, but this is not the norm I would say.
Am I missing the point???
Hi XonXoff:
As much as I know, the mastering house wants a two-track of your project mixes (so he has some idea as to what you think you mixes should sound like) and all the tracks for each cut separately… Each track needs to be dynamically balanced/leveled/and whatever, … It’s the mastering prerogative to do his process on each track… That’s why thy charge all that money for… That’s as much as I know… When they send you the “Proof” of the cut, It’s your choice to say YES-or-NO to what you hear… Your project is in their hands… He is as good as the last project he mastered…
Bill…
| Quote (XonXoff @ Jan. 12 2007,18:55) | ||
BWF can actually be any frequency, and bit rate and is a little more use than for just radio. One of the most important features is the ability to contain sync info in the wav file that ultimately improves portability between systems. |
Right Xon... that's the part I kind of left out in my condensed explanation. THE biggest reason the pro's want BWF (or a similar format) is all that synch info. Otherwise, things are much, much more difficult to work with. Like somebodies home movies shot with a HandyCam with audio overdubbed from something like n-Track. There can't be any true synch between the two and you end up with that cheesy "B" movie overdub effect where the lips don't match the voices. Kind of like politicians!
D
Hi Gents:
I have several files that I got from RADAR Wayne that as far as I know are BWF files… I’ll look for the CD that they were on and do a properties on them… It could be they were all rendered up but I’ll look at them… How do I … or what should I see in the properties that will tell me just what they are?
Bill…
If I remember correctly, all this was discussed at some length, before…
It seems that the audio hardware plays a big roll in “Stamping” the protocals on the recorded files as they are recorded… For example, it seems to me that a S/B audio card is not capible of recording or repro’ing BWF files. Well, not recording the files… Repro’ing the files are a different matter… if the card doesn’t recognize to bits of information, the card just doesn’t read the bits… It doesn’t matter at that point, anyway… Just convert the audio bits and toss the non-audio bits…
I have build 2200 ready to install… I’ll be back…
Bill…