Hey guys. Not been around here for a while - suppose I’ve been busy recording.
However, I have just encountered the biggest problem yet with ‘n’. I hate to talk down nTrack cos it’s my favourite DAW software, but I’ve just lost 40 tracks of the best work I’ve ever done. I will personally kiss anyone who knows a way of getting this lot back.
I’m downstairs on the family computer so I’ve not got info handy about what build of n I’m using. It’s version 4 anyway - I’ll get more info if it helps.
I was basically on the last track before the vocals - putting a synth pad in the verses. I was using nTrack’s native MIDI through Crystal VSTi synth. I’ve recently installed a new soundcard (MIA MIDI) and haven’t been able to set the signal path to mix down MIDI to a wave file. This in itself isn’t a problem - I can work around by routing the signal through my desk and back into the MIA. However, as v4 has new features, I was curious as to whether there might be a new way to mix down MIDI to wave within ‘n’. I followed ‘mix down MIDI track to a wave file’ in the ‘Track’ menu but it’s still the same as it used to be - just talks you through how to route the signal through your card etc. Therefore, I hit ‘cancel’ as I can’t get my card to record from it’s MIDI output. When I did this ALL of my audio tracks disappeared. The only things that remain are the organisational infrastructure type bits of the songs (groups, aux buss settings, master FX etc) and the synth MIDI channel. I tried undo but to no avail. I’ve checked and all of the wave files still appear to be in the song folder so theoretically I can piece the song back together but that will take days.
I feel sick. This song was the best sounding thing I’ve ever come out with. I think the song itself is quite good but I was pushing my production skills to the limits. I have recently made a concious effort to modify my process in order to get my mixes organised - I spend ages sorting tracks out before I start mixing. So, as you can appreciate I’ve lost hours and hours of hard work.
Sorry about the super-long rant but I feel so gutted! Please help me.
Andy.
P.S. Aforesaid process will now be modified to include backing up on CDRW every half hour!
If you close n-Track without saving and then re-open the sng file is it all still there?
If not then do you have other versions saved as different .sng files?
If neither of the above then I think you are out of luck unfortunately.
I always save numerous versions of my song as different .sng files
eg. [song name]_raw tracks.sng
[song name] _no vox.sng
[song name]_midi drums.sng
[song name]_wav drums.sng
[song name]_compd vox.sng
etc. etc.
This serves 2 purposes.
1) It allows me to go back to a version or stage of the song that was a previous “milestone” of sorts of I want to redo something or try somethign different
2) saves as a back if a .sng file gets corrupted or something
It’s more for the first resaon that I do it though.
Rich
I hate to say this but if this truly was a masterpiece you should have known better and backed everything up on a daily or weekly basis…
Besides, maybe it wasn’t even an n-track problem, but an operating system problem.
If you have not turned off the default backup setting, you should have a ‘Backup_of_(filename.sng)’ in your directory no more than ten minutes older. You can open this, and save it under the original name. If you have turned that off, well, you may have some work ahead of you… 
Good luck!
'tl next time;
Tony W
Open windows explorer, programs, N-track. See if you have any “new song” files that do not seem to belong to anything. If you didn’t rename your individual tracks in your masterpiece as the above are suggesting, (ie songname lead guitar, songname lead vocal, etc) then you might have the individual tracks. Open them up and see if they are the parts to your song. If they are, you will have to reload them one by one and realign them. Good Luck!
Open windows explorer, programs, N-track. See if you have any “new song” files that do not seem to belong to anything. If you didn’t rename your individual tracks in your masterpiece as the above are suggesting, (ie songname lead guitar, songname lead vocal, etc) then you might have the individual tracks. Open them up and see if they are the parts to your song. If they are, you will have to reload them one by one and realign them. Good Luck!
Now I am stuttering!
Sounds like a bug to me. Did you email Mr. Antonioli?
Good luck - I understand the panic that sort of experience causes!
The MIDI to Wav feature requires a sound card that has an onboard synth. n-Tracks captures the wave out from the soundcard. Since the MIA MIDI doesn't have an onboard synth the n-Tracks MIDI to Wav function won't have anything to capture.
The way to convert MIDI to Wav using the MIA MIDI is to go out the MIA to an external MIDI synth module and to record the output of that synth as audio. This is how I do it using a Layla20, which is functionally similar to the MIA MIDI (except lots more audio I/O ports).
Having all you audio tracks disappear sounds like a very serious problem....Flavio contact is a good suggestion.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’m going to go and see what I can do.
I know how stupid I’ve been not to implement an effective backup procedure. I have no idea why I didn’t think of the possibility of a corrupt .sng file. Oh well, lives and learns!
Andy.
Even if all the wavs disappeared from the arrangement when you did the midi mixdown, as long as you didn’t save when you exited it should have opened back up how it used to be when you re-opened the sng file… unless it got corrupted in some way