works almost perfectly
I just downloaded the build 1752 and tested the freezing function. It worked! Yay! …almost. You cannot assign the VSTi to a group and freeze, this crashes N immediately. I’ve filed a bug report already about this. Otherwise it freezes/unfreezes nicely. Thanks a lot Flavio! 
can you freeze a group/bus (given it doesn’t have a vsti in it)? you can’t do it in AA, and I absolutely hate it. It makes bussing useless if you can’t.
fish
At 02.11 30/01/2005, you wrote:
>Bug report:
>There was a bug with freeze, when I freezed my
>midi-track with some notes and output directed to sfz (the VSTi) which is
>further directed to group 1 (using build 1752).
>It seemed to freeze it, but after pressing play it
>crashed immediately.
>This bug can be avoided by not using
>groups, then it all works great!! Thank you for this feature.
The problem should be solved in build 1753.
That didn't take too long ;)
>Bug report:
>There was a bug with freeze, when I freezed my
>midi-track with some notes and output directed to sfz (the VSTi) which is
>further directed to group 1 (using build 1752).
>It seemed to freeze it, but after pressing play it
>crashed immediately.
>This bug can be avoided by not using
>groups, then it all works great!!
Thank you for this feature.The problem should be solved in build 1753.
That didn't take too long ;)
Flavios a star at responding…
Good chap!
DSP
I can’t seem to use the LIVE feature in 1753. the freezing works great. I slapped on a bunch of plugins for a 40% cpu usage, froze and it’s down to 5%. it even keeps the old freeze on file so you don’t have to wait for it to load up again.
n-track has turned into such a great program, it’s kinda’ like watching a boy grow into a man lol
so can n freeze groups?
What is this “freeze” you speak of?
it temporarily renders a track with all the effects and such and replaces the said track with the rendered version to cut down on cpu usage. you can also unfreeze the track which reverts it back to the original state with all the normal usage of the plugins being used.
very handy.
Freezing a group freezes all the tracks routed to the group? That would be ideal!
It would have to, wouldn’t it. At first I was like, “Well, no that might not be what you want,” but then I realized that if you changed any of the tracks leading to the group, then the group would have to be refrozen. Well, actually I don’t know if that would be true. It depends on the signal path. is there audio from the group returning to the track? Potentially, I guess, if you use an aux return, right? then everything AFTER the aux return would be alterable w/o having to re-freeze the track. So how your pre/post fader settings were would effect how you can freeze the bus. And where does the effects sit in the signal path? Are they before the sends, or after the returns? Or in between? (that would be odd! 
) So signal path plays a big role in whether freezing groups is even possible, and effects the answer to the question on if they would all need to be frozen or not, and if that would be “ideal” or not. And if busses are post-fader, then you wouldn’t even be able to turn up your tracks when the bus is frozen. Of course, I guess you can’t if your effects are post-fader anyways. I always do pre-fader, so I don’t have that problem. Sorry, I was thinking out loud, or typing out loud or typing while thinking out loud or whatever. But anyways, it is a question…
fish
The signal path is shown in Help -> References. You can see a slightly more up-to-date version here:
nTrack signal path diagram
But you’re right that any use of aux on the tracks in the group mean that those tracks would need to be played. I wonder how clever n-Track is about figuring these things out, or whether you’re expected to mute tracks yourself when using freeze. (I haven’t loaded V4 yet).
By the looks of that, if you check pre effects/pre fader, then you can control your tracks while sending to a frozen group. You just wouldn’t be able to adjust EQ, as it is before the aux send in the chain. I guess there is no return. I don’t know why you’d NEED a return, though. It’s not an effects loop. Anyways. Yeah. it depends on your settings.
fish
Right, aux buses aren’t loops – that’s what the track plugins are. The aux return goes to the master channel.
Regardless of the aux routing you’ve chosen, n-Track has to read the track data apply the EQ, and send the results to the aux. If you’ve selected post-inserts it also has to run the track inserts. If you’ve selected post-fader it also has to apply the fader (not that this matters much).
So, if you’re using an aux send with pre-insert, pre-fader (which I believe is the default), freezing a track’s group gives you the benefit of not running any of the track’s plugins, but doesn’t stop n-Track from having to read the track’s wave data. (Might be good to test to see what it really does.)
Of course, if you make any changes to a frozen track or a track whose group is frozen, you won’t hear the effects of your change.
Well, I don’t know about N 4.04 (wating to get out of beta), but the way AA does freezing (or “track locking”, as it is termed in AA, but it is the same thing) is that if you lock a track and choose prefader, you can control volume AND EQ. But I think that is because you can control where EQ is in the chain. I think. I would hope it is not just always stuck at the end of the chain… But you can’t freeze busses at all. I guess because it is difficult to set up. but it is a pain, because it makes busses useless as effect sends, and only is usefull for grouping, which I don’t really do.
fish